The Kitchen: The Woman's Domain

Since the beginning of time, it has been proven that the kitchen is the women's arena. It's her battlefield, when it comes to protecting her cooking against her mother-in-law. It's a woman's special area to go, to help her children learn, to cook with them. A lot of fond memories are made in the kitchen, not to mention maybe a few dirty ones. That would all depend if you were into that kind of thing or not. Perhaps, the kitchen is the woman's domain because she loves to know her family is well taken care of. In addition, of course a lot of nurturing comes from the kitchen.

Let's take a journey through time to see how far the kitchen has come. The history of the kitchen involves medieval times, pre-historical times and all the way up to the present. Most houses from the Ancient Greece where known as atrium-type house. Atrium means open spaces. This meant the rooms where arranged around a central courtyard. In homes such as this an open patio served as a kitchen, though if you were from a wealthy family you had a separate kitchen in a different room. This room was usually next to the bathroom, so that both the kitchen and the bathroom could be warmed up by the fire in the kitchen. In most of these kitchen's there was a storage room holding extra food supply and kitchen utensils. Back in this time, atrium window and door uses were abound.

With the Roman Empire it was not uncommon to find people who did not have a kitchen. A lot of people had to do their cooking in public kitchens. While being in a Roman villa it was usually missed in the a main building as a separate room. The fireplace as usually placed on the floor where people could kneel as they cooked. There were no chimneys.

In the medieval times, the kitchen was known as the longhouse. A long house had an open fire under the highest point of the building. The kitchen was usually placed between the entrance and the fireplace. In some of the more richer homes it was not uncommon for there to be 2 kitchens.

The very first stove in Japan was from the 3rd to 6th century. The stoves were called kamado, Kamado's were made of mostly clay and mortar, they were usually fired by wood or charcoal through a little hole in the front. There was a hole in the top where a pot was usually hanging over. This kind of stove was used for many centuries.

Antique kitchenware can be amazing to find. Everywhere you look online you can find treasured antique's. It's amazing the amount of stuff you can find and how old it is. Some date back to 1920, some date back much further than that. I know some antique's are passed down from generation to generation which is definitely the best way to pass on old antiques. You can find, cups, spoons, china, crystals, and plates. Some are specially marked while some are just average.