CHAPTER X
QUESTIONS FROM THE LEAGUE OF RATIONS
(_A very possible conversation, but invented by the author to bring out some points that the reader will readily see._)
“Joy!” gasped Mrs. Gregory Eggleston, turning on the electric current for breakfast coffee.
“Isn’t it a luxury after you’ve been out late,” she said turning to her guest, Mrs. Bradford Reardon, “not to have to think of servants and be able to have breakfast like this at 10:30--with impunity! You know I think the kitchenette will rob domestics of house room!”
“It certainly is a luxury to have a little cooking kit like this whether one has another home or not. And to have it as you have--within easy driving distance from the theater, where you and your friends can spend the night and breakfast like kings from this shiny apparatus. Besides,” she continued, “it’s amazing how a little 6′×5′ room (see plan 1) does solve the omnipresent question of how to live in the country and yet not have to depend on hotels to keep one comfortable while attending to the affairs of business and pleasure in the city.”
“You’re right,” agreed Mrs. Eggleston, taking some chilled oranges out of the refrigerator under the table, “Gregory and I wanted the country for our growing kindergarten and yet it seemed impossible until we thought of this scheme. Gregory has so many interests in the city and you know how many I have that it seemed almost exile to leave it. If we didn’t have this place, I’d be on the road all the time, whereas now when I am home I can devote my entire time to the kiddies.”
[Illustration:
_Underwood & Underwood_
A CORNER IN WALTER RUSSELL’S KITCHENETTE. THE STEEL UNIT KITCHEN CABINET IS USED HERE]
DROPPING THE MAIDS
“But,” she went on, “you’d be surprised how Gregory hated the idea at first of a manless or maidless entourage. He said he couldn’t bear to think of me messing with stoves, etc., and now you should see him! He loves it--he helps me too, and says it makes him think of our early days--and he loves me to wait on him and be alone with him.”
“The kitchenette as the domestic canteen has come to stay,” Mrs. Reardon said, and then looking about her with an amused flash in her eye, “but your kitchenette, dear, is like an ordinary kitchen. The kitchenettes I’ve conjured up when thinking of them at all, have been little curtained slits in the wall in the corner of two rooms without bath, clothes closets without clothes, bathrooms without baths, washstands capped with shelves full of canned goods and gas appliances all permitting of cookery with every requisite for human food except the desire to eat it.”
“Yes,” laughed Mrs. Eggleston, “I guess the only definition of a kitchenette is: a place to cook smaller than your previous one and smaller than any kitchen of any of your friends!”
“But,” Mrs. Reardon continued with rapture, “your kitchenette is a dream. It always reminds me of jewels--the tiled floors, walls and ceiling like luminous settings and the apparatus like lovely gems. Really it breeds appetite and culinary prowess. Any one could cook in this place! And when I’m not in such an esthetic mood I am reminded of an engine room in a small electric yacht.”
“That is amusing,” said Mrs. Eggleston, laughing, “but I hardly can see how it could be otherwise because Gregory and I thought of all the yachts we knew before arranging this kitchenette. He always says ‘Well, dear, we certainly are ship-shape here--even if we don’t own a yacht!’”
Whether the slit in the wall kitchenette or the tiled kitchenette is the only kitchen in the family, or whether the kitchenette is only for weekends of the foregoing variety, it must be small and ship-shape. These are the only definite kitchenette requirements.
THE NECESSARY EQUIPMENT
It need consist only of a couple of three-foot shelves, so compact are the stoves and ranges made for light housekeeping. But roominess is no crime, so multitudinous are the tools to play with. Smallness, however, is unusually synonymous with convenience in kitchenettes.
Nearly every professional woman and many men in the large cities are banded into a huge League of Rations by the sympathetic tie of small kitchenettes. These compact cooking outfits make the lives simple, adaptable and healthful, they are the result of the hatred of the restaurant and café which turn steady diet into a farce, and they put an end to the régime: “Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we diet.” And so the slit in the wall or the covered cupboard is made the nucleus of home cooking and family feeling. No servants needed, none missed and a feeling that you are not living down by doing your own work but living up by managing the difficult combination of living well and doing your job on the outside to the best possible advantage.
