VeganMoFo Day 16: Welcome to the Wiko Kitchen

We’re halfway through VeganMoFo! How did that happen? I’m taking a bit of a break from my theme just for today (sorry, dress lovers!) not only to avoid the dreaded MoFo burnout, but also because we’re out of town at the moment! We left Canberra this afternoon and are currently in Adelaide, where we’ll be for the next few days for Chadwiko’s sister’s wedding. I’ve got a couple of my usual posts lined up to go while we’re away, but I also thought that I would break things up with a couple of different posts.

Last week, Kittee had the great idea to introduce kitchen tours to VeganMoFo. We rent our house so we can’t do too much to the place- but trust me, if I had a choice, it would look a lot more like hers! Nevertheless, I am fond of our kitchen. We moved house a couple of months ago and the kitchen (okay, the dishwasher mainly) was a huge part of why we took this house over another one we were offered. While it’s not as exciting as others’ kitchens, I do love the opportunity to look inside other people’s houses so I’m happy to share my happy place/kitchen with all of you.

So this is our kitchen, looking over the main counter from the dining area. It’s all very white, and while I would usually prefer colour, this is a huge improvement on the battered pastel pink at our previous house.

The major downside to this kitchen is the electric stove. These things are a pet hate of mine, but I’m slowly getting used to it after having a gas stove for so long. You’ll have to wait until later to see what was bubbling away in that pot!

My knives are one of my favourite things in my house, let alone the kitchen. My parents bought us these for Christmas just before we moved to Canberra. They’re professional chef-grade knives and they’re worth every cent (I would still say this if I had actually paid for them!). They’re due to be sharpened and the biggest one has to be repaired (Chadwiko chipped the blade trying to open a coconut with it), but they’re still amazing and make cooking so much more enjoyable.

I used to have a terrible habit of forgetting how much flour I had, and buying a new bag every time I needed to bake or cook with it. I ended up with bags and bags of miscellaneous flour taking up an entire shelf in my pantry. So I bought these jars and filled them with my most-used flours (and cashews- I had the same problem with those), so now I can always see when I’m running low on something. It’s saved a fortune, and my pantry is much neater!

Here’s a glimpse of my oven (it’s electric and fairly new and I love it, even if it does run about fifty degrees hot- thank goodness for oven thermometers!) and the microwave area above it. Our microwave broke months and months ago, and at the time we couldn’t afford a new one so we held off on buying a replacement. By the time we could afford it, we realised that we hadn’t actually missed having one at all. So now I use the microwave hole to store bread and hot beverage-making implements. I dream of having a proper espresso machine here, but that will have to wait.

I love our huge pantry. The shelves are super deep, so it’s a lot fuller than it looks. Excuse the mess at the bottom!

… Okay, and the mess inside. It’s fairly orderly chaos- I know where everything is! But I would still love a properly organised system for my herbs and spices. They’re currently in bags and boxes and tins taking up three shoeboxes, plus the space around them for larger tubs of spices. I really need to take stock and avoid buying things that I already have- I’m pretty sure there are four opened bags of coriander seeds in there!

Out hot sauces get their own little rack so we can always find the one we need (not pictured: the four other bottles of Frank’s on another shelf. It’s hard to find here, so we always stock up when we come across some!).

Facing the other way (away from the pantry) is the sink, our beloved dishwasher and the windows. Our house is set pretty high so we get a ton of natural light but no one can see into our house from the street. It’s a pretty good deal. Also pictured here is my second favourite kitchen item, my Scanpan frying pan. My mum is a total Scanpan devotee, and I always loved cooking with her pots and pans when I had the chance, so I saved up some money and bought myself this pan. It’s the perfect size, super heavy and the non-stick coating is such great quality that I barely have to use any oil when I cook in it (unlike my old pan). I use it nearly every day, so I consider it money well spent.

I found these windmill salt and pepper shakers at a market a couple of years ago, and Mum got me the others. They’re super cute and I need to collect some friends for them!

Above the toaster is this portrait of one of our favourite condiments. We just need a Frank’s one to match!

This is our boring, grown-up fridge. We only bought it last year- before then, we had a genuine 1950s blue and yellow Kelvinator. It was adorable, but it didn’t really keep things that cold and it was a total pain to have to defrost the freezer with a hammer and a hairdryer on a monthly basis. When we bought this, a frost-free freezer seemed like the most exciting thing in the world. We still love the Kelvinator (and it was the first thing we ever bought together), so it still sits in our garage as a beer fridge.

Most important here is the Skittles dispenser to the right of the fridge, in our dining area. It never stays full for long!

If all the cashews and weird flours weren’t indicative enough of a vegan kitchen, the miscellaneous things stuck to the fridge probably give it away. A Herbivore sticker, Animals Australia Unleashed stickers, a Babycakes NYC menu and PPK-er Emmeline’s awesome doodle request zine (which just arrived today!).

