Counter Woes

Tuesday, July 11, 2023

My kitchen counters are covered with cooking components leaving little space for anything else. You get it, the must-haves, a coffeemaker, blender, air fryer, and all such. There’s no space for an induction cooktop, or I’d add one.

Which raises questions about modern kitchens. Because of my rapid, effective independent cooking appliances, my oven only gets used for storing pots and pans. If I were to build a home or remodel a kitchen, I’d want to avoid a traditional oven. This idea initially seemed unreal because, in the last hundred or so years, nearly everybody’s lived with kitchen stoves.

I’d ask for a kitchen with a single unit providing an induction cooktop and housing various independent components for fast, efficient food prep.

While wondering if people have begun requesting kitchen designs without traditional stoves. I decided to ask the Home Depot’s kitchen design staff. They said they’ve not had such requests, but one designer did design a kitchen similar to my vision. It was for a tiny home that lacked space for a stove. Another designer suggested that in today’s world, a no-stove kitchen might negatively affect the home’s value.

Regardless, I can’t stop thinking that before long standard stoves must give way to something else. People need modern kitchens designed to accommodate rapidly multiplying alternate cooking devices.

Those aren’t cheap, so changes to improve kitchen efficiency would have to begin in areas with affluent populations. Nowadays among them, it would be interesting to know the typical percentages of foods still prepared in standard ovens.

Dear Friends: Questions about changes, maybe interesting only to a few. Diana