Finding my appetite for life in the kitchen again...where memories are made.
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I’ve heard that one should “eat to live” and not “live to eat.” After nearly seven years unable to eat a morsel of food or drink a drop of liquid, I’ve reached a different conclusion. The surgeons had worked miracles and after a nineteen-hour surgery, my digestive system was finally reconnected after a blood clot had caused it to literally explode. But at 24 years old, seven hospitals across the country had done their job, and now, food was mine! It was a birthright that I was coming into all over again. I was finally growing up after going into a phase of infancy in the hospital. But after that bite, I realized I had to start with baby food. Chewing took work! After all, my body had gone years without one bite.
To be safe, I started on a puréed diet. So much for my frozen waffle leading to a whole buffet. Still, food was a thrilling rediscovery. And I was home, in my kitchen, entitled to every morsel anyone else was. I was finally human again. I rummaged through the groceries we had haphazardly thrown in our shopping cart at Fairway and delved excitedly into that once-forbidden trove of treasures.
Food had always felt innocent, joyful, and exciting to me growing up. I was a well-fed teenager, partial to Chinese food and non-alcoholic Shirley Temples. Of course, as a Jewish girl with a (very) Jewish mother, I didn’t expect hunger to ever be something I’d become intimately familiar with. But then again, I didn’t expect my life, free of any medical problems whatsoever, to be blown apart and rerouted when my stomach exploded. Being told by surgeons I might never eat or drink again? I write about how frightening that new realization was for me in my recently published memoir, My Beautiful Detour: An Unthinkable Journey from Gutless to Grateful. But I also talk about the joy that came when I finally WAS miraculous able to eat again! Now, finally life would start for me. The countdown was over!
I remember journaling:
I can freely enjoy what was a forbidden pleasure for so long. Pumpkin baking in the oven, makes the whole kitchen smell like Thanksgiving. I love scraping up the burnt edges with a spoon! Yum!
Now that I was eating, I was living again!
So now, we had to really remake our kitchen, and I couldn't be happier with Premier surfaces.
Our kitchen is one of the smallest rooms in the house. But our kitchen is life - it is really the center of the home. When we have parties, it’s amazing how many people can fit into the small space to socialize.
Here are just a few things you can do to upgrade your small kitchen, while staying within budget:
1. Lose the dropped ceiling and switch up the light fixture! Within the first 6 weeks of living in the house, we tore out that ceiling, discovered the conflicting wallpaper and replaced the light fixture. We have no idea why the previous owners had a fluorescent light in the kitchen, but we found a light for around $50 – and 10 years later it’s still serving us well.
2. Paint it up! Creativity is a way to celebrate the joys of food.
Image: Premiere Surfaces
3. New countertops! This change was a long time coming, and I couldn’t be happier to get the pea green laminate counters out and something a little more current installed. Premier Surfaces offers a variety of counter tops in natural stone, quartz, engineered marble and more. In fact, they offer two of the most popular marble requested stones including carrara and calacatta. I’d love to have a carrara kitchen countertop someday because of it’s gorgeous white color that would really be a great statement piece in our center island. Premier Surfaces also has showrooms in 10 states throughout the midwest, northeast and southeast. They even have a countertop calculator on their website so you can start to get estimates from the comfort of your own home!
4. Appliances. We’ve been replacing appliances as needed and so far we’ve upgraded our refrigerator, dishwasher and microwave. Unless you’re able to find a killer deal on ALL of the appliances (which I hear is common during the Thanksgiving/Christmas sales), you can scout out deals throughout the year on individual appliances.
5. Update the cabinets. One project we’re hoping to tackle this summer is updating our cabinets.. In the next few months, we’re hoping to remove the cabinet doors, sand them properly and re-paint with a proper kitchen paint (hopefully one that doesn’t come off when we open a cabinet. At the same time, we’ll update the hardware on the doors. The paint and hardware won’t be too expensive.
5 simple kitchen updates that will help increase your home's value.
The kitchen means everything to me. It’s the centre of the home. Thinking back to when I had my original medical crisis, I thought that finally leaving the hospital would take me right back to my old life. I imagined jumping into my old bed, having dinner with my family, and of course, belting out songs from my favorite musicals in my room. After all, I was getting better right?
Not only could I still do not eat or drink, but my parents moved us all right into a brand new house. Who was I now, and what did home even mean anymore?
Nothing was back to normal once I got out. I was lost.
But in that new house, I discovered a flower: Creativity.
Creativity helped me through 27 surgeries. Finally, I could eat and drink.
So, the day we remodeled our kitchen was a very welcome one!!!
We still aren’t finished with our kitchen – or any room in our house, for that matter. I think our home will always be a work in progress. I feel good knowing that we’ve definitely added value to our home making a lot of these changes. I'm really thankful for premier surfaces.