For a start

A tight budget when the original Little House of Concrete went up meant there were certain things you'd take for granted in the average home that had to fall by the wayside, and over the past fourteen years we'd managed to catch up with most of them, with one substantial exception. We needed an oven.

For years we'd managed to get around not having an actual in-built roasting and baking device, first by avoiding those activities altogether, then by sitting a small combination grill and oven on the benchtop, but, eventually something had to be donebecause, for a start, if we ever look like wanting to sell prospective buyers are probably going to look at the kitchen, and the first thing they'd have noted would be the absence of an actual oven.

There isn't a dishwasher or a decent sized pantry either, but those matters were more or less an addendum to the oven question, and fitting an oven into an existing kitchen where there isn't a provision for one is likely to be a rather tricky exercise, so it was always going to be a matter of a whole new kitchen..

Now, having run considerably over the initial budgetary estimates in the process the LHoc Kitchen boasts all three, along with substantially enhanced work and storage space.

You can't see the oven and pantry in the accompanying photo but rest assured they're there.

The refurbished kitchen has brought with it a renewed interest in culinary matters in these parts, and with the impending close of MobileMe the content from the original LHoc wesite needs to be relocated, so it made sense (at least it did to me) to kill two birds with the single metaphoric projectile and port the old content over here to join the musings on more recent adventures in the culinary arts.

Much of the same content will be found in the intermittent posts to my food blog, of course, but the plan, at least at the moment is to use the two as a sort of condensed version of the recipe library that's gradually been built up over the years.