Vegan MoFo VI, Day 28 - My Hateful Kitchen

I've just spent the better part of 4 hours cleaning my kitchen in order to do a kitchen tour.  It's the cleanest it's been since we moved in.  That said, you'll soon understand how I feel about it because, as you'll see from the photos, it still looks dirty.  This is one of the many things I hate about my kitchen.

Anyway, this is a shot of the right corner of the kitchen from the doorway (attached to the sitting room).

You gotta play it safe around electricity.

You can see the kettle, toaster, microwave, and washer are all sharing one pair of sockets.  This is because there are exactly 4 outlets in the kitchen - that pair is one, one is behind the fridge, and the other is by the cooker (and the cooker is plugged in for the digital clock).

A closer view of the area - the microwave is sitting on top of the box that houses the gas meter.

You can see here that this is kinda the hot beverage and miscellany centre - we have a few varieties of tea,  and the coffee is behind the chocolate spread.  There's also a container of sugar and a container of a sugar/stevia blend.  And, of course, my vitamins, because this is a sensible place to keep them (in fairness, I keep them there because I have a glass of oj every morning and take my pills with it).

Above that is one of the cupboards.  I keep all my non-flour baking stuff on the top shelf (including apple cider vinegar, because it's a vegan kitchen), and the bottom shelf has sauces, vinegars, bouillon, condiments, a few spices and herbs, liquid sweeteners, and a couple of Japanese cooking ingredients.

Beside that is the cupboard with all the flours (top - the one groaning under the weight of all the flours), with pasta/noodles, beans, seeds/nuts (that I can eat), and grains on the bottom shelf.  Did you notice the ceiling?  Yeah, that's pink.  Even better, it's pink-painted wallpaper.  I don't know why they didn't just paint the ceiling pink, other than because they knew how much of a hassle it would be for the next owners to deal with it.  Also, the walls are covered with some kind of lino-like substance that was apparently all the rage in the 60s, supposedly because it was easy to clean.  That is a lie.  Or, at least, what's on the stuff in my kitchen isn't coming off.

The fridge came with the flat.  It looks alright, but it makes a lot of weird noises, so I suspect it's not long for this world.  I use the top for storing cereal and breadstuffs (and my electric kitchen scale, which is under the bread).  Also, notice the light switch - by its position, you'd think the lights were off, but no, they're on.  The genius that put in the light switches put them all in upside down.  All of them.

This is the full view of the main work areas of the kitchen from the fridge.  I did 2 or 3 loads of dishes today, and I couldn't be bothered drying all those.  The drawer beneath the dish dryer is where I keep my cutlery.  Notice how the cooker sticks out by about a foot?  That's because I measured it at the front and it was 60cm, but I didn't measure it at the back, which is not 60cm.  It makes perfect sense.  Also sensible - curtains in the kitchen.  We're gonna remove those and put in a blind soon.

This is the view of the left side of the kitchen, also from the fridge.  That unit there was in the sitting room when we moved in.  As a set, I didn't much appreciate them because they took up so much space.  But this one by itself actually proved to be great for the kitchen:

I keep my cookbooks on the top shelf, wine glasses, wide tumblers, large mugs and random storage things on the middle shelf, and most of my crockery on the shelves with the pull-down door.

Beneath that, I keep some pans and the bottom of my blender/food processor on the bottom shelf.  I keep my extra bagged spices and herbs in the top drawer and baking utensils in the middle drawer (the 3rd drawer is the junk drawer).

The bit with the sliding door is our drinks cabinet.  I keep the many bottles of wine that friends bring over for dinner parties and don't drink in here.

Front view of the cooker - it's all gas.  We wanted a dual fuel, but there's no ground in the electrical wiring, so they legally couldn't install it because it was an electrocution risk.  Fun!  To the right are my cast iron pans that need re-seasoning and a few bottles for recycling, and to the left are my slow cooker and a few bottles of oil.

Moving to the left, we see the spice corner.  Most of my bottled herbs and spices are here (apart from the ones in the cupboard), mostly because I couldn't think of anywhere else to put them.  There are also a few large jars of things - plain flour, nooch, and sugar.  That hanging utensil thing was here when we moved in, and I'm actually glad it was left (but probably only because they couldn't be arsed to unscrew it from the wall).  Speaking of the wall, why WHY is the socket so far up the wall?  Why?

And finally, the worktop (with breadmaker and other random stuff to the left).  I didn't get a close-up of why I hate that too.  The person who lived here before us obviously put a hot pan on it, because there's a raised ring on one bit.  It also stains really easily, so I can never tell if I've spilled something or if it's a 20-year-old stain (which is maybe why I hadn't deep cleaned in so long).

I forgot to take a photo of the cupboards beneath, but they're basically all my other stuff (pots, baking sheets and pans, colander, storage stuff) that I just threw in there when we moved in.  The other thing about hating my kitchen is that I don't even want to spend the time making it more user friendly, so it's not particularly well organised.

So now you know why I hate my kitchen, or can at least sympathise to a degree.  I can't wait until we either save enough to get the kitchen redone or I get a new job and can afford to make payments for a new kitchen.  Having a crappy, uninviting kitchen really sucks the joy out of cooking.

