“The Perfect Kitchen”, by Alexandra Parsons

Parsons, Alexandra. The Perfect Kitchen. New York: Hearst, 2004. Print.

Here’s another example of how I can walk into my local library branch and find a book I’m interested in sitting right on the shelf.  Although I get most of my books through the hold system, I still get quite a bit of instant gratification from the branch.

I think I missed at first the fact that this was a publication of “Country Living”, but because they’ve used a pretty broad definition of “Country”, it turned out not to be a problem.  There are no modern kitchens here, and although there’s lots of granite and custom cabinetry, it tends to be more of a flavour that I approve of.

They have a whole chapter of “Retro” kitchens that I didn’t expect to find here, or anywhere in fact.  These are quirky kitchens with vintage ranges, Fire-King ovenware and tableware, Fiesta pottery, or enamelware.  I love the idea, although I would never try to recreate one of those kitchens.

Oddly enough, I was leafing through this book at the same time as I started reading Muriel Barbery’s Gourmet Rhapsody, my next book club book at the time.  In the book a famous restaurant critic has a conversation with a young critic just starting out, and they start reminiscing about their mother’s and grandmother’s kitchens.  I realized that what they were describing were the people and personalities, smells and meals… nowhere did they mention what type of stove was being cooked with, or the colour scheme.  It’s hardly a novel idea, of course, but the things I most want in a kitchen have nothing to do with decorating.  I look forward to the day when I have a more “reasonable” kitchen that doesn’t have a desk in it, but aren’t I living in my kitchen perfectly well this moment with the kettle close at hand, and a kitten snoozing away on the clutter of papers around my computer?

But back to the book.  The benefit is mostly in the pictures, so it’s a bit annoying that pages 24 and 25 are ripped out, with only the tantalizing caption remaining (“Ambient lighting comes from a row of pendants positioned over the 1860s Dutch table, which serves as a work island”).  I scanned several pictures of antiques in kitchens where I thought they had been particularly well integrated.  My one complaint is that the text contradicts itself, as if the author was just stringing together random thoughts to try and tie together a big collection of good pictures.  The most glaring example was a paragraph that admonished me to not have anything in my kitchen that I didn’t use, then on turning the page, finding them extolling the virtues of displaying collections!

It’s not really a criticism, but a bit of a warming; the “perfect” in the title seems to refer to style and decor, because nowhere is the usability of a kitchen considered, except for a bit of lip service.

There is an index but no bibliography.