Day late and a dollar short

Started reading Julie/ Julia book which is a book about a blog about a (cook) book. The girl is from Austin and lives in NYC in a crap old apartment similar to the Amateur Gourmet. Why is cooking in a crap old tiny NYC apartment so intriguing to the general public? It is to me for sure and I can't get enough of the stuff. But, why did she have to go all the way to NYC to be interesting? How do I make cooking in a decent-sized central Austin kitchen with two rug rats interesting? Well, I don't live in NYC and have a pretty normal life and will never become famous from blogging about matchstick carrots in my son's teriyaki but it's the pursuit....and the pursuit of interesting and intriguing is the whole reason to cook.