Parker Ford Kitchen

When we first visited the Parker Ford apartment, to decide if we might be interested in renting it, the kitchen was the last room we saw. It was at the back of the house and overlooked the driveway. It was narrow - only about three feet from the edge of the counter to the wall - and had a mini-size stove and short fridge. The counter space was microscopic. My heart sank. I can't cook here. I can't live here. But everything else was right about the place - location, price, a landlord with a connection to Husband's family... It was the apartment for us. I took a deep breath and prepared for years of cramped, hot cooking in an inconveniently arranged, crowded kitchen space.


When we started moving in, I was surprised to find I actually liked the room. It was the sunniest place in an otherwise very dark apartment, and all that white gave it a fresh feel that was invigorating.

When we moved in, the stove looked pretty bad.

It actually looked even worse than this. This was after Mom scrubbed the whole thing, including the grates on top, the knobs, and the surface under the knobs. I got used to cooking on gas, but it wasn't long before we realized the oven had a problem. Sometimes the pilot light inside the oven would go out. This meant that in order to heat up the oven, we had to relight the pilot with a match or lighter, and then turn it on to let the whole heating element catch and throb into a blue glow. It also meant that when the pilot went out - which was unpredictable - a small bit of gas was leaking into the apartment. This seemed a bit unsafe.


Our landlord was awesome about the whole thing and bought us a new stove.

This was the stove in which I baked and on which I cooked many meals for Dinner in Parker Ford. It was little; a cookie sheet was almost too long to fit in it. But it was great.

You can see here that what I thought was small counter space was actually quite spacious in comparison to many other kitchens. I had all my non-counter things (fridge, drain area, sink, and stove) all bunched up at one end. The other half of the room was all counter. This seemed inconvenient when we looked at the apartment, but I ended up loving that counter and all the things I could fit on it at once. No other kitchen counter can compare to that broad plane of prep space.

One thing that wasn't so spacious - at least at first glance - was the storage space. There was one set of cabinets at the end of the room above the fridge. Then there was a short bank of them above the counter. There was some space under the counter too - open shelves with sliding wood doors. On the wall opposite the counter was a sturdy shelf mounted high on the wall. This was lined with hooks where I hung my pots and pans. Somehow the amount of things I was able to cram into these small spaces was incredible. It was the Mary Poppins carpet bag of kitchens.

I miss this little place, this haven where I cooked my morning oatmeal and made mint tea and
broiled tilapia for the first time. I miss the afternoon sun and the view of the cemetery. There will never be another kitchen like my first little kitchen in Parker Ford.