Since our dining room is attached to the kitchen, I thought I should show you through there too. In addition to eating here when we have company or we want to be fancy, this is where most of my blogging and other internet-related activities happen.

It’s also where I keep my cookbooks! They sat along the breakfast bar in our old kitchen, but the collection got so big that they kind of took up the whole thing, so we needed a new solution for the new place. All the extra space now means that I don’t feel bad when I inevitably get too excited about a new book and buy a copy.

The print above the bookshelf is by my favourite artist, John Baizley. This print is just here as a placeholder for now- I have another one of his that I bought recently which I want to put up there, but it’s much (much!) bigger and needs to be custom framed. That doesn’t come cheap, so it’s going to have to wait a little while. This one will be moved into the bedroom once that happens, but it’s doing just fine here for now!

Last but certainly not least, much like in Amey’s kitchen, there’s always at least one dog underfoot in here. These guys are Hank Scorpio and Pants, our much-loved rescue dogs. The kitchen is the most exciting room in the house when either Chadwiko or I are in there. When I’m there, it’s because I’m frequently messy (though I prefer ‘enthusiastic’) and forever dropping bits and pieces, whereas Chadwiko’s presence is appreciated because he can’t say no to these smiling faces, and it’s just a matter of minutes before he’s spoiling them with a treat or two. I’ve tripped over a dog in the kitchen more than once, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.

That’s it from us! I hope you enjoyed visiting our kitchen- I’d love to see yours some time!

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Comments: 11

  1. moonsword October 26, 2012 at 9:06 am Reply

    How fun! I love your supersunny kitchen! I have espresso machine dreams too. :)
    John Baizley is spinningly brilliant…I hope you post a pic of your new piece when you hang it up. Cheers!

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  2. It’s a kitchen tour! | Cadry's Kitchen October 26, 2012 at 7:31 am Reply

    [...] excuse the dimly lit photos!  (Definitely check out the awesome kitchens of Kittee, Amey, Angel, Erin, & Fanny!)  I’ve so enjoyed peeking into other people’s spaces and seeing where they [...]

  3. lazysmurf October 18, 2012 at 5:08 am Reply

    Your kitchen is so nice and clean, I love it! And the jars look so nice on the counter and the cookbooks look great too. The dogs are the best though! Hank Scorpio and Pants are the best names ever!

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  4. Mandee October 17, 2012 at 7:32 pm Reply

    Love your kitchen, Erin! And Hank and Pants are two of the cutest dogs ever :D

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  5. Geanna October 17, 2012 at 11:59 am Reply

    I love your kitchen – it’s so clean and organized! And your cookbook collection is wonderful; I love that it’s organized by color.

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  6. xvavaveganx October 17, 2012 at 10:20 am Reply

    There are so many things that I love about this post! Your kitchen so so beautiful! I love that you have all of your flours in jars. I have always wanted to keep flours and nuts and things like that in jars. One day :) Your cookbook collection is so impressive, I love that it is color coded too ;) Your pups are gorgeous! Too adorable!

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  7. Abby Bean October 17, 2012 at 4:52 am Reply

    These kitchen posts are so fun. Your jars are fabulous and I’m admiring your hot sauce collection (although do try Secret Aardvark).

    Your pooches are very lucky; I’m too much of a neatnick for my dog’s liking.

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  8. Jojo October 17, 2012 at 4:21 am Reply

    I love your flour / cashew jars and your dogs!

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  9. Maggie Muggins October 17, 2012 at 3:19 am Reply

    I don’t care how voyeuristic it sounds, I love seeing pictures of everyone’s kitchen! I’m tempted to take some photos but I really hate my kitchen, it’s so boring. My favorite thing is that sriracha picture, where do you even get something like that? I also think it’s pretty rad that your cookbooks look like they’ve been sorted by color, I really need to get a shelf like that as mine are currently overflowing from the pantry.

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  10. Kittee-Bee Berns October 17, 2012 at 2:55 am Reply

    Thanks so much for giving us a tour of your kitchen! It’s so cute, tidy and organized! Your dogs are adorable and look a bit like our dog, Vee. Vee almost never comes into the kitchen when i cook, he’s super picky.

    xo
    kittee

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  11. ameyfm October 17, 2012 at 2:49 am Reply

    oooooh! I love this post so much! I love your beautiful kitchen. It looks so spacious. I like your nicely labeled jars for different kinds of flour. Keeping all the different ingredients straight can definitely get messy. Also, your giant pantry is totally amazing! How awesome to find a rental with such a great kitchen. – and OF Course! – I love meeting Hank S & Pants!!!! They are such total cutie pies! I love whiskery dogs! Such big smiles!

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