September 8, 2023 • 35 mins
Stories of moving house, and moving kitchen.
Episode contributors:
Ruby Mason
Ruby is an editor at SAND, a Berlin-based journal of contemporary writing and art (www.sandjournal.com)
Margaux Vialleron
Margaux writes the newsletter The Onion Papers: https://theonionpapers.substack.com/
Maria Agiomyrgiannaki
Maria is originally from Crete, now living in London. You can find her on instagram.
Stephen Rötzsch Thomas
Stephen writes the newsletter Ideas With Legs: https://ideaswithlegs.substack.com/
Matthew Curtis
Matthew is a co-founder and Editor-in-Chief at Pellicle.
Eli Davies
Like her doctorate, much of Eli's work is focused around women and home building; you can read some of it on Tribune here. She is currently writing a book about single women and cooking.
You can listen to Kitchens if you haven't already! And buy the print zine too.
Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.
Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.
Episode contributors:
Ruby Mason
Ruby is an editor at SAND, a Berlin-based journal of contemporary writing and art (www.sandjournal.com)
Margaux Vialleron
Margaux writes the newsletter The Onion Papers: https://theonionpapers.substack.com/
Maria Agiomyrgiannaki
Maria is originally from Crete, now living in London. You can find her on instagram.
Stephen Rötzsch Thomas
Stephen writes the newsletter Ideas With Legs: https://ideaswithlegs.substack.com/
Matthew Curtis
Matthew is a co-founder and Editor-in-Chief at Pellicle.
Eli Davies
Like her doctorate, much of Eli's work is focused around women and home building; you can read some of it on Tribune here. She is currently writing a book about single women and cooking.
You can listen to Kitchens if you haven't already! And buy the print zine too.
Support Lecker by becoming a paid subscriber on Patreon, Apple Podcasts and now on Substack.
Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Lucy Dearlove (00:07):
This is Lecker.
I'm Lucy Dearlove.
Tea.
Sesame seeds.
On this episode, home building.
(00:28):
Stories of moving house.
And more specifically, moving kitchen.
This is actually reallygood spice storage though.
Loads of space.
This is actually going to be a similarsetup to the way I had them before, which
was kind of like a corner cupboard witha thing that pulled out and you could
just look down and see all the labelsat the top and read the names from that
(00:51):
and now this is a corner cupboard butit's a carousel thing and I think that's
going to be the best way to keep them.
Oh, and there's this other little,like a really sort of slim tool.
Oh.
Okay, so there's this like little sort oflike small unit with like enough space for
(01:13):
spices on top and then like bottles belowBut the previous people haven't emptied
it, So we've got some paprika, someground cinnamon, lots of, lots of, um,
just lots of spices in there.
(01:35):
I just nearly dropped that.
It smells very overwhelminglyof clothes, all these brown
clothes.
And we've got,
dark light soy, rice vinegar, I'veliterally just put the exact same
bottle of rice vinegar in there,olive oil, sesame oil, Shaoxing wine.
I mean I would actually probably usethese, but it's also kind of annoying
(01:59):
because I don't need them because Ialready have all of them, and I don't
know if they just forgot to take them or
couldn't be bothered.
I do understand that.
Because packing is so tedious.
The worst.
By the time it came to the kitchen...
I was exhausted.
We had already spent days sifting throughthe things that we had acquired and
(02:23):
held onto over the past decade, whetherthey were beautiful or useful or not.
It had worn me down and I couldnot face doing the same in
the kitchen, so I left them.
We paid a removals company moremoney and they sent someone
down a day early to efficientlypack our belongings into boxes.
(02:43):
In the kitchen, he packed itall, unsorted and unrefined.
The old kitchen was separate,square, with cabinets arranged in
a U shape under the counter, andtwo levels of open shelves above.
The shelves and the counter were both madeof orange formica, a splash of colour that
cheered me every time I walked in there.
(03:05):
So the kitchen in
Ruby Mason (03:06):
my old flat was quite small.
A lot of Berlin kitchens are kind of longand thin because older buildings were
often built without bathrooms becausethere were shared bathrooms downstairs,
kind of in the backyard, like outhouses.
As things got modernized, they oftenjust sliced, a kind of slice off the
(03:26):
kitchen and made it into the bathroom.
Margaux Vialleron (03:28):
My old kitchen was a morning kitchen.
It was facing east, it had the mostincredible aquamarine color, and I would
just bathe in the light every morning.
I sat on a tiny stool I left allday long there, and just put some
coffee on and started working.
Stephen Rötzsch Thomas (03:48):
100 percent the kitchen that sold me
on, the house that we ended up in.
It was this beautiful space.
They'd extended the back of the house,and so it was a quite long kitchen.
It had room for an island.
The doors were painted all thispastel ish sort of green, and there
was this huge curved granite worktop,as well as the granite on top of the
(04:08):
uh, on top of the kitchen island.
Our landlords, before they...
Moved out and now back in, had livedin the house that we were then in,
and so they decorated it for them.
It wasn't like other houses we'd beenin which were just bland and grey
and beige and, you know, kitchensin the corner of the living room.
Matthew Curtis (04:32):
You know, it's a two up, two down terraced
house in South Manchester, butthe kitchen hadn't been cleaned.
And it was massive.
So, I just spent some time in therecleaning it and getting to know it.
The oven didn't get hot properly.
It basically had two settings,lukewarm or raging hot.
(04:56):
It had a gas hob.
I love to cook, so Isort of worked around it.
And it was fine, but I never reallyfelt particularly inspired to cook
in there because it didn't feellike a space that I wanted to spend
much time in, which is depressing.
Maria Agiomyrgiannaki (05:13):
My old kitchen was in a garden flat
behind Turnpike Lane bus station.
Haringey became home veryquickly and the kitchen was
quite small and kind of L shaped.
It had a big window above the kitchensink overlooking a fence with like
(05:37):
ivy on it and it had a door thatled out to a Big, paved garden.
Margaux Vialleron (05:44):
I think that was the thing I loved the most about this kitchen.
It had a door.
I could close it and itbecame a room of my own.
Ruby Mason (05:51):
Kitchen had a, had like a bright purple, yellow and blue and red
mosaic all over kind of half of the walls.
Kind of loved it, kind of hated it.
Other than that, it was just kindof a space where over the years we
gathered a lot as kind of a changingshared flat with various flatmates.
Stephen Rötzsch Thomas (06:09):
The sink was huge and ceramic and could fit
in anything you needed it to fit.
The oven was a big gas range.
My first time cooking with gas since I'dbeen a student and I really didn't have
any idea just how sticky it could getthe things around it, but I loved it.
(06:29):
I loved cooking in that place.
This was, this was a spacethat had been planned.
Maria Agiomyrgiannaki (06:34):
So before we moved in, we asked the landlord to
put two big shelves up on one wall.
And one shelf ended up having all of myspices and herbs and the other shelf was
all my various um dried beans and pulsesthat I bring back from home from Crete.
Once the lockdowns were over and the ruleseased then we started hosting people in
(06:58):
the garden and the kitchen was always amassive mess but it was a haven really.
Ruby Mason (07:04):
I was there for five years but I used to hang out there before I
moved in because my friends lived there.
Parties.
An improbable number of peoplewould cram into that kitchen.
