Ruach Kitchens celebrates 25 years of business

This year is a special one for Ruach Kitchens as we are celebrating our 25^th anniversary. Driven by the vision of our founder Ian Penman, he started Ruach Designs alongside his wife Priscilla to create beautiful but affordable kitchens. Supported by his passion for design, the business has grown into the thriving company we know and love today, now known as Ruach Kitchens.

Still at the helm as Managing Director, Ian started the business from his spare room. From modest beginnings, we now create kitchens for customers across the South East of England. Along the way, we’ve gained a reputation for quality and excellent customer service – values we continue to uphold on every project.

As we reach this important milestone, it seems a great time to celebrate, take stock and look to the future. Moving forward, we will continue to expand our range of designs and incorporate the very latest innovations into our kitchens.

To celebrate we’ve put together our top 25 kitchen facts to honour all things kitchen and cooking:

1. On average, we spend three years of our life cooking – according to research by GFK
2. Originally carrots were purple or white. The orange carrot is a genetic mutation from the 16th century
3. AGA stands for Aktiebolaget Gas Accumulator, after the Swedish company that invented it
4. Humans have been cooking for approximately 1.8 million years
5. Self-cleaning ovens have been around since 1963
6. Queen Elizabeth I preferred to use her fingers to eat, shunning her fork!
7. Henry VIII’s Hampton Court kitchens were the largest in England with 200 cooks, preparing over 800 meals a day for the royal court
8. The first cooking stove was developed in 1800 by Benjamin Thompson, called the Rumford Stove
9. 93 years later the first electrical stove was launched in the US. Households had to wait until the 1930s before they became available for the home
10. Upper-class households in Victorian England entertained guests with dinners of up to 13 courses
11. There are 1,000 different types of banana, but the ones sold in supermarkets are all genetic clones of the Cavendish variety – according to The Economist
12. Toasters can be more dangerous than sharks – as per number of deaths recorded
13. The first microwave oven was developed by Dr. Percy Spencer who inadvertently discovered it when studying radar technology
14. The word fork comes from the Latin furca: “pitchfork.” The first forks for cooking occurred in Ancient Egypt
15. A refrigerator uses up to 12% of a household’s total energy consumption
16. Freon was used as a fridge coolant but was banned following its adverse effects on the Earth’s ozone layer
17. Old dishwashers developed before 1994 used more than 10 gallons of water for every cycle
18. The first superstar of the electric toaster world (called D-12) was launched in 1909 by General Electric
19. We spend more time watching food on TV than we do cooking it – according to a survey by Lurpak
20. In 2017, the worldwide consumption of household appliances amounted to 526.08 billion U.S. dollars – according to Statistia
21. Remove burnt-on food from pots and pans by adding a tea bag, and simmering in water
22. Open-plan kitchens remain the top design choice
23. Leonardo da Vinci invented the rotating spit for roasting, using a chimney propeller
24. Invented in the 1980s, early examples of the extractor hood appear in Frank Lloyd Wright’s House Willey (1934) and House Jacobs (1936)
25. Ruach Kitchens covers 19 areas across the South of England, from Biggin Hill to Reigate

We aim to deliver kitchens that wow our customers. With 10 members of staff including our own experienced fitters, our clients know they’re in a safe pair of hands every step of the way. Pop into our Westerham showroom to help us mark this year, and keep checking our social media pages to hear more about our 25^th birthday celebrations.