My Dream Kitchen

I think it was Elliot Coleman who described his ideal grocery store, filled with only real, whole, unprocessed foods. That inspired me to envision what my ideal kitchen will look like. I started brainstorming, and honestly was surprised at the length of the list I came up with!

I'm picturing a Wall O Jars, mostly home canned (gotta order some of those Tattler reusable canning lids!), supplemented by some commercial ones (familiarity, convenience, and because I don't necessarily want to spend ALL my time growing and canning!) I like the idea of having a lot of healthy ingredients readily available to throw meals together with.

As I was making my list, I also made two columns for depth and width of storage. Depth indicates the number of them I would want to keep on hand regularly while width indicated the variety of that item. For things I use many of (like pasta sauce), there would be secondary storage outside the kitchen. For those I use few of (like pickle relish), the jars on the kitchen shelves will be sufficient.

Prepared meals (chili, stews, soups): many jars, many varieties
Pasta sauce: many jars, few varieties,
Canned meats: many, many
Canned veges: many, many
Canned fruits: many, many
Canned diced tomatoes: many, few
Jelly: few, few
Dehydrated eggs: few, one
Dehydrated meats: many, variety
Sprouting seeds: few, few
Condiments (pickle relish, ketchup, maple syrup): few, one each
Kimchi (?)
Nuts: few, few
Peanut butter: some, one
Salt: many, one
Sugar: few, few
Honey: some, one
Alcohol (drinking and preservation): ?
Rice: few, one
Tea ingredients (herbs): few, variety
Spices: few, large variety

Yoikes! That's about 50 jars wide! Okay, some quick math: a box of 12 quart jars is 12”x16”; pint jars are 11”x15”. So figure 4” per jar (if well stacked with no space between them). 50 jars x 4” wide = 200” linear inches. Divided by 12” per foot = 16.6 linear feet. Divided by the 6' shelves I have planned for the kitchen = 2.8 shelves. Hey, that's not so bad! Of course the spices will be in their own space – I have a ungodly number of those tiny jars!

(shorthand version: 50x4”/12” per foot/6'shelves=2.8

The other way of looking at it is: 6' shelves holds 18 jars wide. Three shelves gives me a capacity of 54 jars. How many of each flavor depends on whether the shelves are 12” or 16” deep. I'm inclined to go 16”, but we'll see when I actually have the room built how that feels.