No kitchen for 4 months - what to eat?

[Peg]

I am having major work carried out on my house - at the end of which I will have a dream kitchen, but for the duration of which I will just have a kettle, a fridge and a microwave (in the room I'll be sleeping in).
Work starts mid September. For some of the time there will be no hot water or central heating. And no roof.
Some nights I'll be staying elsewhere - but for those nights I'm in my hovel, I need ideas of what to eat that won't drive me mad with boredom, especially on those long cold unheated winter nights when the roof is missing.
Frequent eating out is not an option as I need all my money to pay for the new roof.
Ideas? Low fat ideas requiring minimal washing up especially welcome.

[lgss]

We recently did kitchen renovations, not done yet, but it's usable now. We had fridge and microwave and hot water but no kitchen sink, oven, or stove. We used biodegradable plates made from corn and potato starch (available at Whole Foods Market) part of the time and drank juice straight from the carton (each from our own carton) to minimize dishwashing. We ate lots of hummus, dolmas, Israeli (or Shepherd's) salad, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, bananas, apples, chips and salsa, canned beans, crackers and soup. If the fridge includes a freezer you may want to make some stuff ahead. We froze muffins, cookies, bread, precooked black beans, and precooked garbanzo beans ahead of time. We made freezer fudge.

[sarah galvin]

When I had my kitchen done, I made a lot of freezer food. I made single serving size of a variety of veggies, meats, carbs and then I could pick and choose and have a different combination each meal. I even froze pasta and nuked it and added it to a meat or veg dish. After about 2 months, it was a little boring and I started to eat out.

Oh, I just read that you will have no freezer! Eek! It won't be easy! How about lots of salads? Do you have a crockpot? I think it would be worth it to buy a new small appliance - crockpot, skillet, toaster oven.

[torty]

I have done this twice, but never under your frigid conditions! The clean up aspects have always been the pain in the patootee- grease does not combine with cold water out of the front garden hose very well.... My favorite was the electric skillet. As you are mostly veg, consider soupy preps that can be eaten in stages over the course of the evening. First some tofu and veggies in a flavorful broth, then for a second course toss in some fresh noodles into the broth for a soup finale. Canned beans warmed with cabbage and some bread toasted in the toaster oven can be a filling meal. For smellier preps you may not want to spend the night with perhaps you can find a sheltered spot out of doors where things can burble away with only an occasional foray to the outdoors to give it a stir. Good luck.

[Romanmk]

If at all possible make it a priority to set up a temporary kitchen with a sink somewhere. Limited counter space and no place to wash dishes is not fun. I made due for awhile with frozen braised meat dishes, and a rice cooker.

[Peg]

Thanks for all the tips - yes, this will be winter on the UK so will be chilly (normally it gets coldest in February, but maybe this year it will be December) - the work was scheduled to start in March '08 but there were building regulation problems that held it up.
I think a slow cooker/crockpot is the way to go - buying ready made meals would be very expensive, even for veggie food.
Paper plates are worth considering - that would save a lot of washing up with water from the kettle in the bathroom sink!

[shallots]

Even more important than eating is making it through the night, especially through cold nights. Do you have a good, functions-well electric blanket?

Now about cooking: simple and spices and chutneys to finish. And clean up should be disposable dishes (I'll assume UK has a bunch of eco-friendly.) You don't need to be washing dishes. With the pots, you can boil water, rinse and if you've only a bathroom, well, flush the cooking water down the bog.

[scubadoo97]

Toaster oven, grill, hot plate and microwave will be your best cooking appliances. We were without a kitchen for almost a year. I just couldn't do the frozen food things. Ended up grilling almost every night. Chicken, beef and fish all went on the grill.

[foodwich]

We had our kitchen redone some years ago and I used my crock pot, blender and the george foreman to cook. we had good meals using these. i did buy a hot plate but hated the uneven heating on it so stopped using it very fast. good luck with your renovation.

[powella]

I must direct you to my favorite Chowhound thread of all time: http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/360376
There are some very interesting ideas here and in the followup thread, which is easily found by searching "hotel cooking". People had some great ideas which were also a blast to read. I won't spoil it for you, but I will add that at our Trader Joe's (do you have one nearby?) there are scores of shelf-stable vegetarian entrees that are tasty and quickly microwaveable. I'm sure Trader Joe's hasn't cornered the market on these but that's where I shop most often. They also have lots of cleaned/prepped refrigerated veggies ready to be cooked, which would save a lot of time and mess in your situation. Best of luck!

