Saying goodbye to my kitchen

If you are reading this post then I am relaxing in the country, more insects than cars, fresh air, sneezing. I’ll have moved out of the little Marrickville dive that I’ve called home for the last few years, and where this blog was born.  A strange place for a food blog with such a high proportion of recipes to start. Not exactly an ideal kitchen for spending any time at all in, let alone facilitating the creation of elaborate dishes.

I’m not sure that this hunk of heating box junk will survive much longer, it is down to one working element, and by working I mean it gets hot, eventually. The oven has one bottom element and like a leaky boat doesn’t seal properly, so a cake can burn on the bottom and be raw the rest of the way through because all the heat escapes. I will, however, miss it for the next week as I attempt to coax steady heat from fire in the wood stove (farm living!), but I won’t miss the electric shocks, oh no.

I also won’t miss this ‘bench space’. See why I decided not to do the last daring bakers challenge? To give some perspective, the bench in the above shot is 47×45 cms. To further complicate matters only 5 of the 12 cupboards and drawers are usable, hooray for cheap kitchen fitouts from the 1960′s.

Despite its obvious shortcomings, this kitchen has really done me well by providing some alone time (see, this kitchen is definitely designed for one), and enabling the creation of some delicious treats. Fingers crossed my next kitchen is better, but if there is one thing this experience has taught me is to not be too constrained by the apparent limitations of my tools, amazing things are still possible.

Goodbye crappy kitchen, I’ll miss you, sort of.