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!