Self Catering Check List

As we start looking at summer holiday destination listings, I confess I often look at the kitchen photos first. I love exploring new places or revisiting the same ones year after year. While most people like to spend lots of time relaxing all day by a pool or on the beach, I love to visit markets and plan menus. (Or, plan a dinner menu while I sit on the beach.) Strange, I know. But honestly, when you are visiting a lovely French market or stumble into an amazing fish market in Cape Cod, who can resist the urge to scoop up the freshest ingredients to make a dinner you would never be able to replicate at home. This is especially fun when I get to cook with my Food Stylist sister, +Abigail Wyckoff .

To that end, I have realised that I need to bring a bit of home with me on ever self-catering trip. Okay, maybe a bit more than a little bit. I actually have some very elaborate lists that get refined year-on-year, depending on my destination.  (A little tip, buy brightly coloured tools and they won't get mixed in with the items at most rental cottages.) Regardless of where I am, this is my most basic kitchen list:

• Assorted covered knives by Kuhn Rikon (small serated, large kitchen)
• vegetable peeler
• collapsable collander
• toast tongs
• silicon spatula
• Microplane zester (doubles for grating Parmesan cheese)
• teaspoon set
• kitchen scissors
• wine stoppers
• bag clips
• cherry pitter (Seasonal)

Find the shopping list on: Self Catering Kitchen List on Amazon.com

In addition, I can't live without:

• Salt and Pepper grinder
• Select spices: cinnamon, cumin, oregano
• Select baking items: flour, sugar, table salt, packet of yeast, stock cube
• Olive oil spray
• PG Tips Tea
• Tea towel
• Few laundry cubes
• 2-3 Lock and Lock boxes (pack some of the above items in them)
• 5-10 Ziploc bags, assorted sizes (snack to large)
• Foldable shopping bags

You may think this is excessive, but the top items I keep together in a box which comes out of storage when we go on a trip. The other items actually cut down on things I need to purchase at the grocery store when we are away.

This brings me to one of my favourite Christmas presents this year. It is a Joseph Joseph 5-in-1 Utensil. I am most definitely adding it to my kit. If you like to bring a few things along on holiday with you, I suggest you get one of these handy little multi-taskers too.

Joseph Joseph 5-in-1 utensil

What do you slip in your suitcase when you go on a self-catering holiday?

Grammy Wyckoff's Chicken Noodle Soup

Don and Gladys Wyckoff

Grandparents are amazing people. They swoop in for visits bringing a shocking array of treasures in their suitcases. When mine came to visit us in Boston in the 1970s my Grandmother would bring things like spray orange cheese-food and my Grandfather would lovingly carry on the airplane a hybrid orchid he had nurtured in his California greenhouse. These were special times! Spray cheese was certainly not something my mother would ever purchase for us. And an orchid arriving in New England was a rare event, especially when they were named for the grandchildren.

But the most unique gifts by far were the little captured times we shared together making something I'd never seen before. Grammy Wyckoff grew up in Kansas and moved to California as a married woman. Somewhere along that path, she learned to make Chicken Noodle Soup. On one of her rare trips to Boston, she spent a whole day making that soup with me. I couldn't have been more than 10 years old, but do you know, it was probably one of the most important gifts she ever gave me. I still make that soup to this day. Granted, I might not spend the time hand making the egg noodles she carefully rolled out and hung around the kitchen. I do, however, make my own chicken stock from our roast chicken. When any of us come down with a cold or sore throat, it is the thing that makes the world right again.


Now, I might add, my mother comes to my house in London with full suitcases of joy. She tried to bring my children the treasured spray cheese from across the sea, but I had to put my foot down on that one. She muttered something about it being good enough for my grandmother to bring us .... But what my children want more than anything is time making bran and molasses bread or perhaps a batch of homemade cookies or two. 

I've published the Grammy's Chicken Noodle Soup recipe in a separate blog post. Do try it, as I think it is a classic. http://www.lifeatmybench.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/chicken-noodle-soup.html

What is a favourite recipe one of your Grandparents taught you?

A New Year, A new blog

Whenever I get together with my friends, I always tell them about my latest finds or favourite new recipes. This leads to the response, "When are you going to start your BLOG!" Well, it seems today is the day. I hope to share some of my jewellery designs, favourite recipes, great travel tips and even a special object or book. Wish me well and let me know what you think!