House Tour – Kitchen (La Cocina)

Part 5 in a series on our apartment in San Jose.

Above: The kitchen.

Our most frequented part of the house is also our biggest reminder that we no longer live in the United States.

First the good. Our kitchen has been great, it is much bigger than many of the other kitchens in Costa Rica. It has lots of cabinets, good counter space, and a big, hot stove. Our microwave works great, our fridge is always cold, and the freezer never frosts over like some others.

Now what is interesting about out kitchen is how much time we have to spend in it because of a lack of appliances. The most glaring omissions are the dishwasher and clothes dryer, while others include a garbage disposal and an ice maker. We never quite realized how much time and energy these things save until now.

Some things of note:
- You can see a small blue stickie note on one of the cabinets, it has the Spanish word for “cabinet” on it. We’ve tried this throughout our house to learn the Spanish words, though by now most of the stickies have blown off.

- On the corner of one of the counters is all of our sweets. Interestingly, almost all the foods here go bad very quickly, so we have to keep all perishables sealed in Ziploc bags.

- Lastly, you’ll notice the blender on the left, with which we love to make fresh pineapple smoothies!

The above picture is from our kitchen looking out on our laundry room/patio. The first thing that jumps out from the picture is that there is no door. Our kitchen leads straight out onto our patio area with nothing between inside and outside but a few iron bars. When we moved in we were assured that this was normal, though we have yet to meet anyone else with such an arrangement, or meet a Tico who thinks it is infact normal. And yet despite the apparent oddity, we have come to enjoy our “open” kitchen. We always have a great breeze, our house stays cool, and our clothes dry quick while staying dryer.

All in all we have really come to enjoy our kitchen, especially our open windows!