For the most part these kitchenettes are run by gas, but are for that reason cheaper in the cities like New York, where there is no cooking rate for electricity.
But the new appliances for the electric kitchenette are like toys, they are so fascinatingly contrived. You are crazy to have ice cream or whipped cream with which to employ the electric kitchen power unit which can perform all these miracles, and you are led into gustatorial and epicurean extravagances by cooking, boiling, baking and grilling at the same time on the new stove. A whole dinner can be cooked on the dining table with these new ranges even if you have no kitchenette!
The terror of dishwashing has evaporated! The electric dishwasher has been born and now our Ladies Eggleston and Reardon can, without loss of epithelial beauty, dash into the kitchenette for their matinal refreshment--sans sacrifice, sans anything but appetite and culinary ardor.
In the model Edison kitchenette, the utensils are hung up to avoid unnecessary spinal calisthenics. The sink is near the stove and is high enough to save the back from contortionate bends. All surfaces in the kitchenette should be an inch or so higher than that which the palm of the hand can reach without bending the back. The floors should be cement or hard wood with mat or with linoleum, either cork inlay, tile or brick; the ceiling of a light color paint or tile or brick; the walls the same and all joinings rounded to avoid the cracks at the base of the wall joining the floor, or where the wall and ceiling join.
The best kitchenettes are tiled or bricked with generous water vent so that the light hose played on them flushes and cleans them in no time.
One of the best arrangements is to have the kitchenette apparatus follow this succession: (See Plan 1) Drop table, closet, sink, work table, refrigerator beneath, shelves above, utensils hung underneath, stove, on either side of the sink drain boards of hardwood tilted toward sink or copper or composition slightly tilted; and a garbage chute on right side of work table near the sink.
However excellent or concentrated the arrangement, there can be no success, however, with any machinery unless you know how to use it advantageously; so as engineer in the electric kitchenette you ought to know a few things about the mysterious current over which you preside; how to use it economically, how to use it to its full capacity minus disaster and how to have the same mental attitude toward your kitchenette equipment as the workman has to his tools. In the Edison kitchenette is a little sign with the following legend:
Turn off the current when the range is not in use.
1. Start the oven on high, then turn it to medium or low.
2. Turn oven off completely and finish baking and roasting on retained heat.
3. When contents of pot are boiling fast, turn the plate to medium or low for long cooking.
Turn off current when nearly done.
Complete the cooking by retained heat in the plate.
In a little booklet is found this advice:
Fires caused by the use of electric stoves are mostly caused by carelessness.
I. Detach the plug as well as turn off current at the socket.
II. When you are not using any device continually shut off current.
III. Grasp the plug at the spring not by the cord.
IV. Blow-outs are caused by too many devices all attached to the cluster plug. Reduce the number.
The utensils of these kitchenettes are without end; some of them are: Tables, ranges--aforementioned; oven and grill combinations; griddles; toasters; percolators of all kinds; large and small ranges; ice cream freezers; combination meat grinders; ice cream, whipped cream and dough mixing units; electric ice makers; automatic time ovens, with clock attached so that you can put something in to cook and at a designated time the current turns itself off; immersion heaters; coffee mills; samovars; egg boilers; buffer, etc. for sharpening and polishing silver and knives; and countless other things.
But the latest of all is the electric kitchen cabinet or “Movie” of small price and great compactness; gas or electrically ranged and arranged, containing in its simple confines, pots, pans, ice box, folding table, flour bins, stove, shelves for dishes and all the comforts of home. Just the thing for one night stands or bachelor’s retreats!
And jot this down--that if you have a good refrigerator, electric or plain, you can have all the onions inside of it that you want without affecting other foods, and if you have an electric ozonator you can cook onions in the smallest kitchenette without damage!--so they say!
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