Lucy Dearlove (07:13):
I think about a birthday party at my old flat.
Everyone in the living room whilemy friend and I are squirreled away
in the kitchen, several drinks in,hysterically pulling pork with forks
that I'd cooked in the instant pot.
My friend was wearing a billowingpure white top and I'll never
know how she didn't end up wearingthe sauce the pork had cooked in.
(07:39):
I had intended to cook something symbolicon our last night in the flat before the
packing started, knowing we wouldn't beable to get in the kitchen after that.
But after spending the afternoon eating apub roast for a family birthday, neither
of us had the energy or the inclinationto figure out what to cook, it.
And so Rory ordered take awayfrom a nearby Jamaican place.
(08:00):
An earlier take away from thesame shop was actually the first
meal we'd eaten in the flat.
I didn't move in then because we hadn'tbeen together long, but Rory invited
me round with his friend and we atejerk lamb and rice and peas sitting
on some Ikea cushions on the floorbecause Rory hadn't bought a sofa yet.
Not that long after that, wespontaneously got engaged.
(08:21):
After a night out in Deptford,there's a lot of life here.
Unfortunately, the takeaway isn't asgood now as it was then, and we had to
eat it in bed because the living roomwas full of boxes, piled to the ceiling.
Maria Agiomyrgiannaki (08:35):
One more thread, I guess, that run through all
these four years of us living therewere, was My, um, my tomato e eggs.
So, and lots and lots of differentvariations of like, type of
scrambled tomato, e eggs, shaka typeeggs, menna type tomato, e eggs.
(08:56):
So lots of different, um, brunchvariations of these eggs, those kind of
tomatoey scrambled eggs was the firstthing that I learned to cook as a, as a
kid, uh, from my maternal grandmother.
The next question you ask is the lastmeal I ate there and I think most
probably it might have been a versionof those eggs, some tomato y eggs,
(09:19):
so you know everything being packed.
Matthew Curtis (09:22):
Everything was in boxes and we ordered a KFC.
Um, and just ate chicken and, anddunked hunks of chicken in delicious
gravy, ate some chips, and had acouple of beers, and that was fine.
It seemed fitting.
It was a meal of, um, necessity.
Margaux Vialleron (09:42):
It was the last day in the kitchen.
I had packed the house and in fact I hadmoved most of the stuff the day before.
So I was just standing with the lastfew boxes and you know cleaning products
and I had gone to the corner shop in themorning to grab one of those Activia pots
to go because I needed something easy andthat required no instances whatsoever.
(10:03):
And I'm famously quite unlucky and theyogurt factory making industrial era
failed me on this one, there was no spoon.
So I just crawled through someglass boxes and found this wooden
tong and just ate this yogurtout of this, standing in there.
And, you know what, looking at itnow, it's easier to mutate, I guess.
(10:29):
with time.
It was the best last meal Icould have ever had there.
It was, it was one ofmy own and I liked that.
Stephen Rötzsch Thomas (10:39):
The last meal I cooked there was apricot glazed
hake and it was from Lurato's cookbookAfricana which came out last year and
has instantly become one of my favoritethings to have nearby and to cook
from almost every other week maybe.
I liked how vivid the flavours wereand it felt like a nice choice, a
(11:00):
really comforting choice to close outthat sort of chapter of cooking with.
Ruby Mason (11:07):
The week of my actual move I had food poisoning from Takeaway
Sushi, which was pretty awful.
So I think the very last meal I ate inthat flat was probably like dry crackers.
Lucy Dearlove (11:19):
When the movers brought the boxes up to our new flat, I
started unpacking almost straight away.
The boxes they'd provided had writingon the side requesting you to cut, not
rip off the tape sealing them, so thatthey could remain strong and be reused.
The kitchen boxes, there were sixor seven of them, were clearly
labelled in black marker pen.
Kitchen cups, etc.
(11:43):
Kitchen cups, cutlery, etc.
Kitchen pots, pans, etc.
Kitchen various.
Kitchen tins, trays, plastics.
And inside everything was individuallyswaddled in sheets of off white recycled
paper, which unfortunately the moverscould not take back and reuse, so we
(12:05):
were left with bags and bags of it.
Everything that was in the boxes hadbeen treated with the same delicacy, from
practically unbreakable stoneware mugs, toprecious fragile stemmed cocktail glasses.
I found this surprisingly touching.
It was around this time that I realisedthe full consequence of not dealing
(12:26):
with the clearing out of the kitchenas thoroughly as the rest of the flat.
I'm in trouble with Rory because Ibrought all the condiments from our old
fridge and the fridge is literally full.
It's, it's full.
We don't even have any food in it.
It's just like two bottles of wine andthen 800 jars of chutney and sauce.
(12:48):
So, I'm gonna have todo something about that.
It's so weird because like, thefridge doesn't seem smaller than our
old fridge and the freezer is likea fridge freezer and the freezer is
actually bigger than our freezer.
It's got an extra drawer, and it'sdefinitely bigger, so I was like,
(13:09):
great, the fridge is gonna beprobably a bit bigger as well, but I
don't know if it's just shallower orsomething, but it definitely feels a
lot more full with those condimentsin than my fridge, my old fridge did.
I wanted to get on with it, have theboxes emptied, tape cut, flattened
out, and collected so that lifecould start, but I wanted to do
(13:30):
the unpacking well, get it right.
And that felt like trying to figureout who my future self would be.
What would she cook here, in thisnew kitchen, in this new town?
Where should the spices go?
Where should she put the toaster?
Eli Davies (13:53):
So what happened was, I started my PhD in the beginning of
2017, essentially, and um, my PhDwas looking at, it was a sort of
literary, it was an interdisciplinaryliterature psychology project.
about women's experienceswith the troubles.
It started off being about that,the big public narratives, so it was
(14:16):
kind of trying to look at hidden...
story.
It's three months into my PhD, my,my 12 year relationship broke up.
Lucy Dearlove (14:26):
Eli Davies had been interested in domestic life and the
home already as part of her doctoralresearch at Ulster University.
But this dramatic life changingabout face in her own circumstances
forever changed how she looked at theenvironments we build around ourselves.
Eli Davies (14:42):
When I left my, the home that me and my partner shared, I walked
away from all of the stuff that we'dbuilt up, that we'd bought over the
years, because I just couldn't face it.
It was quite a painful process,and I just was like, I can't deal
with this, you can take it all.
Apart from a few choice things, likemy Le Creuset, like, cats are old.
(15:04):
I'm like, I'm like, I'm keeping that.
Um, so, when I moved into my firstsort of, My own close break up phone.
I had to buy all of that stuff again I'mrealizing, you know things like a cheese
grater or a potato masher or you know,these things that you don't necessarily
(15:30):
you forget that you're going to need.
So that is obviously a really importantpart of the work of home building,
which is a, which is, is work.
Like it's not talked about enough aswork, but it really takes a lot of
emotional, physical energy to do it aswell as money, as well as resources, as
(15:50):
well as, you know, material resources.
So there's that.
And then.
All of the kind of emotional layers ofcooking and eating, which for me at that
point, like in 20 17, 20 18, were verybound up with my relationship, you know,
(16:12):
being in a relationship with a man,entertaining people, and I loved cooking
and I really enjoyed doing all of that.
