There is a five day personal art challenge on Fine Art America this week with a Kitchen Theme.  In the past I participated in a similar challenge but that one was for Macro images from the kitchen.  This week’s challenge did not have to be close up images.

Going through my external hard drive and old CDs I found several photographs of outdoor kitchens that we have designed and used in the past.  I have been working on cleaning up those old files for this week’s challenge.

At present we are living in an apartment and our outdoor kitchen consists of a long fold up table (similar to those old school cafeteria tables) and a gas grill set up on a concrete patio.  A very simple space. Food is prepared inside then taken out to the grill.

That’s a far cry from any of our previous outside food prep and cooking stations. We have had fully plumbed sinks with attached drain boards for food prep and cleanup in all of the outdoor kitchens at homes that we owned. We had a gas fired smoker, as well as a grill in one of those kitchens. And a table or counter was a must to facilitate meal prep.

As I work on the art challenge this week, I am also churning ideas around in my head for our next home and how we might design and build an outdoor kitchen for that location. The design phase is always the most fun part of any building project that we undertake.

Do you have an outdoor space for preparing and cooking food?

How elaborate is or was your outdoor kitchen?

Have you used a porch, patio or deck as the location for your outside meal prep station?

Be sure and use the comment space to share descriptions of your outdoor kitchen spaces that are real or imagined. 

I have several images of two of our previous outdoor kitchens on KeppenArt.  You can view those images, read the descriptions and get a few ideas for your own outdoor space by clicking this link.