That’s what Tamara called her old galley kitchen. I had one too for a while. It turns out Mark Bittman also has an awful tiny kitchen. Living proof that you don’t need fabulous stuff in order to cook well.

Like Bittman, who says he takes a little pride in the difficulty of it, I like the challenge of an odd space. One summer in college, the place I was living was having the kitchen overhauled. So we cooked on a folding table with an electric skillet, a rice steamer and a gas camping stove. It worked surprisingly well.

Small kitchens can actually be much handier to work in than large ones. A small kitchen, well organized, is like a cockpit: Everything’s in arm’s reach. I had a great kitchen like this when I lived in Cairo–we had the rare apartment where the kitchen seemed to have been built for regular people, not housekeepers, to use, and so actually had a counter and shelves and other handy details. But I could stand in one spot in front of the stove and reach over for spices, pots and dishes, and turn behind me to drop things in the sink. The gecko clicking away by the window was a bonus.

I do think one mental hurdle people with small kitchens face is the idea of getting the space dirty. If you live in a tiny apartment, a mess in the equally tiny kitchen is going to seem like a huge imposition. But, as usual, the answer is just clean as you go. It keeps the grease from building up. And more immediately, you have to make room on the counters.

And counter space…it’s like money, or free time. As soon as you get some, you just want a little more. Live with what you’ve got.