Things have been pretty busy chez Litlove these past few days. Tomorrow work starts on our house; we are having a new boiler put in and, given that this entails ripping out most of the old kitchen, having our kitchen renovated, too. Consequently we have spent the Bank Holiday weekend clearing out twelve years of accumulated stuff. Finally we have donated the plates we used to use at university to the charity shop, and I have at last thrown out a bag of spelt flour in acknowledgement of the fact I will never have the time or really the inclination to bake bread. My parents came over to help on Sunday – my mother managed to clean out the sink in the utility room, used for the grubby jobs involving paint or cat food, until it looked like new again, and my father manfully emptied all the out of date tins and bottles into a dish so that we could save the environment and recycle the glass and aluminium. You should have seen the dish afterwards – or maybe not; it was for the strong only. For the time being we have set up a temporary kitchen/dining area in the conversatory (just about warm enough – just) but we are still at the stage of opening cupboards in the kitchen every time we want a plate or a fork and then realising they are empty.
Tomorrow the whole room is demolished, leaving me with just a microwave oven and a slow-cooking dish to cook our meals. Most people would say, great, we’ll eat out for a fortnight! But this is not so easy, or indeed much fun, on a restricted diet. When I accepted I would give up sugar and yeast I promised myself I would still eat lovely meals, and this is perfectly easy to do with fresh ingredients and a full compliment of kitchen equipment. Processed microwaveable meals, takeaways, heavy restaurant food, none of these spell pleasure for me, alas. We’re going to have to work it out as we go along. I can only hope that whatever food crises we endure in the next couple of weeks will make for entertaining blog posts.
I do apologise for not having yet had a chance to reply to all the wonderful comments that have arrived over the weekend. I have so enjoyed reading them all and will respond individually, like usual, in the very near future. It’s been an exhausting few days but I’ll be back into a routine soon, I hope. And I still have lots of books to tell you about! Hang on in there for Adventures In Building Chaos Part 1 – to be posted in a couple of days, I would imagine….
Tales from the Reading Room 
Dad’s dish sounds suitably revolting, Litlove… and I can’t wait for the menu misadventures of the next couple of weeks (but just think how nice it’ll be having a brand new kitchen for all your sugar- and yeast-free treats…)!
Good luck with that. We had to have our kitchen done a few years ago and it was 2 weeks without a stove or microwave though we had a fridge (set up in the living room!). Not so fun but interesting stories afterward.
Good luck with the building chaos! You are brave.
It just struck me that my self-imposed low-carb diet must be very similar to yours. I don’t eat sugar or yeast either, and I avoid rice, pasta, bread and starchy veg. Which leaves me with eggs, meat, vegetables, fruit and cheese. We should swap recipes …
Sounds like an adventure! (Of the sort that can provide years of entertaining stories but might not be so much fun to actually live through!) Good luck with the next few weeks…just think of the lovely new kitchen you will have when it is all said and done!
Absolutely the very best of luck with this. Building work when you are in situ is bad, but in the kitchen is the pits. Hope it all works out, especially to schedule. Still, as others say, you will have the wonderful results and soon it will be there to enjoy for a long time to come. In no time you’ll be saying “Do you reember when?”
If it were my kitchen and I had to cook, the menu would be cereal for breakfast, peanut butter and jelly for lunch, and beans and rice for dinner the entire two weeks. But then even if my kitchen wasn’t being renovated that would be my menu so it’s a good thing my husband cooks! Good luck!
i want a new kitchen!!!!!
Eating ‘fresh’ food with the use of only a microwave will indeed be a challenge! I look forward to hearing stories later. 🙂 At least it’s spring–maybe you can grill out? Good luck with things–hopefully it won’t take too long and cause too much inconvenience.
Welcome to the club. We are coming to the end of a major kitchen and living room refurbishment (half our flat) and over the Easter break we did what you have just done: sorted through 8-and-a-bit years of accumulated junk. It was a painful process, just the two of us, and quite fraught in places!