But there was this, I was left withthis like icky feeling about like,
oh, what, what was I doing there?
Like, I was performing as well.
Very sort of Wifely role.
Lucy Dearlove (16:31):
Eli sent me an article she wrote about this for the literary
magazine, the Tangerine in 2019.
I occasionally curse theEli of that moving out week.
She writes, I make pasta one night, getout a block of cheese from the fridge
and then remember, I don't have a grater.
We had two in that lastflat, I think ruly.
This work of building a homecan be a happy occasion, but
(16:54):
it can also just be fraught.
For Eli, constructing this space,both physically and metaphorically,
meant mentally extricating herselffrom previous tensions within her
domestic life, allowing her toreconstruct a home on her own terms.
Eli Davies (17:09):
I had this moment, and this was in the last house that I lived in in
Belfast, actually, where I was watching aJamie Oliver 15 minute meals or something.
He was on the Food Network and Iwas just looking for something to...
To watch, and he was gettingsome spices out from this kind of
whole wall of drawers behind him.
And I just, this feeling, thispang, I was like, I want that!
(17:32):
And I was like, oh god,what's happening to me?
Like, I'm craving all of these really sortof bourgeois, like, you know, kitchen,
sort of Jamie Oliver esque, like...
features, but it's like, youdon't beat yourself up about it.
Lucy Dearlove (17:49):
Coming to accept that the kitchen was an important space for her
meant kind of acknowledging and castingaside the baggage of previous homes
and relationships, because it's home.
Eli Davies (18:01):
In the kind of fraught, this fraught process of home building,
the kitchen is, I realise is theplace where I can I can do that.
I know how to do, you know, I know, Ifeel comfortable in that space, the living
room, the bedroom, you know, putting uppictures, all of those things are very,
(18:22):
very, I find very, very daunting tasks,I'll put those things off, you know,
buying nice little cushions for the sofa,all of that, I feel quite comfortable.
Stressful and overwhelming, butwhen it comes to the kitchen,
you know, I've got like seventypes of vinegar in my cupboard.
I've got, you know,
. Lucy Dearlove: Something Eli has also learned is the value of observing
(18:44):
how other people build their ownhomes and their own kitchens.
I
was living with, my parents live in Cardia for six months and I
was back and forth to London quitea bit and there was very things like
friends and friends with friends.
Yeah.
That enabled me to kind ofspend some time in London.
And that was so fascinating, going intodifferent people's kitchens, because
(19:08):
that obviously, again, like, that'swhere I want to get sorted, you know,
I want to work out, like, I'm going tomake my meals and, you know, and what
store cupboard things they've got.
And that was just so interesting, like,looking at how the kitchen was a sort
of window into, like, what people value
(19:29):
and how important cooking is, obviously,but also What kind of cooking they do,
and who they're cooking, and who's beingcooked for, who's doing the cooking.
Yeah.
Um, and also things, like, I hope I'mnot sort of publicly shaming anyone.
Well, I'm not naming, no names, but like,there's this thing that I noticed, and you
(19:51):
know, I feel like there's a lot of shamearound home building as well, like people
feel like I'm not doing it properly.
Agreed, yeah, yeah.
Domesticity is this thing, you know,there's this ideal that's sort of held up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That people feel constantly that they'refailing to live up to and again I think
this isn't really talked about verymuch, you know, and it is it comes in
(20:13):
the minutiae Stuff, you know, and so Idon't know if you have this but you know,
I'm like the cutlery drawer You openthe cutlery drawer, the cutlery drawer
gets filled up with crap like littlecrumbs Dust and food debris and, you
know, and like, I always, oh my god, it'sdisgusting I've been thinking about this.
Everyone has that.
That's so reassuring.
(20:33):
Yeah.
Lucy Dearlove (20:41):
When I moved out of my old flat, we had to hoover it out.
I was like, this is so bad.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've done that, yeah.
But yeah, that's so true, yeah.
Surely
Eli Davies (20:52):
everyone, maybe, you know, maybe most people week, clear
out the cutlery drawer on a weeklybasis and get rid of all that,
all of that, you know, debris.
And, and,
Lucy Dearlove (21:02):
no, they don't.
The thing that I keep coming backto in Eli's work that really strikes
a chord with me, particularly howshe writes around home building,
is this idea of it being work.
And sometimes it feels like work thatwe're not allowed to acknowledge or
talk about as work, but it's alsoat the same time all consuming.
Eli Davies (21:25):
That thing of the work of it, you know, of moving into a new
place, especially when you're startingfrom scratch, which is what I was
doing back in 2018 when I started anew,you know, that relationship broke up.
Um, I think that really isn'tthought about enough, like how
much, sort of, work, money, effort,thought, you know, it all requires.
(21:48):
And once you've done it, like, as SandraLindsay said, I mean, I did actually,
when I was moving out of my last flatin Belfast, I was, I was, you know,
unpacking things and, um, packingthings up, wherever, and getting,
emptying out my kitchen cupboards.
And I, it felt like this, and Iwas using, trying to use up things
from the freezer, use up, you know,things that I didn't, wasn't able to.
(22:10):
And that felt really sad, that's what,I got really emotional about that.
And again, it wasn't, I only lived inthat flat for a year, it wasn't somewhere
that I had, had, you know, had particularrecognition, you know, for me, my life.
But the kitchen was...
Somewhere that was clearly like, you know,important, you know, and I got really
(22:32):
emotional that this has been a reallyimportant space, you know, here and um,
and I'm turning it down and taking itapart and that is, yeah, that felt sad.
Another place I moved out was this reallyshitty place I was telling you about that,
you know, was not I got reallyemotional when I turned the fridge off.
(22:54):
Like I got, I got, I gotreally tearful about it.
I was like, what the hell is going on?
Lucy Dearlove (23:17):
The new kitchen is separate, square, with
cabinets arranged in a U shape.
The new kitchen is slightlybigger than the old kitchen.
Two people could cook in here comfortably.
Without it being a total nightmare.
The new kitchen is all white.
White gloss cabinets.
White surfaces.
White sink.
White draining rack.
(23:40):
There's something that's niceabout it in the sense that it
feels good to have a blank slate.
But I miss the orange kitchen.
We've already stained the white surfaces,the white sink, the white draining rack
with squeezed out tea bags, coffee grindsand drips and tinned tomato spills.
I'd be lying if I said that wehadn't cursed someone else's
(24:01):
choices in designing this kitchen.
Like the old one, there'sno room for a table in here.
The best thing about the newkitchen is that it has a window.
I've become paralysed withpossibility about what herbs
I could grow on the ledge.
And more importantly, The naturallight means I can take photos of
my food that actually look nice.
Stephen Rötzsch Thomas (24:21):
The house we're buying, we know the one we're buying,
we're just waiting for everything towork out and do what it needs to do.
One of the defining features ofthis house is, is the opposite
of what was the defining featurethat drew me into the last house.
Which is to say that this house thatwe are buying does not have a kitchen.
(24:46):
Or it does.
It has the room, it has thekitchen as a room, and it has
an oven, and it has a sink.
But the oven is a billion years old.
The sink is absolutely disgusting.
Everything about that kitchen, themoment we get in there, will have
to be built again from scratch.
