Alex and Sarah's Seafoam Green Kitchen Kitchen Spotlight

Alex and Sarah's Los Angeles home is a tribute to their well-traveled life. Their style (described as "world traveling eclectic with a handcrafted modern twist") features lots of texture, pattern, color, natural materials, and ethnic accents. The couple tells Apartment Therapy that friends often remark on the wonderful shade of seafoam green in their kitchen! We're certainly smitten with it.

The decorative accents in the adjoining dining room are also eye-catching. Pretty patterned bowls and dishes, photos, books, and other travel souvenirs line the bookshelf, and together with the bright orange chairs create a cozy, yet vibrant space for eating and entertaining.

See the Full Tour: Alex and Sarah's Traveler's Home at Apartment Therapy

Related: Travel Treasures: 6 Essential Cooking Souvenirs

(Images: Marcia Prentice)

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A Coastal California Cooking Vacation

Fruit foraged from a friend's land. Peaches, apples, raspberries, mulberries, tomatoes, herbs.

I'm fresh off the plane from a two and a half week cooking vacation in my home state of California. The first ten days had me with family and friends in Tomales Bay in a house we rented after reading Christine Muhlke's cooking vacation story in Bon Apptit's April issue. It looked so good, I had to do it too. So we signed up, packed our bags, flew to San Francisco, stopped in San Rafael for provisions, and drove to a little town up the coast.

After ten days there, a stay that included visits from both my parents and also some friends from the food world, we drove down Highway One and into Los Angeles where we continued our cooking vacation with a week in the house where I grew up and my mom still lives. By the end of the trip my belly had devoured just about everything I love about food in California, with barely ever setting foot in a restaurant.

Here are some images and ideas for your own cooking vacation. Start planning for next summer now!

When we arrived at the house, we had trouble opening the door, so we walked a few hundred feet down to Hog Island Oyster Company and asked if anyone could help. A few minutes later, the place was closed and the owner invited us to a picnic being cooked by some friends of his. Champagne went into our tumblers, fresh strawberries stained my daughter's mouth, and we had our first of hundreds of oysters. These were served grilled with a kimchi sauce. Brilliant.

Oysters were a theme of the vacation a theme of the summer, really (I ate them and wrote about it in Croatia, too) and it didn't take long before we started grilling our own with bits of bacon, butter, chopped herbs, onion. At $35 for 50 oysters there's still plenty of room to eat them raw. The ice we laid out for leftovers went unused.

In fact, raw oysters, grilled oysters, grilled bread (using the same melted butter concoction poured over the oysters) and a salad with cold ros was the general dinner formula for the first four days or so. We couldn't help ourselves. Eventually we branched out making pork chops from the local butcher, Marin Sun Farms, a mussel stew, wild salmon, a spicy citrus chicken, pies and tarts and cobblers, and on and on.

A new vacation tradition was born on this trip. Anyone coming to dinner has to stop at the local thrift store and put together their dinner outfit. We gave people a $20 limit. It made cooking and eating our meals, not to make our vacation photos, pretty entertaining. The results were beyond my wildest dreams. I wish I could show you photographs of my mother and my editor Amy, but both of them would disown me. Instead, here is my dad and me, posing with the house cocktail, a foraged huckleberry gin and tonic.

After over ten days of this kind of carrying on like Gatsbyesque characters, we meandered down the coast to Los Angeles with my mother to Los Angeles where we continued cooking in my childhood home.

The first night was perhaps the most magical: we took a bowl, a cutting board, a few knives, and some olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper to the garden. Drinking wine we'd picked up on the way down in the Santa Ynez Valley, we chopped up all the crops that had ripened in mom's absence and called it dinner.

Tell us below about your cooking vacation. I'd love to hear stories from the present and memories of the past. If this idea is new to you, try it. When on vacation, skip a few restaurant meals; just make something, call it dinner, see how it feels.

Related: Help Me Cook an Amazing 3-Course Meal While on Vacation

(images: Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan)

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Tyler's Cozy Cottage Kitchen Kitchen Tour

Do you love cottage-style kitchens, with white cabinets, apron front sinks, and scads of sunlight? If so, you have to see today's kitchen tour: a sunny, cozy cottage in Silver Lake, Los Angeles. Last month Apartment Therapy had a full house tour of photographer Tyler Parker's home. Today we are taking a closer look at his remodeled bungalow kitchen cottage perfection.

