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Mom:
The kitchen was not my favorite room, except that when you all were little I could prepare a meal and watch you play at the same time. No counter space, cheap cabinets (which Corey and Cary tried to refinish). I saw the house when I was selling real estate and the cabinets had been painted orange.....they looked really terrible then. Grandma and Grandpa bought a new range one summer after I had taken care of the Camarillo house for over a month while they were on vacation somewhere in the world. Another time they bought the freezer (still have it) when they took a long vacation and I was on house duty. I don't know how we survived in that kitchen. I also had the floor replaced when the carpeting was replaced. At one time I hung wallpaper so the kitchen wouldn't look so blah. The Venus Street kitchen was a dream come true, so there was no sadness in leaving Rosewood Court kitchen or house!
Maren:
The glossy topped table took up the majority of the floorspace in the kitchen. It had 6 chairs around it. One of the legendary Judd family memories is when Corey scrubbed down the table one day and we ate spaghetti for dinner without plates. We did get to use utensils, though, right? I don't remember the motivation behind this occasion.
Throughout the years we had "assigned" seats around the table for dinner. These often changed through the years as the older siblings graduated and left home. When Corey was in high school I thought it was quite unfair that I had to sit across from him since it was assumed that he got first priority with the leg room, thus leaving me with virtually none. Dad always sat at the end closest to the pantry and I most often remember Mom two seats down from him, closest to the oven and sink. Dad had a stack of mail that accumulated on his chair.
The electric frying pan was also used quite often when I was younger, but by the time I was in junior high it seemed to have disappeared. I remember Mom making empanadas (Pilsbury canned crescent rolls with a cube of jack cheese in them) and ground beef for burritos in that pan. Other meals that made their way through the rotations on a regular basis were the aforementioned spaghetti with meat sauce (still enjoyed to this day), casseroles in the brown Corningware casserole dish (the one I remember the most distinctly had ground beef on top and layers of rice and corn beneath. Maybe tomatoes, too. Or did we get to put ketchup on top?), and enchilada casserole (made in a 9x13" pan. I requested this more than once on my birthday. Eaten on the red "You are Special Today" plate, of course). When I was a teenager, we often ate Kraft macaroni and cheese with hot dogs on Saturday nights. All those nitrates and powdered cheese product tasted great. When it got colder, toasted cheese sandwiches with ketchup and Nesquik hot chocolate were a big treat. Sunday dinners often consisted of some kind of a roast and potatoes. Brisket roasts with gravy were my personal favorite, and the meal would instantly become more special if someone took the time to make mashed potatoes instead of the simple baked potatoes.
The avocado green countertops and backsplash were memorable. Although they didn't really match the cupboard knobs that were white with blue flowers.
Many summers I would take on the challenge of straightening up the Tupperware cupboard as part of my 2 hours of work on one of the few days that I was actually motivated enough to participate. Long lost lids would be dug up from the depths of that cupboard and all the reusable Coolwhip and Country Crock tubs would be neatly stacked alongside the multicolored Tupperware.
Summertime was also jam-making time. Regardless of whether it was made from the apricots from our tree in the backyard or strawberries that Mom bought in the fields in Camarillo or raspberries, the kitchen always took on a warm, sweet scent. The freezer would be stocked, mainly with transparent containers with red lids, guaranteeing us another year of beloved PB&Js.
Cereal was kept on the top shelf of the pantry. Golden Grahams marked the borderline of sugary cereals that we were allowed to have. Fruitloops and Trix were forbidden. Honey Nut Cheerios, Honey Graham Oh's, and Honey Bunches of Oats were popular, too. There was always a box of Quaker instant oatmeal poaches as well as a box of Cream of Wheat. I tried many times to like those big biscuits of shredded wheat as well as puffed rice, but no amount of sugar or honey could ever make them truly enjoyable. It was always devastating on the morning of Fast Sunday when we realized that the pantry had just been restocked the night before with new boxes of our favorite cereal. And we wouldn't be enjoying any of them that morning.
