Judy Stoffman's kitchenKevin Van Paassen / The Globe and Mail
Toronto writer Judy Stoffman, who loves to cook and entertain, always wanted a kitchen with room enough for friends and family to gather, sit and keep her company while she prepares dinner. The co-author, with nutrition expert Aileen Burford-Mason, of Eat Well, Age Better (out in April) got what she wanted when the original kitchen in her tall, narrow Edwardian house in Toronto's Annex West neighbourhood was expanded with the help of her friend, the late architect Adrian DiCastri, 15 years ago.
The resulting 18-by-16 foot space offered room for a couch as well as the large collection of geraniums she has grown from seed on the sunny ledge of a new bank of windows. "I love nature and growing things," says Stoffman, wife of the best-selling Canadian business writer Daniel Stoffman ( Boom, Bust & Echo) and mother of two. "I wanted a kitchen that felt like an indoor garden – with all the greenery."
The colour scheme
"Interior designer Robert Wilson, who has an infallible eye and amazing visual memory, has given me much good colour advice over the years. For the walls, he told me to ask for a colour called Spanish White from Benjamin Moore, which must be mixed to order. It's creamy with no glare. He also urged me to paint the ceiling a deep green, which has helped create the kitchen's intimate atmosphere.
The stove
"This is a Garland professional stove adapted for home use. It puts out a lot of BTUs."
The artwork
"The framed pictures in this room are almost all food-related. They range from an inexpensive poster of a giant strawberry to a folk-art fish to a fine silkscreen of a ripe pear by artist James Spencer, whose work is in the National Gallery."
The plates
"The plates on the walls have been collected in my travels – they come from markets in Japan, England, Hungary, France and Italy."
The birdcage
"This antique bird cage has held a shifting population of canaries over the years. At the moment, it's empty. We are awaiting a new avian tenant, though."
The light fixture
"I'm an obsessive antiques hunter and I've had this art-and-crafts fixture for a long time. I believe that all tables should have an overhead fixture and the people below bathed in a pool of light; it creates intimacy."
The flooring
"These green-and-black checkerboard floor tiles are from Merit Decorating Centre on College Street [in Toronto] They're not terribly high-end, but they hide the dirt."