Do you enjoy cooking?

I always love the way the purists react to my rough and ready cooking when I was a working mother, but I recently heard a well known cooking pundit, I can't remember who, on the radio suggesting just such cooking as mine as being the way you could juggle a family, job and feeding a family real food, home cooked.

I spent part of my childhood in the Far East and used to go into the market with my mother, where the spice dealers would blend and mix curry powders and sell them to both local people, as well as Europeans.

It is a lovely idea isn't it, the Indian woman, when she isn't working long hours in the garment factory, spending further long hours loving crafting exactly the right spice mix from her extensive spice collection for the family meal, not to mention spending hours in the market choosing the individual spices and herbs.

In fact they are like us, they are short of time and when the spice stall owner will sell you a prepared packet of spices that can be opened and put in the meal being prepared, of course they do it, and of course so do I. I hate culinary snobbery.

It sounds rather like my cookery methods, M0nica!

I had a friend who would weigh everything precisely to the ¼ ounce and time it to the exact minute but I tend to be a rounded tablespoon, till it's done etc type of cook!

Greyduster I am talking preparation time. I will be somewhere else, doing something else while t cooks.

Essentially put 1lb diced meat in a casserole, add chopped frozen vegetables, a tin of tomatoes and a quantity of curry powder or paste to taste, add stock. Put in slow cooker or slow oven and go and do something else for 4 hours. Serve with naan bread.

I did this for casseroles and other made dishes 3 days a week for about 15 years when working, and withchildren at home. I always doubled the ingredients so that a second meal went into the freezer.

Life was too short to dicker with ready meals or fiddle with stir fries

I do when I have time. Use my slow cooker a lot. I like to be left alone when cooking though but DH whips everything away to be washed before I've finished with it - spoons, knives, bowls etc and it drives me mad! DD1 is a brilliant baker so I tend to rely on her for desserts.

Joseann

Norah

MayBee70 I don’t understand these home makeover programmes where people need a kitchen island so they can chat to their guests whilst cooking. Mind you, I don’t cook and I don’t have guests.

We love the islands in our kitchen, part to additions and changes to our pre-1900s home. We do cook and have guests round often.

I keep them free of all clutter, quite useful worktop space.

My island is the centrepiece of my kitchen, and while I cook a meal my DGC colour in or practise their spellings with me, DH pours wine for guests while chatting, even the dog pops his paws up occasionally to check out the cooking! All very sociable, and a godsend at Christmas.

I agree.

One of our island has shallow drawers all across and 2 rows down, full of spice jars and tins. Spoons to measure quantities and tiny bowls to measure to - in each drawer. Islands are wonderful.

I get how great islands are. What I don't understand is people wanting an audience when they cook. I can wreck the kitchen just by making a cheese sandwich so, on the rare occasion that someone does come round for a meal I prepare everything beforehand.

Yes

MayBee70

I get how great islands are. What I don't understand is people wanting an audience when they cook. I can wreck the kitchen just by making a cheese sandwich so, on the rare occasion that someone does come round for a meal I prepare everything beforehand.

Love it 😂😂😂

I'd probably chat, slurp some wine then smell burning.
DD has a large island and seems to cope with cooking, chatting and pouring me a 🍷

I had a townhouse with a kitchen island where the sink was inserted in it, so guests could watch me washing up and squeezing out dishcloths while we chatted!

I think kitchen islands are like any other kitchen unit. Sometimes they are the right and sometimes the wrong thing to have in the kitchen.

I have never seen them as being a way of socialising, I thought the reason we have kitchen diners now is to deal with the cook being party of the party and that requires neither island units nor penninsula units, unless you have a use for them. I have an open kitchen diner with neither.

On the other hand I have a friend with a big square kitchen with lots of windows and doors and an island unit is a solution to providing enough storage space in the kitchen.

Both of our island have storage on the side where cooking people work and seating on the side where children and grown people are eating, doing drawings, having a wine, looking out at trees and birds, nattering. We love islands, fill vacant spaces, another spot in kitchen and dining room for tables and chairs.