Tuesday 24 June 2014

The Kitchen Project moves on a bit......


And this is my temporary kitchen,
looking like a shed,
all in a general muddle although I do try to make order.
Do you see the bowl on the table in the front of the photo?
That is my washing up area.
Do you see the red bowl beside it?
That is my drainer.
The hot water I get from the sink in the bathroom,
which is just beside me.

I have not had a proper sink for six years.
I have probably said this before.
I am not moaning,
Just saying.

Anyways....
here is the 'proper' kitchen,
with the rat-run holes between the walls and the ceiling
now all filled up.
which I am going to start painting,
when I have done other things....


...and here is Lester filling in a mousehole,
the mouse having given away its hidey hole,
when he was starting to work on this area of the kitchen,
which is where the cookers are going.
out of the wall the little mouse jumped,
which the dogs enjoyed,
nothing like a mouse chase to perk the energies up.
The concrete plinth that Lester is sitting on
 is where the Rayburn is going to go.


..... and here is the other cooker,
it is a SMEG,
that is going on the wall behind it.
That came from Italy. 
The Rayburn came from the UK.
Crikey!!! Global cookers!!!!

.

....and this is what Lester managed to do today,
which is to start building the open sided hut in which the cookers are to go:
two short half height walls at either end of the L shape,
and the block brick wall to cover the up and down mountainous landscape
of a wall which once had the old bread oven in it.


The kitchen when we arrived in 2008


...it's coming along!!!

Weeding this morning in the veg plot for Lester,
and while he did that 
 I made seven pots of peach jam,
and eleven pots of apricot jam from the fruit
he brought into the house from the trees he planted
when we first came here.
He felt as proud as anything when he walked in through the door with the harvest.


Lunch was homemade sausage meat and egg pie
( DIY sausage meat from the big girl pig we slaughtered a while back,
the eggs were from our hens, and the butter for the pastry was
from the cream of our cow)
I failed on the veggies for lunch though,
and we had chips!
But I did make DIY baked beans:
( can of cooked haricot beans, rinsed, then put into a pot with a little cold water in the bottom to stop the beans from burning, added a dollop of mustard, and huge squirting of Heinz tomato ketchup, then heated everything up. Tastes the same as a 'proper' tin of Heinz baked beans, but are a fraction of the price that tins of Heinz beans cost here in France).
Meanwhile, into the All American Canner went a frozen leg of male goat,
and that will be for the dogs to eat over the next couple of days.

.....but then the stormy weather did me in,
and I went to bed for the afternoon,
and that is when Lester carried on with the wall in the kitchen.
He is working very hard for us at the moment,
and I feel privileged to have him walking in stride beside me.

Hope you have someone who walks beside you as well,
sometimes irritating you because none of us are perfect,
but most times helping to pick you up when  you stumble.

Hope you are not as zapped as I am if you are currently having day after day of stormy weather!
Vx

6 comments:

rusty duck said...

It really is coming on.. it'll make such a difference this winter when that Rayburn is installed. Toasty tootsies!

Horst in Edmonton said...

Wow, Peaches from the Garden. Hope you feel better soon. Hot weather does me in, that's why I got a Air Conditioner with the furnace about 8 years ago. The kitchen is looking real good. Keep your chin up.

Horst in Edmonton said...

You are so lucky to be in a place that will allow you to grow such wonderful fruit. Hope your kitchen will be finished soon.

Niall & Antoinette said...

Gosh everything is really coming on. That Rayburn will be terrific :-)
Peach jam --yum! Our peche des vignes doesn't ripen until much later so I have to wait.

Marie said...

Wow, you both have done so much since you first moved in. You will have so much space when it is finished. Your kitchen is about the size of my cottage ;-)

Vera said...

Jessica, my toes need to be toasty, I think that they will moan ever so much if I do not manage to keep them warmer than I have in recent winters.

Horst, our peaches were quite small compared to the ones that we can buy in the supermarket here, but at least they made lovely jam!

Niall and Antoinette, you sound like you have your peach trees quite organised! Our trees have never been pruned since they were planted because we feel mean putting the shears onto them, but we will have to be brave and get the job done next spring otherwise the trees will get out of hand and grow too tall!

Marie, the photos make the kitchen look bigger than what it actually is, and anyway, your cottage sounds lovely and cosy. Vx