At work, I often find myself touting versatile desk-to-dinner styles. At home, desk-to-dinner has a different meaning. I moved into the studio with neither a desk or a dining table, and I knew I wanted to find something that could multitask in the tight space I had carved out for it. There was a perfectly sized bistro table at West Elm, but it was $400—and I have an allergy to buying new furniture. Luckily for me, most West Elm furniture will inevitably end up on Facebook Marketplace, which is where I found the exact table I’d been eyeing for $70.
On the two days a week that I work from home, I use my little table as a desk. The rest of the week, it mostly just sits there gathering dust. But every once in a while, I have a friend over and my workspace becomes a cozy “dining room” for two just as I imagined. After I clear off my laptop, books, and doodads, but before I complete the full transformation, it’s also an extra prep space for whatever I’m cooking. The other night, I hauled the mixer over to make whipped cream for dessert.
When the food is almost ready, I simply pull the table away from the wall, add the folding chair I keep in the closet, and top it off with taper candles if I’m feeling fancy. Et voilà—desk to dinner. Since my kitchen isn’t exactly easily accessible, I always bring out the food to serve family style. Tuesday’s menu included shrimp stew , a green salad, and Eton Mess with several ingredients missing.
I tend to keep things simple in the kitchen, particularly in the summer when it’s too hot to turn on the oven. Even while trying to impress a new boyfriend, the other night was no exception. I didn’t want to spend the whole night chopping and stirring and shouting to him in the “other” room. But despite my best efforts, whenever I make more than one thing at a time, I somehow manage to use almost every dish I own. And that’s when I remember why I only do it once in a blue moon (in this case, literally). The cleanup is a bitch.
Like many things in this apartment, washing a sink full of dirty dishes is a puzzle. Without any counterspace, where do I put the dirty dishes so that I can actually use the sink? And because my drying rack goes over the sink, where do I put them once they’re washed but still dripping water? I have my cutting board and my oven door trick, and that’s all I need most of the time. But the other night, I had so many dishes that I decided to take a cue from Laurie Colwin.
If you haven’t read Laurie Colwin, you should. Her novels are witty and charming and wise. They are the literary equivalent of your coziest sweater. But, she was also known for her essays in Gourmet magazine where she documented, among other things, cooking for company in a 200 square foot Manhattan apartment that had neither an oven nor a kitchen sink. She washed her dishes in the bathtub.
Of course, I have a kitchen sink (and an oven), but my bathtub is big enough to both pile in the dirty dishes and wash them. I put my date to work scrubbing—another thing I can’t do in my teeny kitchen—and all I had to do was ferry the dripping dishes to the drying rack. The whole scene was a revelation, and Laurie Colwin’s ingenious bathtub tip is only partly to thank. The more important takeaway was this: Since I moved into the studio, I’ve spent far more time daydreaming about a dishwasher than about a boyfriend, but it turns out they can be the same thing.
this week’s read
Not a review or recommendation—just what I’m reading right now.
Fun read! 💕👏🏼🌷