A morning in my tiny kitchen

This morning I woke up feeling like I wanted to go shopping. Sometimes I get this itch to go and buy something because I think it will magically bring me joy and improve my life.

But since I spent last night reading The Simple Year, where Kerry documents going a whole year without buying anything new (other than groceries), I decided that for today I could find a different way to improve my life.

So I baked and cooked. And I took some photos while I was baking and cooking so you can see how I make it work in my tiny kitchen.

The first thing I did was get my bun dough cranking in the breadmaker, since it takes a couple of hours in there.

In the next photo you can see that I set the breadmaker up on the stovetop, since that's where the only electrical socket is on this side of the kitchen. Also the stovetop is flat so I use it like a bench top when I'm not cooking on it (and even sometimes when I am).

Bun dough in the breadmaker and fresh banana chocolate chip muffins. 

While the bun dough was doing its thing in the breadmaker, I put the oven to use baking banana chocolate chip muffins. Some of these got eaten for morning tea today and I froze some to pull out for lunchbox fillers this week. I freeze them because it means the kids won't find them and eat them early, and it keeps them fresh until I'm ready to use them. Note my silicion muffin liners. I love these and have used them over and over for a couple of years now. #zerowaste

While the muffins were baking, I chopped up pumpkin, onion and apple to make pumpkin soup. It went into the oven after the muffins came out.

Roasting pumpkin, onion and apple for soup. 

Once it was done roasting, the whole lot got whizzed up with homemade chicken stock on the stovetop next to the breadmaker.

Pumpkin soup.

My soup only required half a pumpkin, so I peeled and diced the other half and double bagged it to freeze for another day. I used an empty bread bag for one of the bag layers. #zerowaste 

Bagged pumpkin pieces ready to freeze.

I do a lot of food prep on my dining table. As you can see, that's where I chopped up the pumpkin above, and in the next photo I'm cutting up the bun dough ready to shape buns. 

Slicing dough to make buns.

This might have something to do with that...

Dishes having a party.

My entire bench gets taken up with dishes, since we don't have a dishwasher to tuck things away into.

Once everything finished baking and cooking, I did the dishes, so now my kitchen is back to normal. Of course, while my back was turned, this happened.