My Kitchen Story - what my kitchen means to me

The kitchen is often referred to as the heart of the home.  Others see it as the room that you are always found in at parties. For some it is the place to sit and natter with friends over a cup of tea.  But for me, my kitchen is the place where I do my best to keep my family healthy through the meals I cook. It's practical rather than cosy, and functional rather than being somewhere to socialise.  I may not enjoy too many evenings spent sipping G&T's at the breakfast bar and putting the world to rights, but I've done a whole lot of cooking in my kitchen!

We have been vegetarian as a family since the year 2000.  My eyes were opened to the old idiom 'you are what you eat' after researching the food industry for health reasons.  I discovered lots of things that I disagreed with from a compassionate, a spiritual and a biological point of view.  I was inspired to make changes, not just to myself, but to my whole family.  So we embarked on a new eating adventure together with open eyes, where our new mantra became 'if it's got a face we ain't eating it!'

With meat, poultry and fish off the menu, I started to find recipes using lentils, pulses, tofu, Quorn, soya and vegetables. I discovered a whole world of delicious ingredients and enjoyed experimenting with them to come up with my own family meals.

As the years went by, my interest in food and healthy eating increased.  We cut back on dairy products, increased the amount of wholefoods in our diet and reduced the amount of refined sugar we consumed. Don't get me wrong, we still enjoy a cheeky Indian takeaway or a big, veggie topped pizza and we love a good home made cake, but on a balance we do the best we can to eat as well as we can. It's not restricting to eat this way. In fact it's been liberating to discover new foods and experiment with wholesome ingredients and bold flavours.

My slow cooker, food processor and spiralizer have become essential kitchen appliances that I use all the time to make food. I love a good gadget and kitchen gadgets are my absolute favourite things. I even have a fondness for my squeezy egg separator that sucks the yolk clean out of the white. I could spend all day browsing the internet for the latest time saving device or humorously shaped silicone cake pan!

These days my cupboards are stocked with red and green lentils, coconut oil, Chia seeds, nuts, dried pulses, buckwheat flour and nutritional yeast flakes.  They are unrecognisable from my shelves of yesteryear,  filled with HobNobs, Pringles and KitKat Chunkies.

There are still some days when I just feel utterly unmotivated to do anything and these are the days when I am grateful for my American style fridge-freezer which I keep stocked with Quorn nuggets, veggie sausages and bean burgers. A bit of convenience food comes in handy from time to time!  Throw in some potato waffles and a can of beans and the kids are fed for the night.

If I ever won the lottery (I can dream!!) I would love a house with a huge, modern kitchen with an island in the middle where the family could sit and chat and where I could spread myself out while preparing food.  I'd have cupboards filled with fancy kitchen gadgets, novelty bakeware and gorgeous crockery. I'd spend many an hour cooking and baking and would serve up plenty of good meals and yummy treats for my family. Of course I would also love the convenience of having a huge and super efficient new dishwasher to clean up all the pots and pans, with Fairy Platinum dishwasher tablets effortlessly keeping everything sparkling clean.  (Failing that, my Ian is an excellent and very accommodating pot wash!)

In the meantime, until my six numbers come up on a Saturday night, I will continue to enjoy my kitchen exactly as it is, and continue to do my best when it comes to feeding my veggie family!

“This post is an entry for the “My Kitchen Story” Linky Challenge, sponsored by Fairy Platinum.”