Kitchen Essential

As soon as you walk into the country kitchen, it’s as if there’s a huge welcome mat at the door. You see it in the lovely comfortable clutter, the warm timber, the informality and the deliberately mismatched old tiles in the splashback. Bowls of fruit and vegetables on display — perhaps just one type, such as lemons or pears — indicate a love of nature. Herbs and spices are decanted into pretty jars; farmhouse loaves sit on the breadboard; wire baskets full of eggs add to the mood. Continue Reading »

STEP BY STEP

1. Cut a length of 60 x 60 mm timber to the desired width of the table. This is the block from which the table will be hinged and which will be fastened to the wall. If it is a stud wall use at least two 80 mm coach screws, counterbored 20 mm or so with a spadebit in a drill, secured into separate stud beams. If it is a brick wall use masonry bolts of the same length or greater, also counterbored 20 mm. Continue Reading »

A small kitchen may not have enough room for a permanent table at which a couple of people can eat breakfast or quick kitchen meals, but it may have a wall to which a fold-down table could be attached.

Such a table can also provide extra workspace when needed as well as a place for family and friends to sit and keep the cook company while meals are being prepared. Folding chairs, some kind of cosy lighting arrangement and a spot for a small television on a facing wall could make previously dead space the most popular spot in the house. Continue Reading »

Kitchen Storage Behind Closed Doors

Cupboard storage ideas are only as limited as your imagination.

• Glass doors can often be incorporated into cupboard design — these are generally at eye level to show off colour-coordinated china and glassware.
• Plastic-coated wire baskets are popular for storing numerous items from pots to vegetables.
• A tea-towel rack may be useful in a small narrow space.

Continue Reading »

With all of its pots, pans, bags of groceries and delicious comforting aromas, the kitchen is the heart of the home. But it does have a dual role to play: it has to be efficient yet comfortable and inviting.

Planning a kitchen may seem daunting at first, but most of the important decisions will be common-sense ones. Then you can spend time on the fun things like colour schemes and the overall ‘look’. Continue Reading »

The galley kitchen, generally a narrow room with cabinets on the two long walls, is one of the most difficult types of kitchen to make work satisfactorily.

The most awkward arrangement is when the room is essentially a passageway between the back door and the main living areas. Much less troublesome is the corridor with one completely enclosed end wall, in which the only traffic is that coming into, and not through, the room. Continue Reading »

If space is a problem, the single-line layout may be the most practical and efficient arrangement.

It’s a challenge to the designer, but if planned carefully, the single-line kitchen can look neat, and work as well as a beautifully designed machine. In a multi-purpose room, it has the advantage of being able to be contained in one area, leaving most of the floor space free for dining and/or relaxing. Continue Reading »

With cabinets and appliances running in an unbroken line around three counters, the U-shape is generally considered to be the most workable kitchen design.

To create an efficient work triangle in a U-shaped kitchen, awkwardly positioned doorways are more of a problem than the actual size of the room. In the true U-shape, the line of work surfaces is uninterrupted by doors, so that the cook is undisturbed by family members continually tramping through the work area. Continue Reading »

This configuration is suitable for virtually all types of rooms, except for particularly narrow ones, or those with lots of doors.

It’s often used to create a kitchen in the corner of an open-plan living room, or in a large combined kitchen/dining room.

In almost every case, the L-shaped kitchen can include an eating area, even if it’s only in the form of a breakfast bar; generally, though, there’s room here for a table. Of course, it’s a very sociable set-up, ideal for relaxed entertaining and family meals, enabling the cook to join in conversation without feeling excluded. Continue Reading »

The most informal arrangement, the eat-in kitchen can fit into almost any shaped room as long as it’s not too small.

A great benefit of this layout is that the cook need never feel left out from what’s going on at the table. On the down side of things it is impossible to close the door on kitchen mess. Continue Reading »

You need more than money to create a kitchen that looks good and works well. Far more important is a sense of how you actually want your kitchen to work, plus a knowledge of basic planning principles.

The layout of the room, rather than its size, has an enormous impact on its level of efficiency. It’s worth taking your time over the planning stage to avoid what could prove to be costly and annoying mistakes. Continue Reading »

Every day in every kitchen, an enormous amount of waste is generated.

