My Kitchen

Since food shopping/cooking is such a central part of my life here in Germany and can at times be a source of frustration, I figured a tour of my kitchen was in order.

I must tell you first that in preparing to take photos of the kitchen, I broke an unofficial German law and vacuumed on a Sunday. Remember, Sundays are "quiet days" and you're not supposed to run noisy appliances, use a lawn mower or allow your kids to make a lot of noise in the backyard (send them to the park if they want to play outside). I have heard of people being reprimanded by a neighbor for running a dryer or watching TV with the volume up too loud on a Sunday. We are very lucky to have patient neighbors who have never complained to us about anything. And that's with us living right on top of each other with no space in between our homes.

This is what David saw when he first toured our house. When a German agrees to buy/rent a house/apartment, he/she brings along his/her own kitchen. That means that your new kitchen has no lighting fixtures or appliances, but even more surprisingly, no cabinets and no sink. You disassemble everything from your old kitchen and install it in your new one. Our wonderful landlord agreed to install an entire kitchen for us, and threw in a brand new washing machine and dryer as well.

Here is the doorway to our kitchen. One of the first things David did upon moving in was remove the actual door that stood there. When we opened the door (and we never actually closed it), it blocked the space between the kitchen and dining area. To an American family, having such a door seemed silly. Why would we close the door anyway?

It reminded me of how the day we first arrived in Germany, we went to one of David's colleague's apartments to rest up for a bit. In that apartment, there was a door to the kitchen. When you opened the door, it blocked the fridge. So, anytime you needed something from the fridge, you had to open the kitchen door, then shut the door in order to get something out of the fridge. Then you had to open the door again to exit the kitchen. That would have driven me crazy.

But over time, I have come to realize the value of having such a door. There is the actual reason, which is to conserve heat, but the other reason is that black dog you see sitting in the doorway. Guinness is a notorious food snatcher. Leave any food on the kitchen counter or dining room table for a few minutes and it will mysteriously disappear. The strangest time was when I was preheating the oven to bake a frozen Hawaiian pizza. I unwrapped the pizza and left the kitchen for maybe five minutes. When I returned, the pizza was nowhere to be found. I scratched my head, asking myself, "Wait, did I actually already unwrap the pizza? Yes, I did! There's the empty box. But where did it go?" Guinness had taken it and eaten it, frozen pineapples and all. There are times that I wish we still had that door so that I could shut Guinness out of the kitchen when I'm in the middle of preparing a meal.

When our landlord agreed to install a kitchen for us, David mentioned to him, "And when you're choosing a refrigerator,...umm....could you keep in mind that we have four kids?" Traditionally, German fridges are very, very small. A typical fridge would hold less than half of what our fridge holds and the freezer, well, you'd be lucky if you could fit half a gallon of ice cream in one. Most Americans who move into a German house that has a small fridge usually end up buying a second fridge for the garage or basement. We were ecstatic when we saw this jumbo fridge in our new kitchen. More and more, Germans are buying American-size fridges.

Do you see the cereal boxes on top of the fridge? We don't have a food pantry, so the cabinets are divided between food and dishes, pots, pans, etc. The top of the fridge is a terrible space to waste and is the perfect place for cereal.

Here is our microwave oven. Very basic, but a typical German microwave oven. No digital timer, no "One-minute" button, no "Popcorn" button, no "Baked Potato" button, no "Re-heat" button. Just choose the temperature (much less powerful than American microwave ovens) and turn the dial for how many minutes. Can't say that I really miss my American one much at all.

Our dinner plates just clear the microwave oven door.

We have a gas stovetop that is smaller than an American one and can be a problem when I'm using more than two burners at a time. One pot is always poised precariously.

Our oven is electric and has a confection feature.

Notice how there are slots for the oven racks and trays. Be sure to have thick oven mitts as it can sometimes take more than a few seconds to slide the rack in properly and when you're holding a hot tray, you don't want to get burned.

My 9x13" baking dish fits OK, but my American cookie sheets don't. When I bake cookies, I use the German oven trays that fit in the slots and use parchment paper. Germans use a lot of parchment paper. Martha Stewart would approve.

A common story told among expats is about preparing a big Thanksgiving meal. The turkey is stuffed and ready to be baked, the American cooks open the oven door and realize that their big turkey pan will not fit into the oven. One person telling me the story went on to say that her husband quickly sawed off the pan's handles and then the turkey just fit.

Our Britta water filter is an absolute necessity. The water in Liederbach as well as the city of Frankfurt is exceptionally hard, so we must filter the water used in our coffee maker, electric kettle and in our ice cube trays.

I had blogged recently about how our washing machine broke down due to a build up of calcium in the heating unit.  We thought that the small water softener needed to be replaced.  It turns out that it wasn't a water softener at all, but rather a water filter.  And then just last month, our downstairs toilet stopped working.  The culprit?  Calcium buildup in the toilet's innards.   Most people in this area do have a water softener and if we were starting all over again, we would have invested in one.

My little sink.

David and I are in disagreement about the sink. I say that the sink in our pop-up camper is twice as deep as this sink, but he disagrees and says that this sink is bigger. We'll be able to verify sink depth this summer when we go camping back in the U.S.

But back to my German sink. It is not even as deep as this glass. When I am washing up after dinner, I usually need to drain out the water at least once while in mid-wash. Such a small sink can make washing large pans difficult, but I've survived. I do have to say, though, that during my last trip to the U.S. over Christmas in 2008, I kept noticing how large all the American sinks were. Just huge.

An example of European brilliance that I cannot for the life of me understand why we don't adopt in the U.S. When you put your wet pots and pans into the strainer to dry, there is a little drain for the water to drain into. Brilliant.

There is nothing extraordinary about our coffee maker -- you can find similar ones in the U.S. We just love that we have coffee made from fresh ground coffee beans every morning. And don't forget to use filtered water or else you'll be de-calcifying the machine every few months.

Our pop-up toaster and electric kettle. I've never seen a toaster oven in a German store, but you'll see rows and rows of electric kettles. We use ours all the time for hot chocolate, tea and cup noodles. Don't forget the filtered water or you'll be de-calcifying the kettle every month.

Just a reminder that you need to put salt and a rinsing agent in your dishwasher and most Germans use tablet cleaners instead of powder or liquid cleaners..

The yellow trash bag is for recyclable items (other than paper and glass) and the white trash bag is for other trash. For the entire house, we throw away one white kitchen trash bag of actual trash a week. That means that the kids collect trash from all the trashcans around the house, add that to this kitchen bag and we take one trash bag out to the big garbage can. Amazing.

The only recyclable material that is not picked up directly from our house is glass. The little red bag to the right is for glass, which I take to one of the three glass recycling bins within a 10-minute walk of our house.

Do you ever wonder what people do with the Christmas photos you send them? Ours go onto a bulletin board in our kitchen so our friends and relatives are always close by.

The side of our fridge is a great resource of information. There is our calendar, but several other important things.

Our recycling calendar. You can also arrange to have bulk garbage and broken electronics picked up at no charge.

One of the most used items in our kitchen -- a butter measurement conversion card. Butter is sold in large blocks which can make following an American recipe difficult. Just lay this card on your butter block and cut. German recipes, on the other hand, use weight measurements, which makes a lot of sense. I'm constantly pulling out my kitchen scale to measure "75 grams of butter."

On the other side of the butter chart is a temperature conversion chart, to which I refer constantly.

And my beloved kitchen timer, my most important kitchen item. None of the kitchen appliances have a clock or timer on them. Woe be to the person who has swiped my timer when I'm getting ready to cook something.