Margaux Vialleron (25:04):
We've now found somewhere else to rent, and
there is a kitchen again, whichI feel extremely lucky about, and
privileged to have this again.
The one thing is, there is no door.
There is no door, it's an open kitchen.
It's, it's a wall really.
Matthew Curtis (25:20):
The kitchen hasn't been updated.
It's like, it's a miner's cottage.
The house has a cellar.
It's a very small kitchen and it hasa cooker, a gas cooker and I think
it might be about 30 or 40 years old.
You have to light the oven with alighter by turning the gas on and
sticking your hand in the back.
And, you know what, we've spent all ourmoney, so we have to learn how to use it.
(25:44):
Because, it'll be, you know, afew months or maybe a year or more
before we can afford to replace it.
Because we own it, we've paintedit this dark olive green.
So like the outside is coming inand that at once makes me feel
like I want to spend time in there.
Ruby Mason (26:01):
My new kitchen is, yeah, it's the first time
I've ever had my own kitchen.
I mean, it's still a rented flat.
In, in Germany and in Berlin where Ilive, it's pretty common for rented
flats to not have kitchens in them.
So even as a tenant.
You fit the kitchen and like the cabinetsand everything yourself when you move in,
which might sound a bit strange from, fromlike a UK perspective, but on the flip
(26:25):
side, tenancies are very secure here, so.
You usually sign a lease for likean unlimited amount of time and you
can't, you can't really be evicted Soyou expect to stay kind of for many
years and get your money's worth ofyour things So so my new kitchen is
green, which I love and yeah, I'm stillgetting used to having my own kitchen.
It feels luxurious andextravagant in a strange way.
(26:49):
All the fridge space and cupboard space.
Stephen Rötzsch Thomas (26:51):
The week before we moved out of our house, even though I'm
still waiting, even for the mortgage tobe sort of confirmed, I went to the estate
agent and I asked if they would let meinto the house that we're looking to buy.
And I took a tape measure and Imeasured that kitchen and I have
all of that written down so Ican eventually start planning.
(27:13):
I don't know how I'mgoing to plan a kitchen.
I mean, I know there's goingto be tools online, but.
I'm still in a space where I thinkthe best way to do it is just
to go on The Sims or something.
The kitchen has a terracotta floor thatis old and tatty and needs a lot of
love, but I'm gonna give it that love.
And I'm excited to havea kitchen that is my own.
Maria Agiomyrgiannaki (27:34):
We moved into a flat in a new development in Walthamstow.
So the kitchen is a big space, togetherwith the living room and the dining room.
It does feel a little bit silly,because we moved out of the old flat.
(27:54):
Uh, because we had leak,we had rising damp.
It was just really months on end of anightmare situation with the landlord.
And the kitchen was kind of, wallswere crumbling and everything, so.
cupboards stinking of moulds and just,so this is why this feels, um, stupid
(28:17):
because the new kitchen obviously noneof that mould smell none of any of
that but the old kitchen I do miss it.
It feels like I had arranged it howI wanted it to be with the furniture
and with the shelving and everythingSo And the new kitchen, it feels like
this is it, and I have to adopt it,and I have to make it work, basically.
(28:39):
So, and I can't quitedescribe what I miss.
It's quite visceral, I think.
But I think I miss the kitchenlike it was a person that I
haven't seen in a long time.
And I think there is, it's becauseof the emotional connection.
of how much went, how much time, howmuch connection, how much, I don't know.
(29:03):
The first meal we ate there in the newflat was some souvlaki that we ordered in.
So just after the, uh, the move.
Yeah, just to share some food withthe friends that helped us move.
We ordered some local souvlaki.
Margaux Vialleron (29:20):
The first meal I made there is a big, big pot of
orzo, which is also my favorite,orzo with some grated courgette.
The trick is to have it one yellowand two greens, a bit of parmesan and
some oat cream to make it very smushy,and that's also a great meal to share.
I think this kitchen isgonna be about sharing,
Matthew Curtis (29:39):
was unpacking everything.
I got the frying pan outta thebox and I fried an egg and I got
a loaf of Warburtons and I didn'teven do anything to the bread.
Just a fresh loaf ofvery soft white bread.
The plainest pillows bread.
I fried an egg over easy in olive oil.
And I put that in the sandwich, oilsplashing onto the bread, and then
(30:01):
I got some daddy's ketchup, which isa bit more acidic than most of the
ketchups, I don't know if you've comparedketchups, and I bought it because it
was a pound cheaper than Heinz, and I'mlike, oh yeah, that'll save me a quid.
Anyway, fried egg sandwich.
on plain Warburton's whitebread, toasty, specifically, with
loads of daddy's ketchup on it.
And that was the first thingI cooked in this kitchen
(30:23):
surrounded by our lives in boxes.
And, I don't know, there's something nice.
It was like, it was a breakfast meal.
I think that's a nice start to cookingin a house, like, okay, I've got gas
coming out the hob, I'm gonna fry an egg.
Ruby Mason (30:36):
Yeah, I remember, I remember when I moved in and I was kind of still
doing some DIY on the flat, my partner andI bought rye crackers and, cheddar cheese,
which is relatively hard to find here, butwe found some really nice mature cheddar
cheese, a jar of, um, Spreewald pickles,basically gherkins that are like grown in
(30:56):
the Spreewald, which is close to Berlin, avery iconic German, German thing, and had
a lot of meals of those, like with thosethree components, crackers, cheese and,
and pickles, which is very satisfying.
Stephen Rötzsch Thomas (31:08):
I don't know what I'm going to cook the first.
The first time I get a chance to cookin there, the first time after I've put
in an oven and put in counters and putin cupboards and put all my food and
my billions of pans and stupid things.
Once I've shipped in 150 cookbooks andput them in the bookshelves and next room
(31:30):
over because they will not fit otherwise.
I'm fairly sure, whatever I amcooking, it won't be a cookbook,
it might just be a risotto.
Lucy Dearlove (31:46):
The first meal we ate in the new flat wasn't when we cooked either.
Around 5pm, Friends rang the doorbell.
It was the first time we'd heardit, and came up with bags of KFC.
We didn't have any dining chairs,so we sat on the sofa that we'd
bought off the previous inhabitants.
I hadn't unpacked the plates yet,so we ate drumsticks, wings and
(32:07):
thighs out of Denby cereal bowls.
I'm several weeks into this newkitchen now, and I'm still finding
my way around it, learning the moves.
Even though I'm the one who unpacked,who drew the map of the new territory.
I don't feel settled as such,not yet, but I feel excited.
(32:30):
Lecker is written andproduced by Lucy Dearlove.
Thank you so much to Ruby.
Margot, Stephen, Matt and Mariawho generously contributed their
stories of moving kitchens viavoice notes and audio recordings.
You can find links to all of them inthe show notes and you can also read
(32:52):
their contributions at greater lengthon the Lekker substack this week.
Also a huge thanks to Eli Davies whowas kind enough to speak to me about
her work around home building for thisepisode and whose contributions were just
(33:12):
so thought provoking and interesting.
I'm so excited to read.
more of her work around this subjectin the future, I'll link to some
of her writing in the show notes.
You can also read a longer version ofthat conversation on the Lekker Substack
2 that'll be coming this week as well.
