In my kitchen :: vintage finds, re-claimed wood shelves and making the first spelt bread

When we first saw the house there was an old wooden bench fitted in the store room. It was covered in powder coated treasures and had a big old rusty vice attached. The wood had once been green, then rust colour and was now washed out grey but you could still see the mottled colours, like age spots on old hands. I loved it and asked the builders not to throw it away. So they carefully removed each of the planks that made up the bench. 

We stored them in the garden, protected from the rain. So many times someone would attempt to throw them away and I'd rescue them again. They couldn't hear the story that those old planks told...Maybe just to me and Ahmad...Although I think that sometimes, even he doubted whether they were worth keeping. 

The bones of the kitchen have been finished for a while and now we're trying to make it feel like ours. I finally persuaded Ahmad to fit some shelves from the re-claimed wood. 

First he gave the planks a good wash. Then he cut a piece to size and sanded all the edges and fitted a dinky little one over the old stainless steel school kitchen table, also rescued...this time by him from being dumped into a rubbish skip at school. We manage to find some old brackets here that had once held a small wash basin. They worked perfectly.

I'm so happy with it. It's the best place to keep mugs and cups and bargain charity shop vintage finds.  Like another 1950's Inger Waage Norweigan piece, this time a gorgeous lidded casserole dish (I made retro coq au vin supper just so I could use it) and my gorgeous Finnish fish pot by Kaj Franck. I've been looking for some of his dishes for ages. It cost me just £3! I've seen them on Etsy for at least £50 but don't think that I could bare to part with it. 

Then Ahmad made a double shelf. This time for high up, over the kitchen window using more old sink brackets and he placed the wooden panels, side by side. It's great for those things we don't use every day. 

At last I made the first bread this year using this recipe it's so simple that you don't even have to knead it. It's very more-ish and so easy to make, you might like to have a go too.

Simple spelt loaves

Ingredients for two small loaves:

• 500g/1lb 2oz organic spelt flour
• A tspn of sea salt
• A tbsp of dried yeast 
• 500ml/17 fluid ounces warm water
• A spoonful of runny honey
• A little olive oil

You may  like to add some seeds like here or as I did this time fresh rosemary and thyme. 

Method:

1. Oil a baking tray
2. Put all the dry ingredients into a large bowl. 
3. Add all the wet ingredients and mix well. Form into a ball and divide it roughly into two.
4. Form each half into a rough loaf shape. Place on the baking tray and cover with a clean, damp tea towel and leave in a warm place until they have doubled in size. This should take about half an hour. Towards the end of this time, pre-heat the oven to 200c/400f/Gas Mark 6.
5. You may like to sprinkle a few more seeds or sprigs of herbs on top if using and brush with a little more olive oil.
6. Place into the oven and bake for about thirty minutes until golden brown and cooked through. 

...That's a bit of what's happening in my kitchen...

I wonder what's going on in yours...

dx

This week in my kitchen 15 ::

Capturing my love of whole foods, combined with the activity of a bustling kitchen.

A weekly collection of photos from the center of my home. 

*     *     *     *     *

There is so little time for cooking or writing, even photographing at the moment. Especially as the knob has jammed in my camera and I'm using A's. But the door to the little portal holding in the batteries of his, came off in my hand so his is broken too, and I've had to Sellotape it in. It isn't very efficient and keeps switching off when I use it. 

Even so, the kitchen is busy and when I have a spare hour I've been making Persian Polows like this one, as they last for one or two days. Or quick chilli prawn spaghetti.  'A' keeps foraging on his way home from school. Bringing home wild greengages or plums that become crumbles and plum sauce, to eat, or freeze. 

The kitchen table was very tidy for one day but now it looks like a volcano has erupted on it, spewing out book and paper and cardboard box magma. So sometimes we are eating store bought sushi or naughty KFC for 'A', who thinks he's in heaven. The kitchen table is spending more time holding the mini library of school exercise or art books that H, whose home from uni is sorting out. But we are having fun as she reads out the essays she wrote ten or more years ago. But very embarrassed at the untidy state of the house as we prepare to move, as this week seems to be, the week for unexpected visitors deciding to drop in and say 'hello' or 'good bye' to us. 

I am joining with heather for her weekly blog hop

...but what about you, are you coming too?
debx

kitchen romances

image via

last two images via

via

Eek, where does it all come from? H would probably call it the detritus, or crumbs of life. Or something similar. Really though, how have we managed to pack so many things into one little house. You bring one tiny box down from the loft, open it up and it's like those cans with pointy nozzles that builders use to fill cavities in walls. All this stuff squeezes out that is ten times bigger than the container that it came in. The temptation is to pack it all back into the same box and put it to one side until we move.

We are gradually peeling our personality from  the house that was our home for the last twenty two years.   We leave at the end of the month. It's only the 2nd of July and that may sound like plenty of time to an experienced mover. But if like me, when you open up a drawer and find the pattern  for the miniature babushka doll overalls that you made for a cheeky little golden haired girl with dimpled cheeks and elbows; or the photograph of the exotic young man with dark, dark hair and big brown eyes who climbed out of a wooden boat nestled in a blue-green sea and headed for the beach with an unrecognisably skinny girl in a white bikini balanced on his shoulders, both wearing shiny new gold bands on the third finger of their left hand; it's hard to move quickly because you just want to slow down and remember those moments that were a life time ago yet only seem like yesterday...

But it's time for a new chapter and it's no wonder that I came down at 2am last night, I am so EXCITED I can't sleep.  My life if full of boxes but when I'm not tripping over them, any spare moment you will find me looking at interior tumbler blogs or the kitchen sections on peoples pinterest pages. ( Yes at 2am.) Mostly my favourite my little things, rhubarb in the garden   or  local milk  for the higgeldy piggeldy kitchens with miss-matched old cupboards and odd pots and pans. Functional, practical, homely ones. I want our new home to be comfortable and livable. 

I re-discovered Sibila Sibella Court. I've  kept an old magazine that I take out every so often and pour over the images of an apartment, that's a bit like a cross between a museum and a stage set, not realising who the owner was.  Then I discovered her books and her website and I can't stop peeping at it all. 

I've begun to collect some things that I don't want to use until we move. Old stoneware jugs that no one seems to value, that you can buy for a few pounds at flea markets. A massive white bowl for making bread. I think it once lived with a jug on  a wash stand in some old house. There's the bargain Georgian full-length stand mirror, and the wooden coal scuttle. Old table and bed linens, and the horn handled carving knife for Sunday lunch.  Even the cherry red, enamel Wee-Willy-Winky lamp, all rusty and chipped to burn candles on winter nights, and the Scandinavian socks from my sister P to hang by the fire on Christmas eve. Mostly projects waiting for a new coat of paint or for me to dye them. It will be a while before they get done. But there's no rush. There may be holes in the roof to repair first or broken floor boards to change. We want to get to know the house first to get the feel of it, and then to start all over again...

...I can't wait...

...do you steal time for a little bit of late night blog reading too? 

debx

This week in my kitchen :: 5

Capturing my love of whole foods combined with the activity of a bustling kitchen.

A weekly collection of photos from the center of my home. 

Joining:: Heather

...why don't you come along for a peep too?