Deciding to be Happy: The Small Kitchen

If you know me, and you do, you know I often lament the size of our tiny house (I feel I can call it tiny, as those who advocate living in the "small" house are often talking about 2,000 square feet, and our house is much smaller). Foremost among my complaints is the size of the kitchen.
Leave it to The Minimalist to shame me into satisfaction. This morning I read "So Your Kitchen Is Tiny, So What?" which is a great column about how he makes all his amazing meals in a tiny, NYC-apartment-sized kitchen (click on the link to the picture and be amazed).
I got to that column via today's column, "Fresh Start for the New Year? Let's Start in the Kitchen." It's a great list of must-haves for your pantry. (Pantry? Do I have a pantry? No.) I was pleased that many things on his list were already in my possession. Also, that I understood a lot of his tossed off recipes ("just steam this and throw in that" etc.). I have to admit that I do have the spray oil, (and packaged broth!) which I will use until gone and not replace (I may be a health freak, but I don't like to waste). But I also have real maple syrup, tomato paste in a tube, quinoa, and three kinds of rice.
I set out to find Mark Bittman because he wrote a book that extends Michael Pollan's argument (from In Defense of Food) called Food Matters, which includes recipes. I read about it on Salon. I've also wanted How To Cook Everything for awhile.
So, my first lesson in happiness this year comes from The Minimalist. It's not the size of the kitchen, it's the imagination of the chef.