Heart Of The House - Kitchen
This summer has been quite chaotic and busy with my family visit, work, and most of all, house maintenance. We have been quite good at eating at home and therefore, we have a lot of kitchen equipment we have collected over the past many years. Every birthday and every special occasion, we like buying each other high-quality cooking tools so we can be better at it.
Working as an industrial designer, kitchen is to me like an art gallery. I like staring at them, the stainless steel, glass, and mat finish coating are my favorites. It's so nerdy of me... but I appreciate the effort that's put into the design to craft long lasting and timeless work of industrial products. It comes with a cost but if they last over 10 years versus buying discount kitchen tools, you will probably save more money, and we dump less garbage on earth that we don't know what to do about.
Interior of our house was already renovated several years ago by previous owners. It's not the most updated design but I like the modern and functional aspect of our kitchen. Most of the appliances are Bosch, which I think has the highest performance among all the appliances we used in the past homes. In the future, we are considering of opening up the wall on the right that's facing the dinning area so we can have an open layout.
If anyone is wondering...
Electric kettle: Stag by Fellow. Rice cook: Panasonic. Bread mixer, blender: Kitchen Aid. Espresso machine, Panini grill: Breville.
The opposite end of the kitchen is our breakfast nook. Since our dinning table was too large to fit in this space and we already had the tall chairs, we decided to buy the table from Blue Dot, Minneapolis based furniture company, started by two architects and a sculptor. I find their design funky and interesting. It was Nicolai's choice but after all, I'm starting to like the 'American retro and modern smashed together.' While food is getting cooked, I like sitting here and have my mocktail. (I have a typical Asian alcohol intolerance.)
In August, my entire family from Japan came to visit our house. It was quite hectic to host 4 adults and 2 small kids at the same time but the house has never been so bustling, cheerful, and chaotic. This was also in my bucket list, to have a house where all our families get together and have a good time. That dream came true and I can't wait for having our next guests.
Greetings in Japanese
今年の夏は目まぐるしく忙しく、ようやく９月の終わりになり家族行事や仕事が一息ついてホッとしているところです。今回はブログで我が家のキッチンをご紹介しました。デザイン性と機能性の高いキッチン用具を集めるのが趣味なので、キッチンは私にとってはアートギャラリーであり憩いの場所でもあります。買ったものを眺めるだけでなくちゃんと料理もしてますよー（笑）。
８月には日本にいる家族が全員で押しかけて来たので、毎日が賑やかでかなりのカオスでしたが、大好きな姪っ子たちとたくさん時間が過ごせて本当に楽しいワイワイとした夏休みとなりました。このブログは誰のために書いてるの？と兄夫婦に聞かれましたが、９０％自己満足といったらいいのでしょうか。一緒に仕事をする人たちが、アイさんってどんな人なんだろうって時に見てもらえると嬉しいなと思って、レジュメのエクステンショみたいな感じで始めたのですが......。次回は久々になりますが、自分の新しいプロジェクトについて書きたいなと思います。