Lifestyle Choices

I took my first unconscious step towards female emancipation and away from martyrdom when I decided that, instead of teaching the au pair girl to cook for the children, it might be a better investment of time to teach the children to cook for the au pair. After all, I don’t change the children every year. For the first time they always ate what was put before them and they eventually asked to do the shopping, a task which they performed far more frugally than I.

The next step was to find a new job for the au pair, and to invest the money saved on wages in anti-drudge machines. One was the fridge-freezer, the other was the dishwasher, and any working woman with a family could regard these as business investments to offset against her wages in the family budget. The cost of both machines was equivalent to the au pair’s wages for eighteen months, not taking her keep into account. Furthermore, I’ll never have to do the freezer’s homework and the dishwasher is hardly likely to have an affair with my husband.

You need all the help you can get and afford. But even if you can pay for it, manufacturers don’t make it easy to choose, blinding you with marketing science and glittering extras which you won’t need. You can get along fine without a surprising amount of equipment. I always considered a washing machine an essential — until I was without one for six months. I didn’t even notice the loss but simply soaked everything in biological detergent in bath and basin overnight, then rinsed them out the next morning.

However, here’s my biased list of what and what not to buy — what to look for when you do decide to invest in helpful equipment.

Most people, however biased, would like certain basic equipment, such as cooker, dishwasher, refrigerator, vacuum cleaner and washing machine.

Cooker: Choose your cooker with care because you’ll probably be spending over five hundred hours a year at it, cooking a thousand meals per annum.

The basic choice is gas, electricity, or solid fuel, such as an Aga.

All the professional cooks 1 have ever met use gas cookers when possible because the heat of the burners is instantly adjustable. The top of a gas oven is hotter than the bottom, which can be a culinary advantage because you can fill the oven with different foods and cook economically.

The advantages of electricity are the lack of fumes and an even oven temperature. The disadvantages of electricity are clumsily controlled heat, possible danger to children if you can’t see that the burners are switched on and non-performance during power strikes.

A solid fuel cooker is cheap to run, can heat water and provide limited central heating, and is delightfully cosy to have in the kitchen. But they are comparatively large and dirty, are clumsily controlled and have no grill.

Other points to consider are size of grill, size of oven, self-cleaning oven, time-switch, spit, roasting thermometer, number of burners, simmerstat (so that milk or sauces don’t boil over), see-through oven doors with light-up interiors.

Eye-level grills (providing your eye is on that level) often mean red- hot grill pan handles, but you can have a grill (Cannon) fixed apart from your oven. You can also have a gas and/or electric hob separated from your oven (Advanced Domestic Appliances).

Double ovens are a good ideaespecially if you are cooking several meals at once. They also ensure enough warm plates. Remember that if you choose a coloured oven you will be stuck with that colour, even if at a later date you want to change your kitchen colour scheme.

Dishwasher: Once, after a New York party, I saw my hostess, apparently blind drunk, stagger zigzag across her kitchen to a pink washing-up machine, shovel the dishes inside, and kick the door shut without so much as squinting to check whether it was properly loaded. To my surprise everything came out clean and unbroken, since when that pink machine has been my personal yardstick for dishwashers. I prefer it to more expensive machines.

Don’t expect a dishwasher to dispense with your washing up problem, but it will halve the job and also seems to provide a painless, built-in discipline for clearing up immediately. People with dishwashers always seem to have tidy kitchens. Try to buy a dishwasher with a built-in waste disposal unit, because it cuts out possible maintenance trouble. Nevertheless, scrape plates before putting into the dishwasher.

Try using Finish washing powder in the machine. If you are in a hard water area, use whichever water softener is recommended by the manufacturers of your machine and Rinsaid. Buy only dishwasher- proof china and cutlery, even if you haven’t a dishwasher. You never know. Dishwashers may easily ruin wood, bone, horn, hand-painted or delicate china or cut glass. Wash these by hand. Manufacturers say that you shouldn’t put plastics in a dishwasher although I know people who do so with no consequent melted plates.

Refrigerator: People always buy a too small fridge when buying the first time. Allow cubic feet per member of household — minimum. Minimum 4 cubic feet even for a bachelor.

Absorption models are silent but use twice as much electricity as compressor machines, which purr.

Useful things to have in a refrigerator are:

1. Well- organized, back- of- door storage, with enough height for hock bottles.
2. Adjustable shelving.
3. Plenty of room to make ice.
4. A worktop, if you need a small model.
5. Deep-freeze space, if you’re not buying a freezer.

But ignore flimsy ridiculous egg holders. (You shouldn’t keep eggs in the refrigerator anyway or they willcrack when you boil them, and you can’t always make mayonnaise with them unless you take them out half an hour before using them.)

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