Kitchen Essential

Sinks and Taps

Essentials like sinks and taps are such an integral part of the kitchen that it’s easy to forget what a variety there is to choose from.

Old-fashioned porcelain butler’s sinks (the deep rectangular tanks that have been turned into so many container gardens over the years!) are still very appealing for country-style kitchens. The disadvantage with traditional installations was that the join between sink and adjacent wooden draining board was difficult to seal, allowing water and waste to get into the gap. If you’re buying a new butler’s sink, look for a design with an edge that overlaps the worktop, to avoid this problem. Continue Reading »

The idea of the kitchen as the heart of the home dates back to the dayswhen kitchens were power houses of service and industry and had a staff to run them! Fitted furniture and neat appliances mean they now have all sorts of other benefits to offer — and are much more fun to decorate.

Practicality should be uppermost in your kitchen planning. Even if you’re not a keen cook, or want a rustic, unfitted look,you will still need unobstructed access to cooker, fridge, sink, work tops and storage. And the kitchen is usually the room that has to accommodate all the general paraphernalia for which there’s no room elsewhere, from cleaning equipment to spare light bulbs and fuses. Colour and decoration will make it a pleasant place to work, but the most important thing is that it suits the way you live. This tells you how to plan a new kitchen — and how to update an old one at a fraction of the cost! Continue Reading »

At its most basic, the kitchen is the engine room that drives the long food processing chain. This stretches from the farmlands and oceans that produce our food to the landfills, rivers, and seas that take the eventual wastes and rubbish. But the chain does not start with the food growers and processors — it starts with you. For it is what each individual consumer decides to buy that ultimately determines the produce — and the price — from the growers and the food industry. The purse is very influential and we, as consumers, have both power and responsibility for making choices. Continue Reading »

The kitchen is the heart of the house, the centre of consumption, the hub of daily life. It is the place where family and friends gather to eat, drink, and chat, share their joys, or solve their problems. It is the base of all domestic operations and the one place where we can “act locally”, and play an active part in protecting the health of ourselves and that of the wider environment.

The kitchen of childhood dreams is a place full of appetizing and tantalizing smells, a farmhouse kitchen, perhaps, hung with polished copper pots and pans and warmed by a glowing fire. However, behind that dream lay the reality for the housewife of long hours of tiring work stoking fires, heating water, hand-washing and ironing, scrubbing and polishing, and cooking. Continue Reading »

If you’re planning your kitchen from scratch, there’s no substitute for an accurate floor plan on which you can mark existing fittings, furniture and immovable features such as windows and plumbing points. Draw it to scale and mark all the measurements clearly.

The basis of a practical kitchen layout is the arrangement described by kitchen designers as the ‘work triangle’ — the space between cooker, sink and fridge. Your kitchen plan should allow for clear access to all three. You should be able to turn quickly and easily from one to another without the risk of dropping a hot pan or spilling an ice-cube tray. It’s an easier arrangement to achieve in some kitchens than in others: long, thin kitchens have a natural tendency to line up all the appliances in a row, and in very small kitchens you really won’t have much choice about what fits where. But if you aim for the triangle — even an elongated one — you’ll have a good basis for the rest of your kitchen. Continue Reading »

Kitchen styles fall into two main groups: streamlined and high-tech, to emphasize the room’s status as a work centre; or softer and traditional, which makes it feel less functional and more lived-in.

The sleek, modern look provides simple lines and easy-to-clean surfaces, with no awkward corners. Kitchens in this style are good for small areas where too much decoration would feel cluttered and fussy; small kitchens really can’t take a rustic, unfitted effect without looking a mess. Continue Reading »

Simple and contemporary

White or plain wood cupboard fronts — with a few glazed doors too. Try mixing white and wood together: white units with a woodblock work top, or wooden base units with white-painted wall cupboards. Stripwood floor. Plain white roller blinds for the windows.

