My Favorite Kitchen Gadgets and Gizmos!
Brad and I spend a lot of time in the kitchen. We love to cook, and cooking involves having some great gadgets and gizmos to help. Below are some of my favorite things to have in the kitchen:
1. Foodsaver - I did an entire post on all the great uses a Foodsaver can provide. The Foodsaver truly changed the way we cook and the way we save money. When we first started out, we would save a few things here and there, and now we have a freezer full of food and a minimal grocery bill. If you always have leftovers after every meal you cook, I highly recommend this purchase. You can easily store leftovers in the freezer instead of throwing them away or eating the same thing for multiple days in a row! If you watch the Foodsaver website, they will run sales on both the Foodsaver and the bags.
2. Garbage Bowl - I watched Rachael Ray for years before getting married, and I have always loved her style of cooking. I am also so obsessed with her cookware. Well, when she released her garbage bowl for purchase, I had to have one. Now unfortunately I didn't get one right away. When I lived on my own, I rarely cooked. However, now that I am married, we cook often, and we have a small 13 gallon garbage can in our pantry. We didn't want to throw smelly things in there, so we started a trick of throwing them in a Walmart grocery bag and just let it sit in the sink while we cook and throw it out after dinner. Well for Christmas, my mom finally got me my own garbage bowl. Now we put the grocery bag in it, and we have our entire sink back! It comes in multiple colors to match your kitchen, and it has a rubber bottom so it won't slide. The next best part - it's dishwasher safe!
3. Digital Crockpot - When we were in the midst of building up our Foodsaver collection, we would use the crockpot at LEAST once a week. Sometimes more. A crockpot is a staple item that everyone must have. You can cook just about anything in a crock pot and it is so nice to come home and dinner be ready! Well what I LOVE about our crockpot is that it is digital. Since I am the last one to leave in the morning, I turn the crockpot on and tell it how long it needs to cook. After that time expires, it goes into "keep warm" mode. It stays in that mode for 4 hours. That is usually plenty of time for Brad and me to get home from work. And you don't have to really worry about overcooking now! As a bonus, you get a little dipper warmer with this version.
4. Food Chopper - I would say I use our food chopper at least once a week. It is great to easily chop onions, stale bread, or even Oreos! Most of the time I am using it for salsa, but sometimes I will use it for other things. It is the perfect size and doesn't take up too much room in our cabinets. It only has two functions, but for what we do with it, that is all we need. It is especially great if you have a lot of small vegetables to chop, but do not want to get out a large food processor, this will do the trick!
5. Nonstick Cookie Pan - This is another Rachael Ray favorite of mine. I have had my cookie pan for about 7 years or so, and it is still going strong. I love its versatility since it is both a pan and cookie sheet. We cook bacon and asparagus on it as well as cookies. The nonstick feature is also an added benefit.
