Making Do

A sensible person would probably just eat takeaways for the few weeks we will be without a kitchen. And am I sensible? No indeedy. No, what I have done instead is recreate a kitchen in our spare bedroom. It is indoor camping if you like (although my partner assures me that if this is my idea of camping, then I am sorely out of touch with the majority who survive camping adventures on tins of baked beans and charred sausages).

Let us take a tour around the temporary digs, shall we? Once again I apologise for the appalling quality of photos - we really need to find the battery charger for the camera...

The "Kitchen" 

The "bench", featuring: chopping board, lovely loaf of bread from Gail's bakery (dark sourdough - yum!), small camp stove, coffee pot. 

The "Pantry", featuring: (on upper shelf) booze, Sodastream maker, spare coffee pot, more booze, soy sauce, vinegar, rice wine etc etc; (on lower shelf): cereal, pepper, marmalade, vegemite, coffee, sugar, panetonne, pickled ginger, chutney, popcorn and assorted other 'essentials'. 

The "Oven" featuring, the microwave, toaster and kettle. And our wicked 1960s radio which I got at the lovely vintage shop in Towcester. And yes, those are cabinets from the old kitchen which I dragged upstairs one afternoon. They house the china, darling. 

The "Stovetop" featuring, the larger camp stove, toastie-maker (essential for weekend lunches when one spends the weekend putting up plasterboard and/or plumbing/wiring), fruit bowl, water purifier (ok, I'm starting to see why my idea of camping may not be 'normal'), Magimix (this isn't actually being used - I just didn't have anywhere else to put it). 

So that's it. Them's the cooking facilities for the next few weeks. While it's not exactly roughing it, nor it is entirely simple to cook. I don't have an oven, so everything has to be cooked in a pot (or in the microwave - which I'm afraid I usually use solely for reheating rice, softening butter and occasionally defrosting meat). I only have 2 gas rings, which is plenty most of the time, but whatever I cook has to be relatively quick because the gas doesn't last that long (and it's expensive). Cleaning up is also a challenge because we have to do it in the bathroom (you'll have noted the absence of the kitchen sink in the pics) and as we recently installed a new bathroom, I'm terrified we are going to drop a plate on the lovely new porcelain sink and break it (the sink, not the plate - plates are easy to replace...sinks, not so much).

The challenge is to try and avoid too many ready meals or takeaways during this time. I am going to use quick cheats like the odd fresh pasta sauce, gourmet prepared soup (because slow cooking lentils or barley on the camp stove doesn't seem sensible) and fresh pasta instead of dry (because it cooks more quickly). Before the old kitchen was ripped out, I also cooked a load of rice and froze it in meal-sized portions so that I wouldn't have to do too many dishes each meal. Once that runs out I will have no qualms about buying ready-cooked rice for the same reason.

I suspect we'll be eating quite a few stirfries and pasta meals, but hopefully I can keep things varied enough that we don't go mad. So far we've had salmon tikka curry with paratha (which doesn't sound too hard-done-by, does it?) and a rather odd meal of pasta with meatballs made from leftover (frozen) Christmas stuffing. Tonight I'm not sure - probably a stirfry with chicken. I'll keep you posted. If you have any suggestions for quick, easy and tasty one-pot meals, I'm all ears!