I can't and shouldn't talk aboutkitchens without mentioning the
entire series I did a couple ofyears ago about this very topic.
(33:35):
Kitchens are very much still on my mind.
You can go back and listen tothat via the Lekker website.
Or you can find it in the feed onwhatever podcast platform you listen to.
There's also a print scene that Iedited to go alongside that series
with lots of writing and illustrationand thinking around kitchens.
It's been unavailable to buy for alittle while while I've been moving,
(33:56):
but I've just reactivated the bigcartel, so you can order it there.
Link, as ever, is in the show notes.
A reminder that Leckeris listener supported.
If you're in a position to donateregularly or one off, it is.
Hugely appreciated and helps me covercosts and keep the podcast going.
You can sign up via Substack,Patreon, or Apple Podcasts, and you
(34:18):
get access to some bonus content.
There'll be more subscriber episodesstarting this month, so you can
access them on all of those platforms.
Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.
And thanks so much to you,as always, for listening.
This is Lecker.
I'm Lucy Dearlove.
Tea.
Sesame seeds.
On this episode, home building.
(00:28):
Stories of moving house.
And more specifically, moving kitchen.
This is actually reallygood spice storage though.
Loads of space.
This is actually going to be a similarsetup to the way I had them before, which
was kind of like a corner cupboard witha thing that pulled out and you could
just look down and see all the labelsat the top and read the names from that
(00:51):
and now this is a corner cupboard butit's a carousel thing and I think that's
going to be the best way to keep them.
Oh, and there's this other little,like a really sort of slim tool.
Oh.
Okay, so there's this like little sort oflike small unit with like enough space for
(01:13):
spices on top and then like bottles belowBut the previous people haven't emptied
it, So we've got some paprika, someground cinnamon, lots of, lots of, um,
just lots of spices in there.
(01:35):
I just nearly dropped that.
It smells very overwhelminglyof clothes, all these brown
clothes.
And we've got,
dark light soy, rice vinegar, I'veliterally just put the exact same
bottle of rice vinegar in there,olive oil, sesame oil, Shaoxing wine.
I mean I would actually probably usethese, but it's also kind of annoying
(01:59):
because I don't need them because Ialready have all of them, and I don't
know if they just forgot to take them or
couldn't be bothered.
I do understand that.
Because packing is so tedious.
The worst.
By the time it came to the kitchen...
I was exhausted.
We had already spent days sifting throughthe things that we had acquired and
(02:23):
held onto over the past decade, whetherthey were beautiful or useful or not.
It had worn me down and I couldnot face doing the same in
the kitchen, so I left them.
We paid a removals company moremoney and they sent someone
down a day early to efficientlypack our belongings into boxes.
(02:43):
In the kitchen, he packed itall, unsorted and unrefined.
The old kitchen was separate,square, with cabinets arranged in
a U shape under the counter, andtwo levels of open shelves above.
The shelves and the counter were both madeof orange formica, a splash of colour that
cheered me every time I walked in there.
(03:05):
So the kitchen in
Ruby Mason (03:06):
my old flat was quite small.
A lot of Berlin kitchens are kind of longand thin because older buildings were
often built without bathrooms becausethere were shared bathrooms downstairs,
kind of in the backyard, like outhouses.
As things got modernized, they oftenjust sliced, a kind of slice off the
(03:26):
kitchen and made it into the bathroom.
Margaux Vialleron (03:28):
My old kitchen was a morning kitchen.
It was facing east, it had the mostincredible aquamarine color, and I would
just bathe in the light every morning.
I sat on a tiny stool I left allday long there, and just put some
coffee on and started working.
Stephen Rötzsch Thomas (03:48):
100 percent the kitchen that sold me
on, the house that we ended up in.
It was this beautiful space.
They'd extended the back of the house,and so it was a quite long kitchen.
It had room for an island.
The doors were painted all thispastel ish sort of green, and there
was this huge curved granite worktop,as well as the granite on top of the
(04:08):
uh, on top of the kitchen island.
Our landlords, before they...
Moved out and now back in, had livedin the house that we were then in,
and so they decorated it for them.
It wasn't like other houses we'd beenin which were just bland and grey
and beige and, you know, kitchensin the corner of the living room.
Matthew Curtis (04:32):
You know, it's a two up, two down terraced
house in South Manchester, butthe kitchen hadn't been cleaned.
And it was massive.
So, I just spent some time in therecleaning it and getting to know it.
The oven didn't get hot properly.
It basically had two settings,lukewarm or raging hot.
(04:56):
It had a gas hob.
I love to cook, so Isort of worked around it.
And it was fine, but I never reallyfelt particularly inspired to cook
in there because it didn't feellike a space that I wanted to spend
much time in, which is depressing.
Maria Agiomyrgiannaki (05:13):
My old kitchen was in a garden flat
behind Turnpike Lane bus station.
Haringey became home veryquickly and the kitchen was
quite small and kind of L shaped.
It had a big window above the kitchensink overlooking a fence with like
(05:37):
ivy on it and it had a door thatled out to a Big, paved garden.
Margaux Vialleron (05:44):
I think that was the thing I loved the most about this kitchen.
It had a door.
I could close it and itbecame a room of my own.
Ruby Mason (05:51):
Kitchen had a, had like a bright purple, yellow and blue and red
mosaic all over kind of half of the walls.
Kind of loved it, kind of hated it.
Other than that, it was just kindof a space where over the years we
gathered a lot as kind of a changingshared flat with various flatmates.
Stephen Rötzsch Thomas (06:09):
The sink was huge and ceramic and could fit
in anything you needed it to fit.
The oven was a big gas range.
My first time cooking with gas since I'dbeen a student and I really didn't have
any idea just how sticky it could getthe things around it, but I loved it.
(06:29):
I loved cooking in that place.
This was, this was a spacethat had been planned.
Maria Agiomyrgiannaki (06:34):
So before we moved in, we asked the landlord to
put two big shelves up on one wall.
And one shelf ended up having all of myspices and herbs and the other shelf was
all my various um dried beans and pulsesthat I bring back from home from Crete.
Once the lockdowns were over and the ruleseased then we started hosting people in
(06:58):
the garden and the kitchen was always amassive mess but it was a haven really.
Ruby Mason (07:04):
I was there for five years but I used to hang out there before I
moved in because my friends lived there.
Parties.
An improbable number of peoplewould cram into that kitchen.
Lucy Dearlove (07:13):
I think about a birthday party at my old flat.
Everyone in the living room whilemy friend and I are squirreled away
in the kitchen, several drinks in,hysterically pulling pork with forks
that I'd cooked in the instant pot.
My friend was wearing a billowingpure white top and I'll never
know how she didn't end up wearingthe sauce the pork had cooked in.
(07:39):
I had intended to cook something symbolicon our last night in the flat before the
packing started, knowing we wouldn't beable to get in the kitchen after that.
But after spending the afternoon eating apub roast for a family birthday, neither
of us had the energy or the inclinationto figure out what to cook, it.
And so Rory ordered take awayfrom a nearby Jamaican place.
(08:00):
An earlier take away from thesame shop was actually the first
meal we'd eaten in the flat.
I didn't move in then because we hadn'tbeen together long, but Rory invited
me round with his friend and we atejerk lamb and rice and peas sitting
on some Ikea cushions on the floorbecause Rory hadn't bought a sofa yet.
