The season of colder weather, possibly snow and ice is here, but what does that mean for your kitchen?
Cooking Winter foods in your kitchen
For cooks, winter is a season of ingenuity, challenge and opportunity. What can seem to many like endless months of dreariness and constant chill is for the chefs amongst us time to be hunkering down with pots and pans and giving some thought to preparing cold weather foods that release their good taste in due time, no rush.
Making an honest loaf of bread or some sort of comfort food like meatloaf or macaroni and cheese or a great chili like the vegetarian version offered here is most satisfying and fills the home with such delicious smells that when the family comes through the door, the immediate reaction is “what smells so good?”
With just a little forethought, one can eat very well in winter. Think soups, stews, slow cooked pot roasts, vegetable casseroles, quiches, fish chowders. Pretty soon as you begin compiling ideas based on readily available ingredients, the list will seem endless and before you know it, you will have cooked your way into spring!
Storage for your Autumn harvest and winter vegetables
Medieval kitchens had their butteries in the coldest corner to keep provisions in good condition, old cottages had pantries with marble shelves and in Victorian and Edwardian times no walled, kitchen garden was complete without a north-facing apple store with slatted shelves where apples and pears could be spaced out and kept at a steady 40F with just the correct humidity.
Today’s kitchens simply don’t have these facilities so you have to make the best of what’s available. The very best place to keep most fresh fruit and veg for a week or so is the salad drawer at the bottom of the fridge.
Apples will keep there for several weeks as long as they are clean, dry and perfectly sound. If you have a spare fridge in the garage or utility room for cold drinks, use the lowest shelves of that as well.
Keeping warm in your kitchen
Think mornings in the winter, perhaps, when the kids are getting ready for school – and we spend a lot of time in the kitchen, too. That’s why we’re going to talk about plinth heaters, and if you haven’t heard of these clever yet simple and discreet heaters, you may well be interested. First, a little more about what they are, and why you might need one.
Under plinth heathers can be fitted retrospectively and do not need to break the bank – here is our favourites – all available in our showroom
One of the main benefits of the plinth heater is that it takes up space that is already wasted; that area under your cupboards is not going to be used by anything else. So, you don’t have a heater taking up space that you need. They are neat, slim and compact typically designed to fit standard cupboard widths – it’s for 500mm width cupboards -and very easy to fit and use.
Protect your kitchen floor from winter mud and grime
A doormat offers a great chance to add some personality to kitchen from the outset, it also, of course, prevents clumps of mud and leaf litter coming into your home while some express style or humour; others offer a feeling of comfort.
A good doormat protects floors, traps mud and dirt, but also dust too – with more of us becoming sensitive to allergens in the home.
We particularly like the ‘mud trapper’ type of mats – there are many options available on line.