Wednesday 25 November 2009

Kitchen Clutter?


What clutters your kitchen? My wife would probably say the ever growing collection of whiskeys, gins, rums and vodkas that engulf the area next to the fridge. Is it your electric whisk, a pressure cooker, Or the colossal bread maker that always seems to be in the way? Are they cluttering your kitchen, or have you grown lazy? If you can't bring yourself to throw it out or give it away then the answer is probably yes, you have grown lazy. Or preoccupied with more pressing matters perhaps. You feel guilty every time you look at it don't you? At the back of many kitchen cupboards across the country, behind the empty jam jars and sauce bottles, there can sometimes be found a pasta machine. I remember pondering on whether or not to buy one and the main argument I wrestled with was that the novelty might wear off. I'd read of people buying them on a whim after watching a Jamie Oliver episode only to run the rollers through once or twice before ebaying it away or banishing it to the cupboard under the stairs. When a friend of mine moved out from home, he turned his mother away when she offered him her pasta machine. I can understand people being put off with the added work compared to turning out a bag of dried fussili into a pan, but making your own pasta isn't necessarily an alternative to packet pasta, it's alternative to cooking altogether. Sometimes I want to be lost in the kitchen for hours on end, making meals and sauces and jams. I enjoy my time in the kitchen, it's therapeutic and a chance for me to zone-out and forget. Too often its all over and done with so quickly. Preparing a meal that is. Sometimes you want to spend more time in the kitchen, be guilted into making meringues with your electric whisk, use your bread maker or prepare some fresh pasta. Sometimes I like to work my way through bottles of whiskeys and rums. In fact only too often. Some people may think it's all too much effort but I smile every time I pull my pasta machine down from the shelf. I find such appliances to give me inspiration, add a new dimension to my capabilities with food. Kitchen clutter? I say versatility.

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