How to live and what to eat on a building site.
Thu, 21 July, 2016
News of my kitchen project. I can now reveal that the project is actually pretty much about demolishing half the house and rebuilding it, only slightly larger. The driving force behind it is the fact that for years I’ve had the kitchen with working surface space of about 5 foot square and if I parked myself in the middle, I didn’t have to step in any direction, just turn: from hob to sink to cupboards. Only getting to the fridge required walking as fridge hadn’t fit in the kitchen and had to live in the conservatory behind a door. Even flipping pancakes was fraught with danger. And I like to line up ingredients and gear I’m going to be using - with more elaborate dishes that left me with no space at all.
So it’s all exciting now as I’m looking forward to a massive open plan kitchen-cum-dining-cum-everything-else area where I’ll have about four times as much storage space! Yippee! no more having to empty most of the pan cupboard in order to retrieve the pasta pan from the back! Or precariously stacking spice jars one on top of the other only to find I need the bottom-most one next! But for the time being I’m getting some heavy metal on the outside and interesting features inside…
We’re not fortunate enough to move out for three months and come back to shiny completion. So as the new walls around us grow the living space inside shrinks.
Which means of course - takeaways. I still have a cooker but a lot of utensils are packed away and they are of course the indispensable ones, even though I’d thought differently whilst packing away. There’s no dining table any more - in fact the dining room is right out of a ghost movie.
Eating in the sitting room with trays on our laps is not the preferred style, we’re very civilised like that. But needs must and going out every night is out of the financial equation.
There I am thus, having had my first fix of kung po prawns and special fried rice. Pizza will undoubtedly arrive soon, as it’s the Weather Man’s poison of choice. My heart yearns for kebabs but my waist is seriously worried about the prospect.
What else, if not takeaway, and the determinants are: ease of consumption, relatively low processed level and the cost? I’ll say: jacket potato for one, bung it in the oven and open a couple of cans for a topping (tuna, sweetcorn, beans, chickpeas) and scrape the fridge clean off cheese.
No, nothing as posh and fancy as this!
Cheap filled pasta cooked like pot stickers: fry-steam-fry, more about it soon, watch this space. Odd bits of veg fried up in the pan and covered with beaten egg and cheese for a very unorthodox frittata. Salads made of torn lettuce topped with ready-roasted chicken or ham. It will all be possibly half the price and a tenth of a salt and sugar content of an average ready meal.
Recipe coming soon.