Not that long after that, wespontaneously got engaged.
(08:21):
After a night out in Deptford,there's a lot of life here.
Unfortunately, the takeaway isn't asgood now as it was then, and we had to
eat it in bed because the living roomwas full of boxes, piled to the ceiling.
Maria Agiomyrgiannaki (08:35):
One more thread, I guess, that run through all
these four years of us living therewere, was My, um, my tomato e eggs.
So, and lots and lots of differentvariations of like, type of
scrambled tomato, e eggs, shaka typeeggs, menna type tomato, e eggs.
(08:56):
So lots of different, um, brunchvariations of these eggs, those kind of
tomatoey scrambled eggs was the firstthing that I learned to cook as a, as a
kid, uh, from my maternal grandmother.
The next question you ask is the lastmeal I ate there and I think most
probably it might have been a versionof those eggs, some tomato y eggs,
(09:19):
so you know everything being packed.
Matthew Curtis (09:22):
Everything was in boxes and we ordered a KFC.
Um, and just ate chicken and, anddunked hunks of chicken in delicious
gravy, ate some chips, and had acouple of beers, and that was fine.
It seemed fitting.
It was a meal of, um, necessity.
Margaux Vialleron (09:42):
It was the last day in the kitchen.
I had packed the house and in fact I hadmoved most of the stuff the day before.
So I was just standing with the lastfew boxes and you know cleaning products
and I had gone to the corner shop in themorning to grab one of those Activia pots
to go because I needed something easy andthat required no instances whatsoever.
(10:03):
And I'm famously quite unlucky and theyogurt factory making industrial era
failed me on this one, there was no spoon.
So I just crawled through someglass boxes and found this wooden
tong and just ate this yogurtout of this, standing in there.
And, you know what, looking at itnow, it's easier to mutate, I guess.
(10:29):
with time.
It was the best last meal Icould have ever had there.
It was, it was one ofmy own and I liked that.
Stephen Rötzsch Thomas (10:39):
The last meal I cooked there was apricot glazed
hake and it was from Lurato's cookbookAfricana which came out last year and
has instantly become one of my favoritethings to have nearby and to cook
from almost every other week maybe.
I liked how vivid the flavours wereand it felt like a nice choice, a
(11:00):
really comforting choice to close outthat sort of chapter of cooking with.
Ruby Mason (11:07):
The week of my actual move I had food poisoning from Takeaway
Sushi, which was pretty awful.
So I think the very last meal I ate inthat flat was probably like dry crackers.
Lucy Dearlove (11:19):
When the movers brought the boxes up to our new flat, I
started unpacking almost straight away.
The boxes they'd provided had writingon the side requesting you to cut, not
rip off the tape sealing them, so thatthey could remain strong and be reused.
The kitchen boxes, there were sixor seven of them, were clearly
labelled in black marker pen.
Kitchen cups, etc.
(11:43):
Kitchen cups, cutlery, etc.
Kitchen pots, pans, etc.
Kitchen various.
Kitchen tins, trays, plastics.
And inside everything was individuallyswaddled in sheets of off white recycled
paper, which unfortunately the moverscould not take back and reuse, so we
(12:05):
were left with bags and bags of it.
Everything that was in the boxes hadbeen treated with the same delicacy, from
practically unbreakable stoneware mugs, toprecious fragile stemmed cocktail glasses.
I found this surprisingly touching.
It was around this time that I realisedthe full consequence of not dealing
(12:26):
with the clearing out of the kitchenas thoroughly as the rest of the flat.
I'm in trouble with Rory because Ibrought all the condiments from our old
fridge and the fridge is literally full.
It's, it's full.
We don't even have any food in it.
It's just like two bottles of wine andthen 800 jars of chutney and sauce.
(12:48):
So, I'm gonna have todo something about that.
It's so weird because like, thefridge doesn't seem smaller than our
old fridge and the freezer is likea fridge freezer and the freezer is
actually bigger than our freezer.
It's got an extra drawer, and it'sdefinitely bigger, so I was like,
(13:09):
great, the fridge is gonna beprobably a bit bigger as well, but I
don't know if it's just shallower orsomething, but it definitely feels a
lot more full with those condimentsin than my fridge, my old fridge did.
I wanted to get on with it, have theboxes emptied, tape cut, flattened
out, and collected so that lifecould start, but I wanted to do
(13:30):
the unpacking well, get it right.
And that felt like trying to figureout who my future self would be.
What would she cook here, in thisnew kitchen, in this new town?
Where should the spices go?
Where should she put the toaster?
Eli Davies (13:53):
So what happened was, I started my PhD in the beginning of
2017, essentially, and um, my PhDwas looking at, it was a sort of
literary, it was an interdisciplinaryliterature psychology project.
about women's experienceswith the troubles.
It started off being about that,the big public narratives, so it was
(14:16):
kind of trying to look at hidden...
story.
It's three months into my PhD, my,my 12 year relationship broke up.
Lucy Dearlove (14:26):
Eli Davies had been interested in domestic life and the
home already as part of her doctoralresearch at Ulster University.
But this dramatic life changingabout face in her own circumstances
forever changed how she looked at theenvironments we build around ourselves.
Eli Davies (14:42):
When I left my, the home that me and my partner shared, I walked
away from all of the stuff that we'dbuilt up, that we'd bought over the
years, because I just couldn't face it.
It was quite a painful process,and I just was like, I can't deal
with this, you can take it all.
Apart from a few choice things, likemy Le Creuset, like, cats are old.
(15:04):
I'm like, I'm like, I'm keeping that.
Um, so, when I moved into my firstsort of, My own close break up phone.
I had to buy all of that stuff again I'mrealizing, you know things like a cheese
grater or a potato masher or you know,these things that you don't necessarily
(15:30):
you forget that you're going to need.
So that is obviously a really importantpart of the work of home building,
which is a, which is, is work.
Like it's not talked about enough aswork, but it really takes a lot of
emotional, physical energy to do it aswell as money, as well as resources, as
(15:50):
well as, you know, material resources.
So there's that.
And then.
All of the kind of emotional layers ofcooking and eating, which for me at that
point, like in 20 17, 20 18, were verybound up with my relationship, you know,
(16:12):
being in a relationship with a man,entertaining people, and I loved cooking
and I really enjoyed doing all of that.
But there was this, I was left withthis like icky feeling about like,
oh, what, what was I doing there?
Like, I was performing as well.
Very sort of Wifely role.
Lucy Dearlove (16:31):
Eli sent me an article she wrote about this for the literary
magazine, the Tangerine in 2019.
I occasionally curse theEli of that moving out week.
She writes, I make pasta one night, getout a block of cheese from the fridge
and then remember, I don't have a grater.
We had two in that lastflat, I think ruly.
This work of building a homecan be a happy occasion, but
(16:54):
it can also just be fraught.
For Eli, constructing this space,both physically and metaphorically,
meant mentally extricating herselffrom previous tensions within her
domestic life, allowing her toreconstruct a home on her own terms.
Eli Davies (17:09):
I had this moment, and this was in the last house that I lived in in
Belfast, actually, where I was watching aJamie Oliver 15 minute meals or something.
He was on the Food Network and Iwas just looking for something to...