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Tyler's home was built in the 1930s, and besides the updated wiring, the kitchen is really the only thing that has been remodeled since then. With an apron sink and butcher block countertops, this cozy, sweet kitchen offers ample space for cooking as well as an eat-in nook. It opens up directly to a small backyard where Tyler has a frequently-used grill.

I felt the kitchen was the heart of this house, and lucky for Tyler who loves to cook, the updated appliances and countertops are perfect for preparing large meals. An entertainer and cook's dream!

Visit Tyler's website: Tyler William Parker Photography

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10 Questions for Tyler (and His Kitchen)

1. What inspires your kitchen and your cooking?
I like to keep things pretty clean and uncluttered. Most of the utensils, pots and pans are put away where you can't see them. Cooking and eating well in Los Angeles is incredibly easy; we have cars to lug home big buys for dinner parties and BBQs and farmers' markets with great produce year round.

2. What is your favorite kitchen tool or element?
I really enjoy my cast iron skillet. It pops in the BBQ or goes on the stove and makes anything you cook with it taste amazing. After three years, it's well seasoned and totally reliable for delicious food. Veggies on this thing can't be beat.

3. What's the most memorable meal you've ever cooked in this kitchen?
I recently set up a dinner with my friend who's a celebrity chef. She's great with other people's kitchens and was able to use all the herbs I had in my backyard along with the veggies I had from the farmer's market to prepare an amazing meal. It really taught me that you can keep things simple and utilize a little bit of everything around the garden. Everythingfrom the filet mignon with thyme to the kale salad with fresh lemons and applesseemed new to me, even though it came right from my pantry or my backyard. I tend to like a meal that has variety and flavors that unexpectedly complement each other, all paired with a tall glass of Tempranillo or a Malbec, of course.

4. The biggest challenge in your kitchen?
The biggest challenge while cooking in my kitchen seems to be the lighting. I could really use some lighting under the cabinets, just enough to really check out what I'm cutting up late night while cooking dinner.

5. Is there anything you wish you had done differently?
My kitchen's great, but if I could I'd change the appliances and have a few larger cabinets for storage.

6. What was your biggest indulgence or splurge in the kitchen?
I believe the wood countertops are the biggest splurge in the kitchen, just in terms of keeping them in good shape. They look great, but they can be a lot of work, whereas marble or another harder surface would be way easier to maintain.

7. Is there anything you hope to add or improve in your kitchen?
I'd love a table that fits a few more people in my kitchen nook and possibly folds up for larger dinner parties. This will happen eventually but for now the round tulip table is my solution to creating a better flow in the kitchen.

8. How would you describe your cooking style?
I'm more of a BBQ guy than anything else. I would cook every meal on the BBQ if I could and most days I do. It has a social feel about it and the chance to be outside on most evenings seems more enjoyable than sitting in my kitchen. I'd like to have a indoor/ outdoor kitchen at some point.

9. Best cooking advice or tip you ever received?
My dad always used to tell me to cook things low and slow. I think this has been the best advice throughout the years considering most people burn their food and think they aren't great cooks, or dry things out way too quickly. I've spent nights with friends where I cook food over the BBQ and stove for hours. Somehow it just works out and I've been pretty successful thus far.

10. What are you cooking this week?
This week I'll be getting into bratwurst and sauerkraut with some thinly sliced fingerling potatoes while drinking a tall Bitburger out of my stein. It's my go-to most weeks during the summer while having my buddies over. Feels like we're at a beer garden when there is nice weather and spicy mustard to be had.

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Resources of Note

The Products

Chemex
Four Barrel coffee cup
Gimme Coffee - Broome St General Store
Glass jars - flea market finds
Pickle jar - vintage
Tivoli audio
Cast iron skillet by Lodge
Glasses - gifted
Pepper and Salt Shakers - CB2
Plates - vintage and IKEA
Mason jars - found

The Food

Cocktail - 2 ounces rye wiskey (Bullett whiskey), 3 dashes orange bitters, muddled jalapenos and cilantro. Pour into glass over rocks, add 2 ounces tonic (or more depending how spicy you like it) and stir in a pinch of sugar, garnish with jalapeno and cilantro. Enjoy!
Salad - kale, apple, fresh lemon juice, pepper and sea salt, cranberry's optional
Salmon bbq with fresh lemon and pepper and sea salt
Fresh Beer bread
Assorted olives

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Thank you so much for letting us peek into your kitchen, Tyler!

Share your own kitchen renovation or improvement!
We're always looking for real kitchens from real cooks.
Show us your kitchen here!

Related: Haleigh's Charming Parisian Kitchen

(Images: Bethany Nauert)

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