A version of this post was originally sent to our email subscribers yesterday. To receive Sara Kate's weekly email, sign up in the column to the left or click here. Something tasty will arrive in your inbox every Thursday.
Greetings from Los Angeles, where I'm entering my second week of a long visit to my hometown. Today's email is quick, just an offering of ten of my favorite things in my mother's kitchen. Being here reminds me that this is where I learned to cook, so it's a sanctuary of sorts to me. The kitchen has changed, but the spirit inside it has not.
I'd love to see snapshots of the things you love about your own kitchen, or the kitchen of someone you love. My shots, and details on what to send and how, below.
Scroll through the gallery to see these ten favorite things from my mom's kitchen:
1. Very well-used spoons. I think they pre-date me.
2. Almond extract. Mom puts it in coffee and French toast. Now I do, too.
3. Strawberry Jam ruler given to me in the fourth grade on Valentine's Day by a kid named Carl.
4. One of mom's watercolors.
5. The greatest bread knife, ever.
6. Coarse salt and pepper in clay herb pots from Pierre Lafond Market in Santa Barbara.
7. A lime-board — not just for margaritas — made by my brother around the time I was born.
8. Crazy turquoise tile.
9. Pie dishes and tart tins stacked in a way that, to me, is sculpture.
10. Compost bucket. Kitchen scraps and dryer lint feed the composter out back. A lizard visits often.
If you have some favorite things from a kitchen you know and you're up for taking some nice photos, give it a whirl this weekend. Send the images to us (no more than ten please) with "favorite things" in the subject line. We'll choose a few to post next week.
Last Week's Posted Email: In Praise of Raisins
5 Things Paris Taught Me About Travel
Summer Recipe: Brown Butter Peaches & Chantilly Cream
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Linen Napkins from ...
Dirty Little Secrets of Tidy Families
Nikki’s Sweet and Cheery Print Studio
i love this post...thanks for sharing :)
I love this post too. Very nice.
I do have a question :) What are the jars in the tile picture originally from? Do you know? I have a hand-me-down jar like that and I know I've seen what it was but I can't remember and it's making me crazy.
Is dryer lint okay to put in the compost? I thought it would be full of chemicals from the fabric softener. (You know that email about the film on the lint trap... http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/household/dryer.asp )
Sara Kate,
Two things
1. How did you get my wooden spoons!!
2. I thought I was the only one who knew about those knives!!
I'll definitely send pictures when I finish my remodel, and I will come looking if my spoons are missing from the storage unit! :)
What a lovely post. Thanks for sharing. I am now sitting at my kitchen island and wondering what things my kids will love when they are grown-up (right now they are yet to be born LOL!)
this post made me miss my mom's kitchen--and want to invest in my own for the future! sara kate, your photos perfectly capture the nostalgic love.
talkingcrow - i have some very similar jars that i found at target! might not be identical, but certainly very close.
this post, and the series you are starting based on it, are both sentimentally lovely and fun to read. I will be watching.
thanks kiddo katsu! i actually do tend to look for jars and such when i'm at target but i don't remember ever seeing anything but plastic food storage. i'll have to look again! :)
i happened to run across the jars at target today (they weren't in food storage they were in housewares). if anyone else cares, the shape/style of these is a 'cracker jar'. (now i can obsess about something else)
talkingcrow-you can get these at The Container Store, as well. I just LOVE these jars! They always look great, no matter the decor!
This post makes me want to visit my Mama!