Kitchen Tricks

I’ve spent more time than I’d like to admit staring at kitchen shelves, trying to figure out why some feel like they belong in a magazine spread

Sea purslane doesn’t look like much when you first spot it growing in the salt marsh. I used to think all coastal foraging was about seaweed and

I used to think Portuguese kitchens were just about practicality—you know, the kind of spaces where grandmothers made caldo verde and that was that.

The kitchen I walked into in Libreville smelled like wet wood and smoke. It wasn’t what I expected—I’d imagined gleaming surfaces, maybe some

I used to think Soviet kitchens were just depressing gray boxes until I spent three weeks photographing apartments in Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

The kitchens along Lake Malawi don’t look like the ones in design magazines. I’ve spent time in villages where the cooking spaces are open-air

I used to think a grapefruit knife was one of those unitasker gadgets that cluttered up drawers—you know, the kind that make minimalist food bloggers shudder.

I used to think penny tiles were just for bathrooms. Turns out, these small round mosaic discs—typically measuring one inch in diameter, roughly the size

I used to think lobster crackers were just, you know, those metal nutcracker-looking things your grandmother kept in a drawer. Turns out—and here’

I used to think Swedish kitchens were just about being cold and sterile. Turns out, there’s something almost paradoxical about how Scandinavian design