Some time ago, our small family had to move out of our flat for a while. We moved into our office just a short step away. I put some wooden tables taken from re-cycling into a very small back room and on them placed a rice-maker someone had given us, an electric kettle and a single free-standing 1000-watt induction cooking plate. I bought a small old second-hand fridge with great insulation, placed a basic microwave with a grill on top of it, and then paid a local plumber to connect a free-standing stainless steel sink a short distance to the services. There it was, our kitchen. At the time I had never used a microwave or even a rice-maker but I soon learnt. But I learnt something much more interesting as well - a different way of being in the kitchen. I would never willingly spend expensively on what is called nowadays a 'fitted kitchen' ever again.
With these simple and inexpensive tools, I learnt to cook roasts, cakes, scrambled eggs, pizzas, soups, all manner of potatoes, rice and pulses, and every kind of vegetable there is. I made jams, compotes and chutneys. In short, I did all the cooking I will ever do in a tiny, easy to clean space, with very economical devices. The induction pad is a revelation. Heats a pan up in seconds and will efficiently fry up at a reduced power without setting its surroundings alight or even getting them hot. I had never realised how useful it is to have a rice-maker prepare rice ahead of the time you want it, and I found, too, that the microwave is actually a versatile cooker.
My time in this kitchen showed me at least three important things.
1. Investing large sums in a kitchen is not necessary.
The massive installations of standard kitchens are excessive (obviously this does depnd upon your hosting intentions). Who ever needs really needs a 4 ring cooker and oven wired up to a dedicated 3000-watt circuit? Melanine cabinets are massively heavy, cannot be properly cleaned in and around them, end up rotting with damp and infected with mould. Who needs double sinks as well as a dish-washer? Think of the house space taken up with kitchen devices. Fridges do not need to be large. Have a freezer compartment by all means - frozen vegetables are as good sometimes better than fresh - but there is no need to keep every single food item cold in the temperate zones. Old fashioned larders were just cool aired rooms with netting on the windows and around some food items, and did a perfectly good job of long term storage. Vegetables and fruits rot in fridges just the same because they sit on plastic trays and are not bathed in drying air currents. Filling a fridge with stuff forces it to work harder. We are three and wash up what we use straight away. A wipe down of surfaces with vinegar, a sweep under the free-standing tables and the kitchen is clean and what's more, it's open to inspection.
2. Efficient and healthy cooking.
Eat your food as you buy it, Cook only what you are going to eat. Don't create left-overs and don't be seduced into storing quantities of foods for so long that they decline in quality. Filling a fridge with left overs is uneconomic in energy terms as well as unhealthy. Storing stuff outside a fridge forces you to buy food in smaller quantities and thus forcing a higher turnover of use which is all to the good.
Microwave cooking allows you to make use of a much larger range of vegetables than one might ordinary use since cooking them to any desired consistency is easy, and it wastes no heat whatsoever in boiling masses of water you may use on an ordinary stove merely to cook a carrot. Our overal electricity use turns out to be much more reasonable than when we lived in our house.
3. Cook less but more frequently.
Our eating habits have changed. No longer do I make a large dish for a big meal. Rather, I tend to make small delicious things several times during the day. This actually frees my time up and also frees up muenu ideas. I can produce something quick within minutes and there is less of a need to rely on starches for bulk. Meals become part of the free-flowing time we have rather than inhibiting fixed points in the day.
What is revealed in our accidental shift in household habits is how much of a tyranny the kitchen can be, not simply as a space given up to one activity, but as a sink of investment and energy. It is no accident that one of the ways women are enslaved is through the culture of cooking. Pretty much all cuisines we admire, like those in the East, for example, have traditional household meals - and I have cooked some of them - that take hours and even days of preparation. I know, as a writer and default cook for a small household, there is almost nothing that can inhibit individual progress more than the tyranny of household obligations and duties.
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