Our Tuscan Villa – Part Two

The kitchen area is woefully inadequate, but when you are on holiday you can cope and have a bit of a laugh about it. Clearly as the property is so remote, it is designed for self-catering, but the fridge is small, and there were no cupboards provided for food storage. We had to tidy out the bin and cleaning equipment from the cupboard under the sink in order to find more space. There are almost no worktops for food preparation and no space for piling up the washing up. Hence much time is spent bringing the garden table in and out of the house to use as a work top.

The cooker is hilarious. It is very important not to have the water heater and the oven on at the same time (the oven is electric) or all systems fail. The hob is run by bottled gas, which is completely uncontrollable; you can have flames licking round your saucepans in true chef style, or nothing at all. And in true mediterrranean style, the kettle is not electric, so it is very hot and steamy making cups of tea and coffee. We like fresh coffee, and as the only coffee maker available is a tiny percolator, we have to be inventive. Apart from being small, the percolator does not seem a good idea, as I’d probably just burn the coffee having to put it on such a high gas flame. So I have taken the filter part from the percolator and, holding oven gloves, use it to strain the coffee which I make in a jug after boiling the water in the kettle.