Category Archives: St Andrews Shop
The Student Kitchen – Do’s and Don’ts
1. DO – Learn to cook, even if it is just the basics like lasagne, casseroles, and soups. You will save masses of cash and be healthier for it.
DON’T – Attempt to survive on a diet of pizza, chips, Indian, Chinese and kebabs. It is not good for your wallet or your well being.
Recommendations – Get a recipe book, or have a look at our Pots and Pans Recipes page.
2. DO – Buy at least a couple of decent saucepans. They last longer and are easier to cook with than budget pans – try cooking and then cleaning rice off a cheap saucepan and you will understand this entirely. Stainless steel pans are great, as even if people use metal utensils on them (which they will), your pans will survive.
DON’T – allow a flatmate to use saucepans as a drum kit. It may not hurt your pans, but it never sounds as good as he thinks it does.
Recommendations – See our Stellar 1000 and Judge Vista pages for great value pan sets.
3. DO – Buy at least one decent quality sharp knife. A blunt knife will slip and you are far more likely to cut yourself. Unless your house is organised, it will then take you twenty minutes to find a bandage. When purchasing your knife, please don’t be offended if the staff request to see ID. You must be 18 to purchase a knife, and many stores operate a think 21 policy.
DON’T – Allow any of your flatmates to use your knives for the following; to have an impromptu swordfight, open a tin of any kind, open a coconut.
Recommendations – We have a good range of James Martin Knives, and some novel designs from Voodoo Knives.
4. DO – Buy a wok. It is an extremely versatile piece of cookware, and will allow you to not only cook stir fries (which are economic and healthy), but is also good for frying, steaming and making sauces.
DON’T – leave your wok in the garden to be cleaned by the rain, as this will cause it to rust.
Recommendations – See our Ken Hom Woks, designed with input from the master of oriental cooking.
5. DO – Buy more than one piece of cutlery and tableware. Within ten minutes of being in your flat, you will have ‘lost’ something. Do buy knives, as well as forks and spoons, as you will host more impromptu dinner parties than you realise.
DON’T – buy cheap, thin cutlery, you will bend all of your spoons on your first tub of Ben and Jerry’s.
Recommendations – We have great offers on Monogram Cutlery and Stellar Cutlery sets.
6. DO – Learn to bake. There is no better way to make friends with you neighbours than with muffins and bread. This will serve you well when your house parties run late.
DON’T – allow your flatmates to combine every unwanted foodstuff in your kitchen, to make a ‘cake mix’. The results are not pretty and definitely not edible.
Recommendations – Raymond Blanc Bakeware and Master Class Bakeware are our best selling ranges of baking equipment.
AND FINALLY – do wash all your kitchen ware thoroughly after each use, it will last you far longer, and you won’t have to buy it all again the next year. Remember, it’s food you’re trying to create, not new life forms!
Based loosely on the life of a St Andrews graduate
St Andrews Shop
This week the Open Golf Championship is at the home of golf, so we thought it would be appropriate to mention our St Andrews Shop. The shop is in the heart of St Andrews, in the middle of Church Street, which is situated between Market Street and South Street. You shouldn’t miss it – the shop is always sporting some colourful displays in the window, something the industry has recognised, as the shop won the Independent Category at last year’s Excellence in Housewares Awards. The current display shows a few of the attractions of St Andrews, ‘the home of…’ with Old Tom Morris (pictured) highlighting the connection to golf. You can see some of the previous displays below, with themes of Weddings, Father’s Day, National Honey Week and Halloween, promoting a wide selection of products, including Le Creuset cookware, Dualit toasters and KitchenAid mixers.
Nina and her team are our Pots and Pans experts there, so feel free to quiz them on what products will fit your needs. If you can’t make it to the shop, please visit our online cookshop where you can get the latest kitchen and dining products delivered straight to your door.
Pots and Pans are finalists in two categories at the Excellence in Houseware Awards
We found out this week that Pots and Pans are finalists in two categories at this years Excellence in Housewares Awards. The two categories are Excellence in Direct Retailing and Excellence in Retail Display – Independent. The second of the categories is for the window displays in the St Andrews shop. In case you have you have not had the opportunity to see the shop’s window displays we decided to add pictures of some of the recent displays to our FlickR pages so you can see why they are finalists in this category. Being nominated and subsequently discovering that they are finalists in this category is some recognition for the amount of effort and creativity that goes into creating each individual window display.
The Excellence in Houseware Awards are a joint collaboration between Progressive Housewares magazine and The Cookshop and Housewares Association. They were set up with the explicit goal of recognising ‘innovation, integrity and commitment on both the retailing and supply sides of the housewares industry’. They are the only dedicated awards for the housewares industry. In this industry they are viewed as being the equivalent of the Oscars.
This year the awards are being held on Wednesday the 7th of October at The Royal Lancaster Hotel London, in the words of the invitation they are a “Black tie / Posh frocks” occasion. The funds raised from the raffle on the night will be divided between two charities, Shelter and The Rainy Day Trust.
At the 2008 Excellence in Housewares Awards Pots and Pans won the Excellence in Online Retailing Award. It would be nice to add to that award this year, but we will have to wait and see how we do on the night.
