The importance of utility

Very often we ignore the usability factor in our floor plans. A well designed plan would look at usability and maneuverability. Sometimes you might need a separate space for storing things apart from your kitchen.

We have seen clients who want a big kitchen, a small (cozy) kitchen, open kitchen, closed kitchen and many more such options. But there is one common factor among all - they need more space! Kitchen being one of the most frequently used spaces in a home, it is important to plan it well. Utility has its own usage and is extremely important to any house. A good storage space to keep away things that you many more require very often (you would be surprised to see how many redundant items have crept in to your kitchen and how rarely you use them).

Assigning a space for utility helps you to declutter your kitchen and have enough space to move around. At Samskruti, our designs are aimed at bringing in more flexibility, leg space and storage space along with ample natural lighting and ventilation.

To know more follow us on facebook, read our blog or call us @ 99162 17777.

The working triangle in a kitchen?

While most of the designs in the kitchen should be done to accommodate the tastes and work-style of the lady of the house, the working triangle remains the same. 

There should be easy access to the stove, refrigerator and the sink. It would be an added advantage if you have a counter away from the stove, near the refrigerator. 

 At Samskruti Builders, we also have a small planter for growing fresh vegetables too.

Write to us to share your views and ideas or to know more.

Speak to us to know more: 

     Call 99162 17777 

     Visit: www.samskruti.in 
     Follow us on facebook for updates!

Community Kitchen Caldas - eating inexpensive and healthy meals together!

At Samskruti Builders we believe in community kitchen and community gardening as a source to build, nurture and strengthen the community. Here is the concept explained!

Community Kitchen Caldas - eating inexpensive and healthy meals together!

Inspired by the community food bank concept, Community Kitchen Caldas (CKC) is an extension of the idea but focused around the activity of cooking through a community farm, community kitchen and community canteen, with the benefit of bulk-purchasing and bulk-consumption. The menu and recipe is derived from locals and experts collaboratively to create a healthy menu with local tastes, targeting malnutrition for women and children. The result is a pool of CKC members enjoying inexpensive and healthy meals.

Community Cooperative

CKC operates like a cooperative, with joining members putting in hours for the work involved (farming, cooking, maintenance) in exchange for close to cost price of food that is bought in bulk, farmed on the community garden, and cooked by members on rotating basis. It is a center of community building around the act of cooking.

Health and Malnutrition

The extra component of the CKC is the input of recipes from local residents and health experts, especially for the target of women and children malnutrition. The health or nutrition experts would spend time at first on the field understanding the issues of malnutrition, working with local residents to create recipes and eating habits that could remedy the condition. Such recipes are then shared in an open-source format and cooked in bulk (reduce cost) in the community kitchen. The health or nutrition experts can be on ground initially, but over time the can operate more remotely from Bogota (7-8hrs drive), Medellin (5-6hrs drive) or even overseas with investment of communication equipments.

Growing your own crops + bulk-buying

Urban agriculture in Havana Cuba has tremendous success, the lack of foreign imports becomes an opportunity for local farmers to adopt organic methods of fertilizing soil and using compost. The idea is that with more and more member support, the community garden scale can grow to cushion fluctuating food price and reduce cost, but more importantly, tailor the need for the problem of malnutrition with the right crops together with bulk-buying of food (enabled by food bank).

Entrepreneurship

This could become a scalable model to affect more people, and the local management opportunity becomes a channel to build entrepreneurship through the management of this local cooperative. Logistics, finance, marketing are all essential part of this cooperative to ensure success as a social business.

OpenIdeo Collaboration

During the week of consultation we have updated our base scheme with the following:

Cookbook

Using the combined efforts of health experts and local recipes, the result can be combined into a physical or online cookbook that would be sold to support the operations of the Community Kitchen

Cooking Fuel and Cooking Equipments

Using a centralized setting, the efficiency of better stove and better fuel can be utilized fully to reduce the cost per meal. Biogas is an option where bio-waste from either community toilet or community kitchen itself can be converted into cooking fuel in an anaerobic tank. Low tech and inexpensive improvements such as Rocket Stove could also be used to reduce fuel consumption by maximizing stove efficiency.

Community Chefs

An ideal training ground for community chefs that would have potential national exposure and repeated training with local community and health experts, these could either be family members that are already cooking for their families everyday, or they could be young aspiring chefs from the local regions.

Individual Farming Plots

Small plots could be assigned to families to have ownership of the plots, cultivating a collective culture of farming using shared resources of both tools and knowledge, and also can tailor the crops produced based on needs and preferences and monetary value.  

Community Kitchen Vendors

Vendors could rent stores next to the community kitchen to produce processed healthy food such as fruit juices, yogurt, etc. They could reap the benefit of bulk-buying from the Community Kitchen operation, and also getting all the traffic from CKC members.

Ecosystem of Materials

Bio-wastes from the Community Kitchen and Community Gardens operations could be transformed back into compost / fertilizers / biogas. The centralized grouping of waste allows for efficient upcycling. 

The best dish in the world

Is it really the ingredients which matter most?

Article by our intern Michael Duspiwa from Austria.

If you ask a person, what is the best food in the world, what answers do you get? This is of course not predictable as the individual preferences largely vary. In the United States some people may say “burger”, in Italy the majority might tell you “pasta” or “pizza”, and on the other hand in India some people may say “dosa” is the best food in the world. But what do all this dishes of the individual persons all over the globe have in common? 

From the outside it looks like those dishes have nothing in common, one is with meat and grilled the other is made in an oven and the third one has a similar shape to pizza, but is something completely different. Thus without further examination those have nothing in common, and a comparison among them might not lead to proper results. 

But what the majority of the people asked, will tell you is that it is the pasta cooked by their mum, the burger grilled by their father or the dosa prepared by their grandmother which is the most delicious food on the globe. Thus we associate food with much more than just eating and the taste, it is the person who prepares it and the environment of the meal which contributes its essential part to the perfect enjoyment. It is much more important with whom you eat the meal and who prepares it than the actual meal. 

Where does your family have lunch or dinner, always together or in front of the TV? Especially for kids it is an important part in their education and essential in their way to become a grown up. Thus this has to be preserved as it sticks with every person for the whole life. The dinner together is an important place to talk about school, work, problems, feelings and all other issues. Now imagine how much information among the family members will be exchanged, while eating in front of the television. Nearly nothing, right?

As on the whole world things are getting faster and faster, also the time available which is required preparing a full course meal decreases. Who is usually cooking for the whole family? Yes, most of the time the women in the house. Now the question comes up why they do not like to spend so much time anymore on cooking. The answer is rather simple: Because the father is at work and the kids sit in front of the TV, and the only person in the kitchen is the mother. 

 

By simply not making the kitchen a closed room and by removing all the walls, people are going to enjoy cooking much more as it was in former times. The meals get better, the time is used more efficiently and the community feeling is fostered. Summarizing, by removing your walls and by making one huge room out of living, dining, sleeping room and the kitchen, the best dish of the future generations is assured. 

Remove your walls, it does make a difference, just one single person has to start doing so!