Sleek and high-tech

Everything discreetly fitted, right up to the ceiling — no open storage except for ultra-functional chrome utensils on hanging rails. Recessed lighting. Granite-effect work tops. Black‑’ and-white tiled floors. Slatted window blinds. Continue Reading »

Your choice of colour will determine the style and ambience of a table, so don’t rely on a quick decision. Colours can be used quite consciously to achieve precisely the effect you are hoping for.

It may help you to run through the colour palette, starting with the colour which appears on almost every table — green.

Green for freshness

For nature lovers, the fresh green of flowers and leaves brings life into the house, especially during the winter months. Therefore green is a welcome addition to the table, because besides its fresh appearance, it has another quality. Green lifts and emphasises other colours, especially its complementary colour, red. You can exploit this characteristic if you place big green leaves on the table and then lay a single, or just a few, brightly coloured blossoms on top (for example, rhododendrons orhydrangeas). Continue Reading »

It has become normal to expect that menu cards and seating plans are purely a matter of etiquette and reserved for official occasions, as they are thought more than a little excessive for a private dinner party. It would be a pity if this idea were to persist, because menu cards for a small dinner party or place cards for a tea party in your home can be a gesture which brings people closer together and, if you do it properly, a sign that you are in command of your role as a hostess. They also make an eye-catching part of the overall table decorations.

Imaginatively designed menu cards lead to anticipation of a delicious meal and afterwards your guests can take them home as an attractive memento. Continue Reading »

For many people a country walk at Easter is a good old tradition. It gets you out into the country and you are able to enjoy the fact that spring has arrived to the full. Also, Easter is a traditional time for visiting; relatives or friends come to stay for a couple of days for a short holiday with you, or the children are back home again. If you want to surprise your guests, then maybe this idea will appeal to you — round off your Easter walk with a rustic, country Easter celebration.

What to do:

Create a mossy dell on your table! A moss arrangement stands in the centre, which you can design with the help of the whole family. All of you can also bring together the other components and prepare them. Continue Reading »

Thoughts of an attractive table setting usually start with a freshly laundered tablecloth which is carefully spread over the table. Sometimes that’s as far as the table decorations get — which is a shame, because with a few tucks and a bit of imagination, just a tablecloth on its own can provide your table with an effective “outfit”.

There are a few basic rules which will help you to make the most of your tablecloth.

The tablecloth must fit the table.

This makes sense, because nothing is more detrimental to the effect of a table than a cloth which is too small. On the other hand, your guests won’t enjoy fighting to disentangle their legs from acres of cloth hanging down from the table. It should still be possible to sit comfortably at a fully clothed table. Continue Reading »

Have you ever watched the precise and practised way in which professionals in a good hotel or restaurant set a big table for a five- or six-course meal? Lots of different glasses and table silver are placed in exactly the right spot without hesitation. The number of items involved in a setting may seem confusing to you.

However, there is a clear rule for everything.

Guests start with the cutlery furthest away from the plate and work inwards during the course of the meal. The same procedure applies to glasses. The drink which is served first is put into the glass which is furthest from the centre of the plate. There is often also a side plate, which is placed to the left of the setting.

These few rules are so basic and clear that they can become a matter of routine for any guest, so you nolonger have to worry about which knife, fork or spoon to use next during the meal. Continue Reading »

This invention is older even than the ancient Romans, who prized the product of melting sand, limestone and soda, and the attractive shapes and practical containers which could be made from this refined material.

Glass is found today in almost all walks of life, and it is hard to imagine life without it. The range of drinking vessels extends nowadays from cheap moulded glass to hand-blown, engraved designer glasses.

The differences in quality depend on the composition of the glass as well as on the way in which it is produced. The use of different raw materials and the melting process are decisive in determining the quality of the glass. Good-quality glasses are usually hand-blown, the sides are engravedand they don’t have a seam. On the other hand, moulded glasses are rarely as clear as hand-made ones, they have a small bulge at the rim and usually have a seam on the stem or foot. However, they are much cheaper than blown glass, and therefore much more practical for many uses. Continue Reading »

The table illustrated here is not just a still life; it is a compilation of a small selection of things which are used as decorations for various tables in this book. This should give you a fewideas about the many accessories whichsurround you in your house.