The old refrigerator had a pull-out freezer on the bottom. The ice trays were metal and had a lever that you had to pull up to loosen the ice. Later, we got a side-by-side fridge that had a fancy ice and water dispenser in the freezer door.
In front of the sink there would often be a few little flowers or house plants since the window facing the backyard was right there. The last picture above is of a houseplant that was generally regarded as the table centerpiece between meals. There was also a 3-tiered metal basket that hung for some time next to the counter, although I most often remember it being empty. Was it supposed to be for fruit or to organize junkmail?
The kitchen floor was a brown linoleum for many years, but was eventually replaced with a white vinyl with pink flowers. The best part of mopping the floor was skating on a towel afterwards to dry it off.
Curtis:
The kitchen at 1926 Rosewood Court, I must agree with Mother, is the model of how NOT to design a kitchen. The table sat in the middle of a rectangular room with cabinets on two sides, a doorway to the bathroom and garage on one side, and the other side open to the family room. Static. Bad feng shui. Nevertheless, we have many fond memories of home-cooked meals with a distinctive Southern California flair--or was that just a mom flair? We ate a lot of burritos and tacos during my teen years but plenty of 60s and 70s inspired casseroles and other vintage recipes including cabbage rolls in my earlier years. I'm sorry Maren, that you didn't get as much of those earlier dishes...
Dad:
Maren described the kitchen about as well as it could be described. A lot of good meals were prepared and eaten in the kitchen.
Corey:
Along with the family room, the kitchen was the center of activity in the house. So many things happened in the kitchen that it would take pages to list all the memories that took place there.
Of course there was the avocado green countertop, the faux wood panel vinyl floor, the dark stained cabinets (later sanded and whitewashed by Cary and I), and the rickety, oval dinner table. I can recall the original tile floor, white with a dark outline of flowers, with Suarez tiles that didn't always line up right. The walls were originally white like the rest of the house, later wallpapered with the Orange and red floral design with bright green stems on a white background.
I remember the white sinks with a black chip near the drain--having spent hours doing dishes. Mom actually stuck to her rule--"I won't cook dinner if there are any dirty dishes in the sink." I wonder if she ever left a few herself on days when she didn't feel like cooking. Almost invariably I'd have to refill the sink with soapy water after finishing the dishes to re wipe the table and counters after Dad would ask "Did you wipe the table? Did you use soap?"
Many of us used the table as a desk. I remember sitting at the table drawing a scene of camping pioneers for some Primary Pioneer Day project. I learned how to draw five and six pointed stars in the night sky of that picture. I also used the typewriter to write reports for school before we had a computer.
There was the scale hanging from the ceiling, over the counter where the broken dishwasher was taking up space. At first the scale held fruit, then more and more it was just storage for paper and plastic bags. There was the old spice rack, the ceramic cookie jar with different cookies all over the outside and a walnut as the handle for the lid, the old metal toaster, the big white mixer that rarely got used--all taking up counter space. Fruit and potatoes and bread were usually piled on the small counter between the stove and refrigerator.
The original stove unit had an upper and lower oven. I don't remember the upper oven ever working. The clock with the triangular hour and minute hands also didn't seem to ever work. It was exciting when we got the white stove that had the microwave on top. I remember cooking open face melted cheese sandwiches in there in lieu of real toasted cheese. And mom cooking potatoes in there for dinner, the leftovers she ate cold, in hand as if they were apples--yuck.
The pantry had cereal boxes on the top shelf--Wheaties, Cheerios, Grape Nuts, Chex. When we were lucky there would be short-lived boxes of Golden Grahams or Honey Nut Cheerios. There were packets of oatmeal and sometimes shredded wheat or Malto Meal. The lower shelves held cans and at the bottom were white, cylindrical bins of flour and sugar-- some of the only food storage we actually rotated and used with regularity. Then there was the mice infestation when Curtis and my mice had babies and a few escaped. Some found there way to the pantry where they chewed a hole in the drywall and nested in the wall. For a while there were mousetraps around, but at some point Dad got ahold of a bunch of babies or smaller mice and took them to the pet store. Not sure where the cats were at that time or if we even had cats at the time.
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