Proper Kitchen

Good grief, these kids’ toys are getting realistic. I remember way back in the day when I had one of those miniature kitchens, with the plastic food and the stoves that were just stickers on plastic discs. I know most boys had different toys, but we got given a bunch of stuff by a family with older kids, and I didn’t care, so whatever. Anyway, there were no electronics, and all the cooking was pretend.

Fast forward 25 years or so, I’m looking after my niece, and she’s got a full-on cooking station that actually bakes, albeit super slowly. It doesn’t even look cheap either. In child terms, it’s a marvel of efficient and modern kitchen design. This is coming from someone who works in a kitchen, by the way. I wish our work surfaces were consistently as clean and clear as Ava keeps them. Come to think of it, Ava could teach a number of restaurants some lessons about how to keep their kitchens in order. I noticed that every time she takes out her pots and pans, she replaces them neatly on the hooks and stacks them according to size in the drawer. We just got a whole kitchen makeover last year, and it was partly to give us more storage space because people kept stacking things incorrectly. Now everything is labelled. If it goes on a hook, it has a label. If it goes in the cupboard, each door clearly states what goes in what position. Do people FOLLOW it? Of course they don’t. Glad we got some of the best people to take care of the kitchen renovation in Melbourne and make our cooking space more efficient. All of this only to be outdone by a six-year-old.

I need to bring Ava into the kitchen. Seriously, she can give a masterclass on how to properly store kitchen equipment and how to clean up after yourself. She makes a pretty mean chocolate brownie as well.

-Jordan