Welcome to my kitchen!

This is my kitchen.  Isn't it beautiful?  

It will be.  Soon.  Very soon.  

It bloody better be.  

I've spent a good part of the last year studying at the Google university of kitchen design.  Kitchen triangles?  Got them down.  The relative merits of one bowl over two bowl kitchen sinks?  I could write a dissertation on that.  The pros and cons of every conceivable countertop material? Bevelled or non-bevelled splash-back tiles?  Which shade of white for my kitchen units?  Fluorescent versus LED versus halogen lights?  Electric or gas appliances? 

The decisions that need to be made go on and on and on.  

The money that is being spent is dizzying.

My kitchen (and if the truth be told, the rest of the house too) has broken me.  

And when I'm broke, I bake my own bread.  

I don't know why, but when I bake my own bread I feel like everything is under control.  Just think of the money I could save baking my own bread and making my own jam.  A decent loaf of bread in Rio de Janeiro (which is hard to come by) costs over R$5, and jam R$15 at least.  Thats a few hundred Reais in just a few months if you eat as much of the stuff as we do.  A few hundred Reais spent on flour, water, fruit and sugar that could otherwise be spent on...a quarter of a kitchen tap?

OK, so making my own daily bread isn't going to get us out of the money squeeze while we renovate our new house, but it will make me feel better.  

Another thing contributing to my new found kitchen enthusiasm is that I have lately 'inherited' a whole new collection of interesting cookery books.  Those of you that know me from my old blog might remember the post about the crazy neighbour.  Shortly after that post, she was driven off in an ambulance in restraints, presumably to the loony-bin.  Well it turns out she was a hoarder...of cookery books of all unlikely things.  Every day she would go to bookstore Saraiva and buy a handful of foodie books.  Once home she never opened them, just added them to a growing pile. 

Last week a couple of guys were clearing the place out.  Literally thousands upon thousands of cookery books, many of which in English, were on our landing awaiting removal.  I was told to help myself, so I did.  Quite liberally in fact.   Possibly too liberally.  (note to friends and family - no cookery books for christmas please.  For at least ten years.)

I thought that it would be fun to share with you the evolution of my new kitchen,  the experience of cooking at home with Brazil's wonderful and varied ingredients and the exploration of my new cook's library.  

As I write, the first of many doughs is rising.  A fifty fifty whole wheat that I'm not too confident about.  Got to start somewhere.  Here we go...