When I think back on my childhood, then to my college years, and now to my adult life (I use the term adult loosely), many of my happiest and most vivid memories took place in a kitchen. When I think of family gatherings, I'm always transported to a kitchen. When I was a teenager, we had a phone with a long white cord in our kitchen - and I spent many nights laying on my kitchen floor talking to my now husband.
On Sundays, all of my siblings gather at my parents' house for dinner. The first thing I do when I walk into their house is saunter into the kitchen to check out what Mom is making for dinner. In my own home, our kitchen is the center of everything. We eat, do homework, talk about our day, and even this blog is written right on my kitchen island, several times a week.
My point? My kitchen is the center of my home. We spend so much time there, live so much of our lives there, that the kitchen has become a very special place for me. Even on days when my sink is full of dishes, when my newest recipe has flopped, and my daughter is fighting homework with every ounce of her being, my kitchen is the center of our day-to-day being. We have hard conversations there. We laugh there. We eat delicious food there, and we celebrate there. The American Kitchen is so much more than a functional room for food preparation. It really is the heart of our home.
GE Appliances have been in American homes since 1905. For a hundred and ten years, GE has been a part of the changing ways people live, play, cook, celebrate, and shape family life at home in America. My friends over at GE have developed a series of documentaries called Our American Kitchen. Every kitchen has story - I'm sure yours does - and these documentaries explore how real GE appliance owners, as genuine representatives of Americans and the American experience, are living their lives in their kitchens.
These documentaries have really touched me - the human experience is vastly different for every single one of us, but there are also so many things that tie us together. Something as normal as our kitchens and the moments lived IN our kitchens are part of our foundation and for me, comprise the bulk of my happiest memories. The kitchen in my first apartment, back when I could barely afford rent, was stocked full of noodle packets and boxed macaroni and cheese, but reminds me of a time when I was fearless. It reminds me of a time when I was figuring out what I was going to do with my life, how I was going to handle the grown-up thing. Kitchens are a bit magical like that. Think back to all of the kitchens in your life. What memories do they conjure up?
I'd love to hear some of your kitchen stories - and while you're at it, head over to GEAppliances.com and check them out. Stay tuned for an upcoming post with more information about the Our American Kitchen documentary series. It would be fun to see some your kitchen pictures too - send them to me on Twitter or Instagram, and use #OurAmericanKitchen!
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