merloon

The kitchen in my otherwise pretty cute 1920s mill house is the size of most people’s bathrooms.  My relationship with it is strained at best.  A confession:  I don’t particularly like to cook (though I do have a rather strange love of cookbooks/food blogs/cooking shows) in the best of kitchens.  A veritable army of foodie friends and easy access to interesting restaurants keeps me from feeling deficient.

Rather than belabor the point, I will simply note that when left to my own devices at home I eat a lot of cereal.

However, as the adorable New York Times recipe tester Jill Santopietro demonstrates, having a catacomb for a kitchen shouldn’t keep a person from flexing culinary muscle.  “You just clean up as you go,” she chirps in the online videos she produces for the Times, and I feel at once envious and a little tired.

But really, how can you not be totally charmed by a woman who somehow has an ice cream maker stored in her “11.5 square foot” kitchen?  Especially if she also demonstrates how to make ice cream using only a baking dish and a food processor.

Her video about tangerine sherbet is so enticing that I may be compelled to attempt it, teeny kitchen be damned!

* For me, baking is another species entirely.  I love to bake…but not in my current kitchen.