[yayadave]

OP is in Bristol, UK. I don't think Trader Joe's has paddled that far, yet.

[foodwich]

oops blunder !!

[yayadave]

Minor blunder. What really erks me is when I get really wound up with a reply on a thread and just after I hit "Post my reply" I realize the thread is three years old and half the people are no longer registered. That's a grit your teeth moment.

[foodwich]

thank you. i have composed a wonderful reply to a post and then hit the edit or changed the screen its too frustrating. but i was mortified at the previous 'blunder' didnt realized i was writing the wrong thing.

[chef chicklet]

As was said before me, the hot plate is the best. Add to that a panini press for grilled chicken, steak, hotdogs, and sandwiches. Another item that I'd get is a good thermos to hold hot soups and stews or if you're really adventurous your bernaise sauce! ( Or pasta sauces while you boil the pasta)
Be sure to keep a journal of your recipes and ideas, I'm betting you'll get quite good at this!

[yayadave]

Think about a blender. It will puree your soups and make healthful, refreshing drinks.

[beggsy]

I agree on the hotplate.. you can do almost any cooking you want. That and the toaster oven were my best friends. Beware though, a lot of my great meal ideas were lost when it came time to doing dishes (pots and plans included) in a bathroom sink. Eating out became a much easier choice. Good luck! It will make your new kitchen seem that much better (and you won't want to eat out!).

[rworange]

I had my condo redone and needed to stay at a motel for a while. It was a crappy motel but they took the cats which I had. I got sick of eating out.

The electric skillet sounds good, but you can achieve the same thing with a hot plate. Then you can use your own pots and pans and really cook anything that can be cooked on a stove.

As a side benefit, I fell in love with the hot plate. It is useful when cooking for company and you run out of stove burners. It keeps buffet dishes warm better than a chafing dish. If you get a hot plate I suggest one with a smooth surface rather than coils as they are easier to clean.

Will you have a fridge?

[Sherri]

Peg, please correct me if I've got it wrong, but I think I read "winter" and "UK" and "no roof" in the your post??? You've got to be a saint to undertake a renovation at this time, especially one en pleine aire. Four months of rainy, teeth-chattering chill is more than I can contemplate -- I live in Arizona!

Trying to put myself in your (hopefully) warm, snuggly boots, I would opt for every kind of heart, stick-to-my-ribs strengthening soup & stew that I could conjure. My first two purchases would be a crock pot and electric skillet, followed closely by something to use as a table/counter. Four months of picnic food would get pretty old pretty quickly.

Thick, nourishing "stupes" would be my first choice - things filled with barley, pasta, onions, carrots and the like -- also, creamy bisques, thick chowders and hearty bourrides. The idea of a salad leaves me cold (pardon). I'd make hot toddies with the kettle and stay snugged around warm Glogg for the whole renovation.

[seattledebs]

Maybe it's a good opportunity to experiment with fermented foods? I've been having fun with that lately. True, you can't make a whole meal out of sauerkraut, but what better time to learn how to make it?

Here's a recipe for sauerkraut, from the book Wild Fermentation:
http://www.wildfermentation.com/resources.php?page=sauerkraut

Debs
http://food.gofrolic.org

[folprivate]

When we redid our kitchen 2 years ago we had no cooktop or oven for several months. We had an electric skillet and a toaster oven to add to the fridge and microwave. With the skillet you can make almost anything you would normally make. We did a lot of chicken, homemade soups & stews, meat and vegetable one dish casseroles. I bought chicken that was ready to cook since I didn't have a prep counter (I used a banquet table). Unfortunately we also had more than our share of frozen foods (shrimp, fish, chicken) we cooked in the convection toaster oven.

[Peg]

The skillet sounds a good idea - I shall have to look out for one. I'd not thought of a counter other than the top of the fridge. (there will be no freezer). I should have mentioned I don't eat meat (but do eat fish - though I don't think the smell of cooked fish in the bedroom would be pleasant).

Maybe I'll just eat salad and smoked salmon for 4 months - it would certainly be a healthy diet!

[callmijane]

Definitely get an electric skillet. Can you grill?