CNN, New York, NY.
Living in New York City has its challenges, not the least of which is apartment size. With these tiny apartments come teeny tiny kitchens – which are manageable if all the “cooking” you are going to do is make a bowl of cereal or an occasional pasta dish.
Every New York home cook has their own way of dealing with the space issue. Most kitchens are built using all the available vertical space. Mine is no exception. What seems high to most people is actually towering for me. I’m only 4’2″.
To put it into perspective, the counters in my current apartment come to my shoulders. I have always had to use a stool, but this kitchen is sort of ridiculous. The bottoms of my top cabinets are at least five feet off the ground. My average height friends have difficulty in my kitchen.
Cooking has become an acrobatic exercise. To fix one meal you might see me climbing up on counters, leaning across the kitchen from my stool, so I don’t have to climb up and down the stool every time I need to get to the sink. I use kitchen tongs to grab things off the top shelves all the while standing on a stool or kneeling on the counter. It sounds strange and it probably looks strange but at least I am burning off a few calories before I eat.