As you may have gathered from the previous blog, we like to eat! We are super lucky that we both love to cook as well, and more recently have been trending more and more towards a plant based diet. I've been veggie since I was about 9 and whilst Pete does still eat meat and fish, it's not part of our every day meals. Lots of people think this must reduce the amount of food you can eat, but we often realise that because we don't follow a traditional meat and two veg kind of meal, we actually end up eating a way more varied diet, filled with food from around the world and lots of herbs and spices and flavour!
It was of course therefore really important to us to have a decent kitchen in the van, we wanted to make sure that we had plenty of space to prepare, store lots of yummy ingredients and be able to keep fresh veggies cold too and perhaps the odd beer ;). We originally had planned to buy a trunk style fridge that would sit under one of the bench seats so we could pull it out and get to the food, but after many hours of deliberation and conversation with Matt at Wandering Wheels, we decided to go with a more conventional shape fridge, that actually has a freezer compartment too. Although that can also be removed to make it entirely a fridge.
Once we made this decision, we had to plan where to put it, along with the water and waste water bottles and the sink! We were also pretty clear from the start that we wanted a three burner hob since we often seem to use most pans in the house at home, we defo needed plenty of cooking space! The first thing to get decided was where the hob was going, we put this on the left hand side of the kitchen nearest the side door, we figured that this would allow much of the steam, smoke and smell to escape out of either the door or the window in the door when we're cooking. Although what is likely to happen in reality is for the wind to just blow in and sweep it all around the whole van - so we'll see how that goes, but there was at least some logic that went into it!
From there it meant that the sink would be located at the other end of the kitchen, as we showed you in a previous blog, we were blessed to find a great vintage jam pan at just the right moment to be able to bring from France to make into our sink. With the talented Matt making a tap out of copper, the two look fab together :) of course with the sink being in place, we knew the two water bottles needed to be nearby, although they're on an electric pump, so we get a decent water flow. They've ended up more or less in the centre of the kitchen, they sit above the diesel fan heater, which will blow lovely warm air onto our feet after chilly morning walks or when we first step out of bed :).
Our original plan also included a big old space in the middle for a doggy bed, our plan is to adopt a pup at some point in the future and we definitely want them along for the ride, so it was important for us to make space for him/her. However, this would have significantly reduce our kitchen storage space and in reality seeing and talking to other van owners with dogs, the reality is that puppies often end up on beds and sofas with you. So we have a lovely big space under the bed and since we don't even know what dog we're going to get yet, we decided to change the design and prioritise the space for the kitchen. This meant we've been able to squeeze in 5 drawers and 2 crates to store food, equipment, utensils and goodies!
Now we have some of the practical stuff dealt with, we can think about the aesthetic! With the sink and tap introducing copper to the van colour scheme, we wanted to continue that into the kitchen splash back. We'd also had the idea of re-using the light strips that had been in the original van behind the splash back giving us a lovely glow for preparing our meals under, we are properly chuffed with how this turned out! It's fab in the day, but comes into it's own at night! Matt & Naomi then took things up another notch, by adding the copper detail to our shelves in the kitchen which we love! We're looking forward to trial cooking in the van in the garden and figuring out all the bits and pieces we need to kit it out. we've defo got our eyes on an omnioven too!
The other feature in the kitchen is a window into the cab and also all of our electric controls, which turn on the fridge, the tap, the splash-back lighting and the spot lights in the main cab. We also have 2 USB points for charging and a 12V socket too. We cannot wait to get our hands on the van and get experimenting and adapting all our favourite foods to cooking in the van and also learning some new ones too! We'd love to know what your fave van recipes are!!!