For the past few weeks we have been living in our bedroom, with a microwave oven for company, although I have only used it twice: most of our meals have comprised cheap sandwiches from M&S! We have gone out to eat for about 5 nights in total, which isn’t too bad.
Needless to say, I am hugely hanging out to have the project completed so that I can begin cooking proper meals again!
No matter what challenges come my way this summer during our home renovations, I am totally grateful we have a fully functioning kitchen. I have some food allergies and while I can withstand eating out here and there, regularly doing so really messes with my sense of well-being. Good luck with your food prep and the remodel – if you have a slow-cooker you should be able to make some nice, high-protein meals…
Best of luck with the building chaos, Litlove! Hope it all goes well and that you get your kitchen back in order soon.
Believe it or not, when my kitchen was renovated, and I was going stir-crazy not being able to cook (it was one of those things I never realized how much I needed until I couldn’t do it), I had some lovely, lovely friends who were perfectly willing to “loan” me their kitchens where I got to cook to my heart’s content, and they got to eat without having to bother. Perhaps you can find the same?
Doctordi – yes, he was a brave man to take on that job! And I know it will be lovely when it’s finished, and I am trying not to look to 2010 for that happy moment!
Lilian – oh yes indeed, that is almost exactly our situation (apart from the microwave advantage). It is grim, isn’t it? But hopefully good stories afterwards. Thank you for the solidarity, which is much appreciated.
Charlotte – when the madness dies down, let’s definitely swap recipes. I have several that I think you would like – punchy with the vitamins, low on the free radicals and the carbs. I didn’t realise you weren’t eating sugar or yeast either! It’s relatively easy to cut them out, compared to some restricted diets.
Verbivore – I am trying to keep the new kitchen in mind. All these months of learning how to live in the moment, and then you end up with a series of house chaos moments that it requires a new skill to transcend! 🙂
Bookboxed – most definitely the pits! Thank you for your kind words. I am not quite managing to find grace under pressure yet, but I will probably give up grumbling in a day or two! The anecdotes had better be worth it…
Stefanie -lol! I do so envy women with partners who cook. It’s not that I don’t like cooking, in fact I generally enjoy it very much. But to have the option of not being the person coming up with the ideas for what to have every night is a fine and relaxing position to inhabit! 🙂
Emily – I can promise you that with three children under five you would not want the chaos that comes with getting the new kitchen. But still, I am hoping it will be nice when it is done. If nothing else, it will be nice when the noise and mess stop.
Danielle – I’ve never done much barbecue cooking, because I just tend to use the oven and my husband, into whose hands barbecueing traditionally falls, has no interest in cooking at all if he can avoid it! I am an obsessive with food hygiene and am terrified I’ll kill people with uncooked meat, so if I ever did cook outside, it was just to give it a nice charcoaled finish! 🙂 But if ever there was a time for us to branch out, this is it…
Kimbofo – oh you are a sister in suffering indeed. If only I could eat bread, then the easy sandwich route would be a way to go! I feel for you, really I do, and we can at least both say to each other it will be nice when the building work stops. In the same way it’s nice to stop hitting your head against a brick wall.. 🙂
Courtney – you are lucky indeed to have your kitchen at all times! I am missing mine badly already. But I must have a hunt around the internet for some good slow-cooking recipes. I can imagine having a go at those!
iliana – thank you for the kind wishes! I need good karma at the moment for the project, so they are gratefully received!
Emily – now that to my mind shows what a lovely, generous, adaptable and sociable person you are. Me, I need to be quiet in the evenings and I couldn’t bear to not have ‘my’ vegetable peeler, and ‘my’ special measuring jug, etc, etc. If only I had your flexibility, I’m sure life would be much easier!
Oh, I’m sorry about losing your kitchen for a while! Home renovations are surely one of the more miserable things to have to do — worth it in the end, but no fun getting through it! I’m about to read your latest post to see how things are going …
Wishing you some creativity amidst the chaos! Looking forward to hearing all about it too.