Waste comes in all shapes and forms — paper, cardboard, plastic, food scraps, liquids, oils, even airborne waste — the list goes on, and we all create literally mountains of the stuff.

A lot of our rubbish is a product of modern packaging methods, particularly in the case of cardboard wrapping, plastic bags and containers and metal cans. We can all do our bit by refusing to buy over-packaged products. It’s easy enough to cut down on plastic carrier bags by recycling them or by using canvas or string bags. Continue Reading »

In any kitchen, but especially a small kitchen, where space is at a premium, it is important to make use of all available space for storage.

These DIY projects will enable you to keep kitchen essentials within easy reach. While they are simple to make, they look smart and help keep your kitchen neat.

All these projects are suitable for novice carpenters. Continue Reading »

Fridges and freezers are no longer huge white shapes looming in the corner. While they may be less bulky on the outside, their internal capacity is what counts for most people.

Despite all the streamlining, size, more than any other factor, determines which model of fridge or freezer we buy. A tall larder fridge and a matching freezer give ample easily accessible storage space but many kitchens are simply not big enough to accommodate them. Alternatives include a freezer kept separately — in the utility room, garage or wherever — or a combined fridge/freezer unit. Whatever you buy, choose a model on which the door is hinged correctly — it should not open into the central space of the kitchen. Continue Reading »

Apart from making sure that it is not easily breakable, there are no special requirements when selecting crockery and cutlery for camping. Naturally, it does not make sense to take along the family’s Dresden china or parts of a complete dinner set which would be ruined if one piece went missing. But the other extreme of using only disposable plastic knives, forks and spoons is also not the answer: Continue Reading »

If you take a look around your well-equipped kitchen at home, with its plumbed-in sink, its spacious oven, its four-ring hob, its refrigerator, dishwasher, electric food-mixer and so on, it is fairly clear that no portable camp kitchen is likely to match up to it for sheer convenience and labour-saving efficiency. It follows, therefore, that when you go camping you should not expect to cook and eat as elaborately as at home. Continue Reading »

There’s nothing better than getting home after a hard day’s work (or any day of work) and pouring yourself a drink.

If you’re going to stock a bar at home, or more realistically a kitchen cupboard, cover your bases by buying the six main types of spirits.

BRANDY

More brandy is consumed locally than any other spirits. Generally acceptable mixes are Coke, soda water, water or orange juice. Continue Reading »

You may never set the table like this (you probably don’t have enough matching cutlery anyway) but should you happen to be invited to one of those really fancy restaurants where you are faced with a dazzling display of silverware and starched white linen as the maitre d’ pushes in your chair, at least you won’t make a fool of yourself when it comes to using said silverware to deliver delicate morsels to your mouth for mastication, swallowing and digestion and whatever follows that.

With formal 3-5 course meals, the dinner place-setting is used from the outside in. When you sit down at a formal table, the side plate on your left is yours. There will normally be a butter knife on top. You will use this knife to butter your bread or roll which you don’t cut, by the way, but break (gently, you’re not a caveman). Continue Reading »

Eat your vegetables! This little sentence was drummed into all our heads when we least wanted to hear it. But as the universe is strange, when you move from your mother’s home you suddenly start eating vegetables by choice and you may even become a vegetarian! Most veggies are really easy to prepare, and depending on how you prepare them, they are healthy.

Steaming Vegetables

It is almost always better to steam your vegetables as it is the healthiest method for the tastiest vegetables (you taste the vegetable instead of what’s been added to it). Now if you own a microwave there should be no reason for you to ever steam, boil or cook vegetables on the stove. Most vegetables are quickly and easily cooked in the microwave. Consult your manual — it probably has a very useful table giving you preparation and timing details. Continue Reading »

A modern miracle, the microwave’s potential is hardly ever met in the mere mortal’s kitchen. It stands in the corner forlornly hoping its owners will use it for more than pizza leftover warm-ups. As we are also maniacal reheaters, we went in search of the holy grail — or in this case the Best Kept Microwave Secrets.

In many instances the general reluctance to make the most of your microwave oven may well stem from a secret fear that it will blow up and take you and your home along with it. So let’s start with some golden rules: Continue Reading »