As the hours in day seem to vanish, kitchens across the country continue to fill to the brim with a new wave of appliances with bold claims to rid you of the need to actually have any talent to cook at all. I, for one, am definitely in that target demographic!
Do I Really Need A Pasta Maker?!
With seemingly less and less time for the pursuit and art of cooking in our busy lives, manufacturers have seized the opportunity to create a new wave of time saving devices. For many, the kitchen has been the birthplace of some of the most revolutionary of these devices in the last 100 years, the microwave oven, freezer and most importantly for a large proportion of households, the dishwasher. As a generation we have wholeheartedly embraced anything that can help us cheat our way to culinary glory in the eyes of our peers.
The home chef is sadly aspiring to an unobtainable position. Buoyed on with rapturous encouragement of an ever-increasing gang of celebrity chefs, mocking us with their recipes, utilising mere ‘leftovers’ to create restaurant quality delights. Leftovers that were probably carefully sourced, prepared and placed in the fridge by a production team no less. We mere mortals don’t stand a chance by ourselves. The bar has been raised and apparently pasta bake surprise is no longer an acceptable home cooked delight.
Surprisingly Few Beans
Coming from my university experience of cooking, although the term ‘warming up’ would be more appropriate; kitchenware and appliances were predictably abused. The microwave is king, the oven is but a lowly prince, the hob makes do as jester and the local Kebab shop is a veritable magical kingdom. You know your oven is neglected when you have a tab at the local take away and are receiving invitations to the owner’s son’s christening.
Attempts were made to pull together and utilise the appliances and facilities so kindly provided to us by our landlord, unfortunately the only facility our oven provided was making sure that the batteries in our smoke machine weren’t flat. Which, as safety conscious as that made us, did not make up for the fact that a cheeky post night out pizza at 3 am could end frantically wafting smoke out of the window with an ever useful and now multi-purpose take away menu.
Getting Your 5 a Day
Great lengths were undertaken to avoid the rigmarole of cooking, the most common ‘meal’ being ham, eaten as is now customary, from its packet with the fridge ajar in front of you. However, as my education progressed, more adventurous methods were undertaken, underlined by one fateful day when the household discovered hash browns that could be cooked in the toaster.
Like castaways stranded on a desert island, every commodity is used to its full potential, simple items of kitchenware become as multipurpose as a Black and Decker Workmate. Saucepans become bowls, bowls become drinking receptacle and sporks become a valid form of currency, holding their own against the Euro. Conversely, the kitchen table loses its primary function and becomes an inefficient large bottle opener and intricate game of dirty plate Jenga, like some kind of washing up purgatory.
To say I will miss this way of life is probably not the right phrase. I will always look upon it with a slightly undeserved sense of nostalgia. Knowing that, these ways of looking after oneself are not socially acceptable outside of being a university Student. Now I have to be sensible and cook ‘proper’ meals, for myself and even for other people (although not in a ‘Come Dine With Me’ format thankfully), I need all the help I can get. Time to go shopping for some appliances, for one, I need all the help I can get.
Patrick Robson is a freelance journalist and recent graduate. He blogs for Lords of Notting Hill, who offer a great Brabantia touch bin range – perfect for cleaning up messy student apartments!