To watch, and he was gettingsome spices out from this kind of
whole wall of drawers behind him.
And I just, this feeling, thispang, I was like, I want that!
(17:32):
And I was like, oh god,what's happening to me?
Like, I'm craving all of these really sortof bourgeois, like, you know, kitchen,
sort of Jamie Oliver esque, like...
features, but it's like, youdon't beat yourself up about it.
Lucy Dearlove (17:49):
Coming to accept that the kitchen was an important space for her
meant kind of acknowledging and castingaside the baggage of previous homes
and relationships, because it's home.
Eli Davies (18:01):
In the kind of fraught, this fraught process of home building,
the kitchen is, I realise is theplace where I can I can do that.
I know how to do, you know, I know, Ifeel comfortable in that space, the living
room, the bedroom, you know, putting uppictures, all of those things are very,
(18:22):
very, I find very, very daunting tasks,I'll put those things off, you know,
buying nice little cushions for the sofa,all of that, I feel quite comfortable.
Stressful and overwhelming, butwhen it comes to the kitchen,
you know, I've got like seventypes of vinegar in my cupboard.
I've got, you know,
. Lucy Dearlove: Something Eli has also learned is the value of observing
(18:44):
how other people build their ownhomes and their own kitchens.
I
was living with, my parents live in Cardia for six months and I
was back and forth to London quitea bit and there was very things like
friends and friends with friends.
Yeah.
That enabled me to kind ofspend some time in London.
And that was so fascinating, going intodifferent people's kitchens, because
(19:08):
that obviously, again, like, that'swhere I want to get sorted, you know,
I want to work out, like, I'm going tomake my meals and, you know, and what
store cupboard things they've got.
And that was just so interesting, like,looking at how the kitchen was a sort
of window into, like, what people value
(19:29):
and how important cooking is, obviously,but also What kind of cooking they do,
and who they're cooking, and who's beingcooked for, who's doing the cooking.
Yeah.
Um, and also things, like, I hope I'mnot sort of publicly shaming anyone.
Well, I'm not naming, no names, but like,there's this thing that I noticed, and you
(19:51):
know, I feel like there's a lot of shamearound home building as well, like people
feel like I'm not doing it properly.
Agreed, yeah, yeah.
Domesticity is this thing, you know,there's this ideal that's sort of held up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That people feel constantly that they'refailing to live up to and again I think
this isn't really talked about verymuch, you know, and it is it comes in
(20:13):
the minutiae Stuff, you know, and so Idon't know if you have this but you know,
I'm like the cutlery drawer You openthe cutlery drawer, the cutlery drawer
gets filled up with crap like littlecrumbs Dust and food debris and, you
know, and like, I always, oh my god, it'sdisgusting I've been thinking about this.
Everyone has that.
That's so reassuring.
(20:33):
Yeah.
Lucy Dearlove (20:41):
When I moved out of my old flat, we had to hoover it out.
I was like, this is so bad.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I've done that, yeah.
But yeah, that's so true, yeah.
Surely
Eli Davies (20:52):
everyone, maybe, you know, maybe most people week, clear
out the cutlery drawer on a weeklybasis and get rid of all that,
all of that, you know, debris.
And, and,
Lucy Dearlove (21:02):
no, they don't.
The thing that I keep coming backto in Eli's work that really strikes
a chord with me, particularly howshe writes around home building,
is this idea of it being work.
And sometimes it feels like work thatwe're not allowed to acknowledge or
talk about as work, but it's alsoat the same time all consuming.
Eli Davies (21:25):
That thing of the work of it, you know, of moving into a new
place, especially when you're startingfrom scratch, which is what I was
doing back in 2018 when I started anew,you know, that relationship broke up.
Um, I think that really isn'tthought about enough, like how
much, sort of, work, money, effort,thought, you know, it all requires.
(21:48):
And once you've done it, like, as SandraLindsay said, I mean, I did actually,
when I was moving out of my last flatin Belfast, I was, I was, you know,
unpacking things and, um, packingthings up, wherever, and getting,
emptying out my kitchen cupboards.
And I, it felt like this, and Iwas using, trying to use up things
from the freezer, use up, you know,things that I didn't, wasn't able to.
(22:10):
And that felt really sad, that's what,I got really emotional about that.
And again, it wasn't, I only lived inthat flat for a year, it wasn't somewhere
that I had, had, you know, had particularrecognition, you know, for me, my life.
But the kitchen was...
Somewhere that was clearly like, you know,important, you know, and I got really
(22:32):
emotional that this has been a reallyimportant space, you know, here and um,
and I'm turning it down and taking itapart and that is, yeah, that felt sad.
Another place I moved out was this reallyshitty place I was telling you about that,
you know, was not I got reallyemotional when I turned the fridge off.
(22:54):
Like I got, I got, I gotreally tearful about it.
I was like, what the hell is going on?
Lucy Dearlove (23:17):
The new kitchen is separate, square, with
cabinets arranged in a U shape.
The new kitchen is slightlybigger than the old kitchen.
Two people could cook in here comfortably.
Without it being a total nightmare.
The new kitchen is all white.
White gloss cabinets.
White surfaces.
White sink.
White draining rack.
(23:40):
There's something that's niceabout it in the sense that it
feels good to have a blank slate.
But I miss the orange kitchen.
We've already stained the white surfaces,the white sink, the white draining rack
with squeezed out tea bags, coffee grindsand drips and tinned tomato spills.
I'd be lying if I said that wehadn't cursed someone else's
(24:01):
choices in designing this kitchen.
Like the old one, there'sno room for a table in here.
The best thing about the newkitchen is that it has a window.
I've become paralysed withpossibility about what herbs
I could grow on the ledge.
And more importantly, The naturallight means I can take photos of
my food that actually look nice.
Stephen Rötzsch Thomas (24:21):
The house we're buying, we know the one we're buying,
we're just waiting for everything towork out and do what it needs to do.
One of the defining features ofthis house is, is the opposite
of what was the defining featurethat drew me into the last house.
Which is to say that this house thatwe are buying does not have a kitchen.
(24:46):
Or it does.
It has the room, it has thekitchen as a room, and it has
an oven, and it has a sink.
But the oven is a billion years old.
The sink is absolutely disgusting.
Everything about that kitchen, themoment we get in there, will have
to be built again from scratch.
Margaux Vialleron (25:04):
We've now found somewhere else to rent, and
there is a kitchen again, whichI feel extremely lucky about, and
privileged to have this again.
The one thing is, there is no door.
There is no door, it's an open kitchen.
It's, it's a wall really.
Matthew Curtis (25:20):
The kitchen hasn't been updated.
It's like, it's a miner's cottage.
The house has a cellar.
It's a very small kitchen and it hasa cooker, a gas cooker and I think
it might be about 30 or 40 years old.
You have to light the oven with alighter by turning the gas on and
sticking your hand in the back.
And, you know what, we've spent all ourmoney, so we have to learn how to use it.
(25:44):
Because, it'll be, you know, afew months or maybe a year or more
before we can afford to replace it.
Because we own it, we've paintedit this dark olive green.
So like the outside is coming inand that at once makes me feel
like I want to spend time in there.
Ruby Mason (26:01):
My new kitchen is, yeah, it's the first time
I've ever had my own kitchen.