Every container, every sculpture, pretty stones or shells, decorative ribbons or marbles can provide you with ideas for table decorations. Don’t be afraid to use simple, everyday items from house and garden, or even foodstuffs. What about wire, pieces of cloth, sand, old pots or flasks, balls, candles, mirrors or even toy cars? What is wrong with a large cabbage or asparagus as a replacement for, or addition to, flowers? Why not use fifty sharpened pencils for an accountant’s fiftieth birthday party table? Or why not put brown leaves on the table, when we enjoy them so much outdoors in autumn? Continue Reading »

The history of crockery is a chequered one. There were times when nobles and merchants tried to outdo each other with beautiful china. In fact the splendour on the table was more important than the food on the plates. The finest porcelain (known as white gold) was painted with in several layers and decorated with gold leaf. Simplicity was the last thing anyone had in mind.

More recent times have provided us with cheap paper and plastic crockery. It didn’t matter whether it looked good or not — the most important thing was that it was practical. Decorated and disposable items are all crockery, but there is a world of difference between them. Continue Reading »

Holiday atmosphere. Are you one of those people who go for long walks along the beach when on holiday, collecting shells, stones and driftwood as little treasures and mementoes of your holiday to take home? Then in principle you already have theessential ingredients for this table decoration.

What to do:

Arrange a small beach scene in the middle of your table. To avoid damage to your table, place newspaper under the sand. If you don’t have a glasstable top, a blue tablecloth will do just as well to represent the colour of the sea.

If you don’t want to raid your child’s sandpit, you can buy fine white sand cheaply from craft shops. Continue Reading »

Either you’ve just come back from a holiday in Italy or you’ve got it still to look forward to. Or maybe you simply love the Italian way of life, relaxed and friendly, cheerful and colourful. Of course, you’re just as keen on Italian cuisine as well, which is so much more than just pizza and pasta. What about the typical antipasti, and many delicious Mediterranean specialities, or “formaggio” (cheese) to round off a meal, and wonderful red wine to drink?

Get together with your friends for a “Bella Italia” evening, and give your table an appropriate southern flavour. You simply must have tomatoes, red wine and, of course, spaghetti! Continue Reading »

An invitation to breakfast on a sunny summer morning is simply wonderful. The guest is met by the aroma of freshbread and coffee. That’s the most attractive thing about breakfasting together: you have more time to spend with each other, you have the whole day before you, and breakfast can easily turn into brunch, if liked, or even an afternoon get-together over coffee. The things that you enjoy as the guest of other people can also be enjoyed when you are the hostess, as there is even pleasure to be gained from the preparations involved. A summer breakfast with lots of fresh fruit can be something special and exciting for you and your guests, and the table can be made to look very inviting with very little effort.

What to do:

If you restrict the table linen and crockery to white and shades of green, you already have the basis for a fresh effect. Of course, you can use other colours in combination with white, but the green and white combination sprites to mind first because of the natural green of fruit and leaves. Continue Reading »

Whether you are hot on the trail of Don Quixote or Velasquez, or simply spending relaxing days in the warm Spanish sun, it can still be exciting to act as a hostess on a small scale when you’re staying in foreign lands.

Native specialities, exotic flowers and leaves can be combined by simple means to produce unusual arrangements. The lifestyle and culinary specialities which you see on holiday can be reflected in your decorations.

What to do:

The table impresses with its simplicity, it radiates atmosphere without too many frills, and the charm of the Mediterranean is typified by the rich colors of the flowers, framed in elegant white. As a final touch the napkins are held together with a strip of palm leaf. Continue Reading »

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the shepherds in Scotland would gather together in their huts, known as bothies, to tell stories, sing, drink and simply get warm.

The Scots have retained elements of this along with many other good old traditions. They still get together to talk about the day’s events,to exchange news and spend some time together over a cup of, tea and a snack.

Even if friends have just dropped round for no particular reason and you’re only having a snack, you may still want to decorate the table and make it look different.

What to do:

If you have a wooden table, then don’t bother with a tablecloth. Wood looks good in this simple, rather rustic table decoration. Continue Reading »