My current kitchen is a wee teeny strip along the side of the house. Our chimney is in the middle of our house, which makes for some interesting nooks and crannies. We don’t have enough space for a dining table, so when we have friends over every week for dinner, everyone’s eating off their laps in the living room. We knew the place was a little bit of a fixer upper when we bought it, and we’ve started in earnest now. The builders are in, and a new kitchen/diner is on the way!!

So this weekend, I started packing up the kitchen. There’s an ever-present layer of muck and crud on the floor, which I’ve largely given up on cleaning for now. This is going to be blocked off this week, and I’ll have my sink area and a temporary bit of counter to work from until the new kitchen is installed.

So this is where I’m starting from. Completely as I walked into it, not tidied for the photo.

We’ve been eating down the presses/freezer since Christmas, when they were absolutely jammed solid. I even had an extra small freezer then! This is our main food press before I started today.

I’m a pantry person, but I’m also short so things at the back of top shelves absolutely get forgotten sometimes. Hence this photo of our jars of jam…

This is just honey and jam. It doesn’t include peanut butter, or syrups or chutney, and these are just the unopened ones – there are more in the fridge! All still good, apart from one homemade jar that had to be binned as the pop seal had released. No more buying jam until these are used up.

Top drawer is cutlery, second drawer is utensils. I desperately need a system of organisation for these.

Giant bag of rice. This is sushi rice, as we get through a lot of this – and mostly not as sushi. I usually get a 5kg bag once or twice a year from the Asia Market as it’s massively cheaper than buying little bags, lasts for years, and it’s compact enough to sit at the back of a press (supermarket website has it at € 2.29 for 500g currently. This bag works out at €2 a kilo, so less than half the price).

Ice cream machine, ready for temporary storage. It’s not quite ice cream season, but these are gonna start popping up in seasonal aisles in shops soon.

This has lived in the press since we moved in for one reason, which is also my biggest bit of advise for homemade ice cream. Measure your freezer drawer before you buy a machine! This worked fine in older freezers, but not in our current one. This type of machine absolutely needs to be upright to freeze or your ice cream will not come out right.

I’ve quite a few electrical gadgets. I try to keep the “silly single use” ones to a minimum, and I definitely want shelf space for all of the “worthy” ones so that they’re hidden away and not taking up real estate on my counter. Looking at you, bread machine (which also makes jam and cake!)

So this is what I’m left with, before the temporary space kicks in.

One press left, plus windowsill…

I already miss my coffee machine! It was basically a choice between that and the toaster and Boy Wonder is a big toast fan.

More to follow!