I mean, it's still a rented flat.
In, in Germany and in Berlin where Ilive, it's pretty common for rented
flats to not have kitchens in them.
So even as a tenant.
You fit the kitchen and like the cabinetsand everything yourself when you move in,
which might sound a bit strange from, fromlike a UK perspective, but on the flip
(26:25):
side, tenancies are very secure here, so.
You usually sign a lease for likean unlimited amount of time and you
can't, you can't really be evicted Soyou expect to stay kind of for many
years and get your money's worth ofyour things So so my new kitchen is
green, which I love and yeah, I'm stillgetting used to having my own kitchen.
It feels luxurious andextravagant in a strange way.
(26:49):
All the fridge space and cupboard space.
Stephen Rötzsch Thomas (26:51):
The week before we moved out of our house, even though I'm
still waiting, even for the mortgage tobe sort of confirmed, I went to the estate
agent and I asked if they would let meinto the house that we're looking to buy.
And I took a tape measure and Imeasured that kitchen and I have
all of that written down so Ican eventually start planning.
(27:13):
I don't know how I'mgoing to plan a kitchen.
I mean, I know there's goingto be tools online, but.
I'm still in a space where I thinkthe best way to do it is just
to go on The Sims or something.
The kitchen has a terracotta floor thatis old and tatty and needs a lot of
love, but I'm gonna give it that love.
And I'm excited to havea kitchen that is my own.
Maria Agiomyrgiannaki (27:34):
We moved into a flat in a new development in Walthamstow.
So the kitchen is a big space, togetherwith the living room and the dining room.
It does feel a little bit silly,because we moved out of the old flat.
(27:54):
Uh, because we had leak,we had rising damp.
It was just really months on end of anightmare situation with the landlord.
And the kitchen was kind of, wallswere crumbling and everything, so.
cupboards stinking of moulds and just,so this is why this feels, um, stupid
(28:17):
because the new kitchen obviously noneof that mould smell none of any of
that but the old kitchen I do miss it.
It feels like I had arranged it howI wanted it to be with the furniture
and with the shelving and everythingSo And the new kitchen, it feels like
this is it, and I have to adopt it,and I have to make it work, basically.
(28:39):
So, and I can't quitedescribe what I miss.
It's quite visceral, I think.
But I think I miss the kitchenlike it was a person that I
haven't seen in a long time.
And I think there is, it's becauseof the emotional connection.
of how much went, how much time, howmuch connection, how much, I don't know.
(29:03):
The first meal we ate there in the newflat was some souvlaki that we ordered in.
So just after the, uh, the move.
Yeah, just to share some food withthe friends that helped us move.
We ordered some local souvlaki.
Margaux Vialleron (29:20):
The first meal I made there is a big, big pot of
orzo, which is also my favorite,orzo with some grated courgette.
The trick is to have it one yellowand two greens, a bit of parmesan and
some oat cream to make it very smushy,and that's also a great meal to share.
I think this kitchen isgonna be about sharing,
Matthew Curtis (29:39):
was unpacking everything.
I got the frying pan outta thebox and I fried an egg and I got
a loaf of Warburtons and I didn'teven do anything to the bread.
Just a fresh loaf ofvery soft white bread.
The plainest pillows bread.
I fried an egg over easy in olive oil.
And I put that in the sandwich, oilsplashing onto the bread, and then
(30:01):
I got some daddy's ketchup, which isa bit more acidic than most of the
ketchups, I don't know if you've comparedketchups, and I bought it because it
was a pound cheaper than Heinz, and I'mlike, oh yeah, that'll save me a quid.
Anyway, fried egg sandwich.
on plain Warburton's whitebread, toasty, specifically, with
loads of daddy's ketchup on it.
And that was the first thingI cooked in this kitchen
(30:23):
surrounded by our lives in boxes.
And, I don't know, there's something nice.
It was like, it was a breakfast meal.
I think that's a nice start to cookingin a house, like, okay, I've got gas
coming out the hob, I'm gonna fry an egg.
Ruby Mason (30:36):
Yeah, I remember, I remember when I moved in and I was kind of still
doing some DIY on the flat, my partner andI bought rye crackers and, cheddar cheese,
which is relatively hard to find here, butwe found some really nice mature cheddar
cheese, a jar of, um, Spreewald pickles,basically gherkins that are like grown in
(30:56):
the Spreewald, which is close to Berlin, avery iconic German, German thing, and had
a lot of meals of those, like with thosethree components, crackers, cheese and,
and pickles, which is very satisfying.
Stephen Rötzsch Thomas (31:08):
I don't know what I'm going to cook the first.
The first time I get a chance to cookin there, the first time after I've put
in an oven and put in counters and putin cupboards and put all my food and
my billions of pans and stupid things.
Once I've shipped in 150 cookbooks andput them in the bookshelves and next room
(31:30):
over because they will not fit otherwise.
I'm fairly sure, whatever I amcooking, it won't be a cookbook,
it might just be a risotto.
Lucy Dearlove (31:46):
The first meal we ate in the new flat wasn't when we cooked either.
Around 5pm, Friends rang the doorbell.
It was the first time we'd heardit, and came up with bags of KFC.
We didn't have any dining chairs,so we sat on the sofa that we'd
bought off the previous inhabitants.
I hadn't unpacked the plates yet,so we ate drumsticks, wings and
(32:07):
thighs out of Denby cereal bowls.
I'm several weeks into this newkitchen now, and I'm still finding
my way around it, learning the moves.
Even though I'm the one who unpacked,who drew the map of the new territory.
I don't feel settled as such,not yet, but I feel excited.
(32:30):
Lecker is written andproduced by Lucy Dearlove.
Thank you so much to Ruby.
Margot, Stephen, Matt and Mariawho generously contributed their
stories of moving kitchens viavoice notes and audio recordings.
You can find links to all of them inthe show notes and you can also read
(32:52):
their contributions at greater lengthon the Lekker substack this week.
Also a huge thanks to Eli Davies whowas kind enough to speak to me about
her work around home building for thisepisode and whose contributions were just
(33:12):
so thought provoking and interesting.
I'm so excited to read.
more of her work around this subjectin the future, I'll link to some
of her writing in the show notes.
You can also read a longer version ofthat conversation on the Lekker Substack
2 that'll be coming this week as well.
I can't and shouldn't talk aboutkitchens without mentioning the
entire series I did a couple ofyears ago about this very topic.
(33:35):
Kitchens are very much still on my mind.
You can go back and listen tothat via the Lekker website.
Or you can find it in the feed onwhatever podcast platform you listen to.
There's also a print scene that Iedited to go alongside that series
with lots of writing and illustrationand thinking around kitchens.
It's been unavailable to buy for alittle while while I've been moving,
(33:56):
but I've just reactivated the bigcartel, so you can order it there.
Link, as ever, is in the show notes.
A reminder that Leckeris listener supported.
If you're in a position to donateregularly or one off, it is.
Hugely appreciated and helps me covercosts and keep the podcast going.
You can sign up via Substack,Patreon, or Apple Podcasts, and you
(34:18):
get access to some bonus content.
There'll be more subscriber episodesstarting this month, so you can
access them on all of those platforms.
Music is by Blue Dot Sessions.
And thanks so much to you,as always, for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.