And now that my kitchen is finally clean, I'm gonna go make a mess!

Vegan MoFo VI, Bonus! - Cookbook Challenge - Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day! (and breakfast)

As I mentioned last night, I was gonna make the Oreo Wafflewiches from Vegan Sandwiches Save the Day! for dessert, but it was far too late once we got to the dessert stage of the night.  So I made them for breakfast!  And since it's daylight, I actually took a picture!

Sorry about the spill - I didn't notice it when I took the picture.

 

 These were pretty quick for waffles - or as quick as waffles can be given my hateful kitchen and my slow-ass waffle maker.  I subbed a bit of black cocoa powder for some of the regular cocoa powder for a bit more Oreo realness, but I don't know how much it helped.  Maybe I should use half and half next time.

 

These were fairly similar in taste to Oreos, though obviously the cream tasted fresher and less of chemicals.  It was kinda like eating half a packet of Oreos in one go - delicious, but now I feel a bit ill, though I don't feel particularly full.

 

I'm definitely gonna have to go to the gym soon.

 

Since I finally got around to taking a MoFo pic, I discovered that I had loads of photos of my cat, Zebedee, on my phone.  So, bonus Zebby and Mike photo!

 

Sunnin'

 I don't always sit here, but when I do, I step all over his junk.

Vegan MoFo VI, Day 19 - British Food Friday - Treacle Tart

Lemme 'splain something - UK sweeteners are kinda confusing.  When I was younger, listening to loads of British music, I would hear the word "treacle" and assume it was something super sweet and sticky.  Well, it turns out that what the Brits call treacle is what Americans call molasses - so at least the sticky part was accurate.  What I thought was treacle is actually golden syrup (or just syrup - not to be confused with the syrup Americans put on pancakes, which they don't really have here).

So, treacle tart - technically, it doesn't actually have treacle in it.  It's made with golden syrup.  Also, breadcrumbs!  So you're basically eating a crust full of syrup and bread.  There's almost nothing else in it.  I always found treacle tart to be the kind of thing that sounded both horrific and delicious, and this was before I even knew what was in it.

I can't even remember the first time I had treacle tart, but it was well after I'd moved to Scotland.  It was pretty much exactly what I expected - a little bit dirty, but addictively delicious.  I struggled to not eat the whole package.

I knew I had to make treacle tart at some point - it was one of the recipes that made me decide on this theme.  So I looked up recipes and landed on this one from a few MoFos ago.  I had all the ingredients on hand, and it looked pretty easy, so I went for it.

Well, it wasn't quite so straightforward.  Part of this is to do with my hateful kitchen - I don't have the best surface for making pastry, so the rolling out of the pastry was a bit of a project.  Then it turned out that the filling didn't actually fill the crust!  So I ended up having to nearly triple the filling.  I also ran out of syrup, but luckily I had a bottle of the maple-flavoured syrup, so I used a bit of that.  I'm so glad I made my own breadcrumbs because I used nearly all of them, and it was more than would've been in a box.

In the end, it all worked out.  Everyone loved it.  It had just a hint of maple flavour, which made it a little different than the usual treacle tart.  I might try to recreate this on purpose some day, but it might not happen until after I get a new kitchen (or maybe use someone else's).

Vegan MoFo VI, Day 12 - British Food Friday - Fish and Chips

It's British Food Friday!

I really struggled with what to make tonight.  I didn't want to make another sweet thing because we've had sweets in the office every day this week and it's reaching the point of overkill.  I was waffling between pot roast and fish and chips because that's all I could think to make.  I dug out a couple of pot roast recipes and realised that most of them were for crock pot roasts, which would take 4+ hours to cook.  I'm not spending 4+ hours on dinner on Friday night.

I finally decided to make the Fish and Chips (kinda) from Quick and Easy Vegan Celebrations by Alicia Simpson.  As you might recall, I tested for this book a couple of years ago.  Well, this recipe wasn't on the tester list, and for some reason I kept passing it over when I flipped through the book.  I honestly don't know why because fried fish is one of the few pregan things I still miss.

Of course, when I finally went to start cooking, I realised that the light above the cooker is now out - the day after we got the other light fixture replaced.  I very nearly decided to just say "fork it" and make some Fry's chicken nuggets for dinner.  But I powered through the annoyance of my hateful kitchen and made the seitan.

I was really unsure about this - you cook it in a smaller-than-usual pan in not very much broth.  But it actually turned out really well.  Unfortunately, it wasn't particularly fishy, but it was still really, really tasty.  Also, I have to say, the coating was more Southern than British (even though this is a St Patrick's Day recipe).  Again, super tasty, but not quite what I was expecting.

I couldn't be bothered making chips from scratch, so I bought the non-coated chips at the store.  Yes, most of the bags of chips I looked at were battered or otherwise coated in some way.  I just wanted straight-up chips, so I went with the bag which had an ingredients list so small (potatoes, sunflower oil) that it took me about a minute to find it.

I made a quick and dirty tartar sauce from some smoked garlic mayo, lemon juice and minced capers (I don't do vinegar on my fish).  It all worked really well together, and I'd definitely recommend it!

I will eventually do that pot roast, but maybe at a weekend.