The unhurried kitchen: the pleasure of taking your time

It's been a full, happy and slightly chaotic summer – doors and windows flung open to catch the faintest of breezes, the boys and their friends in and out, suppers eaten in the garden at whatever late hour we finally sat down. And now autumn is creeping in, school has started again, and the house is suddenly much quieter – in the daytime at least.

As life settles back into its familiar rhythm, I've been thinking a lot about the way we spend our time.

Modern life is full of efficiencies, and many of them are blessings. Your grocery shop can be delivered right to your door, much of the household admin can be done with a few taps on a screen, and the coffee turns up by subscription just before the last bag runs out. Sometimes I'll catch myself grumbling about having yet another load of washing to deal with – and then I remember that seventy-odd years ago I'd have been doing this with a mangle. Certainly, there are shortcuts we wouldn't be without.

Efficiency has its allure, but I notice that as more and more technology comes our way, promising to take things off our hands, somehow the days feel fuller than ever. 

Lately, I've been paying attention to the things we choose to do the long way, for the pure enjoyment of the task. The topic seems to come up frequently at the moment, in conversations with friends and with so many of the people who come to see us at our showrooms. Keeping chickens at the bottom of the garden for an egg or two a day. Cutting flowers from the garden for vases. Ringing a friend for a proper catch-up, rather than sending a quick text to check in. A local veg box each week – carrots with their tops still on, the surprising pieces of veg you'd never think to pick up in the supermarket, and the creative puzzle of what to do with it all.

One friend has become such an ardent grower that I can't see her without being sent home with armfuls of courgette, sweet peas, rhubarb or whatever the season has brought. Another has taken up knitting, and now there are sweet little hats for each of the babies in her life, and scarves in the works for Christmas.

The kitchen is one of the places I most love to take my time. Part of the deliciousness is found in the process, long before anything reaches the table. On a quiet Sunday, we might indulge in cooking something ambitious that will take the whole afternoon – chopping, softening, stirring, the radio on, a nice glass of something – and the reward of dinner, a row of gleaming jewel-toned jars, or a freezer full of neatly stacked tupperware for the weeks ahead.

Perhaps it's the way these kinds of tasks bring you into the present moment. When you're making something with your hands, it's hard to focus on too much else, and for an hour or two, life seems to slow down.

When the apples arrive, my great-grandmother's old enamel pie dish comes down from the shelf. I peel and slice the apples first, then make the pastry by hand (never filo – I know my limits) and roll it out on the kitchen table. When the pie comes out of the AGA, I cut around the edge of the dish, working the knife between the dish and the pastry. The sound of the blade against the enamel, and the smell – and hot butter, brown sugar and baked apples – take me straight back to childhood.

Baking bread has become a fixture in our house, and our middle son, Arthur, often makes it with me. It takes time, and attention, and the sourdough starter needs a little looking after through the week. We could easily pick up a good loaf from a bakery and often we do – we love the bread from Honesty, at The Base in Newbury. Ours might not be technically quite as good as theirs. And yet. Is it possible it tastes even better to us, simply because of the work we put into making it? Still warm from the oven, with a generous smear of butter and a pinch of sea salt. Heaven.

When friends come round, I’ll make a big pot of something and ask everyone to bring a side dish. Somehow the hodgepodge always comes together better than anything you might plan. Good food, shared with a crowd of loved ones around the kitchen table, is one of my favourite ways to spend time. Our old table has a slight warp in it, so when someone's elbow catches a glass, the wine pools in the middle and then races down to the far end and into the waiting lap of whoever is sitting there – we all leap up, searching for a tea towel. It's happened so many times now that we're laughing not just at this time but at all the other times too.

Of course, not every day can go like this. Between work and everything else, there are plenty of evenings when supper has to be on the table in twenty minutes – and we've written about weeknight dinners on the AGA for exactly those days. But when I think about the things I want more of in my life, this is what I keep coming back to. I suppose it’s simply about noticing the things that are worth slowing down for, and allowing ourselves to enjoy them. An unhurried way of living.

So many of our customers – especially, I've noticed, those thinking about an AGA cooker – seem to feel the same. For them too, the kitchen is the heart of it all. A customer told us recently that they'd chosen an AGA instead of a new car, and I understood completely. A new car would get them from one place to another, just like their current car. But the kitchen is the place where the life they dream of will unfold, day in, day out, over the decades to come.

Buying an AGA is not like buying any other cooker. It isn't necessarily the most precise, or the most efficient you’ll find on the market. You could buy a built-in oven and an induction hob for a fraction of the cost. But the decision has little to do with any of that. You buy an AGA because you're also choosing everything that exists alongside one: the gentle warmth that draws people to the kitchen, unhurried cooking, time to linger with what matters most, a table full of family and friends.

We can't do everything the long way, and I wouldn't want to. But I've come to notice that when I'm a little more intentional with the things I give my time to, life feels a whole lot richer. 

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If you'd like to talk to us about how an AGA might work for your family, or if you're considering making the change from an old oil or gas model to a newer electric one, we're here to help. Give us a ring, send us an email, or come and visit one of our showrooms. Three generations of our family have worked with, cooked on and lived around these iconic range cookers, and we'll help you find the one that's right for you.

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