Kitchen Must-Haves

In case you don't know me - I love cooking. I especially love all of my little kitchen gadgets and do-hickeys that just make cooking so much fun! After making a new recipe last night, I thought that I should post a list of my current kitchen faves.

1. Kitchen Aid Mixer - love it! Use it all the time. I don't think I've mixed any type of dough by hand since we got married. I love the convenience of dumping in my ingredients, and then walking away to fold a load of laundry. I come back, and the magic kitchen fairies (aka. kitchen aid) have made my ingredients turn into something awesome.

2. Kitchen Aid Paddle w/ rubber scraper - seriously, I have the coolest husband ever! Scott gifted me with this at Christmas time. No more stopping the mixer in the middle to scrape the sides of the bowl - this does it for me!

3. Kitchen Timer - I have a love hate relationship with this tool. I love that I don't have to keep looking at the clock in the middle of my tv show to see when I need to take the bread out of the oven. I hate that I'm in the middle of a tv show, and all of a sudden I hear this high pitched beep, beep, beep. Seriously, I yell at it every time "I hear you, I'm coming, BE QUIET!".

4. Heat Resistant Rubber Scraper - Good for mixing pancakes, scrambling eggs, scraping sauces off the sides of bowls - all while resisting melting!

5. Garlic Press - Open press, insert garlic, squeeze - out comes deliciously minced garlic, enough said.

6. Multi-sided grater - used primarily in our house for cheese. Cheese tastes so much better freshly grated, way more moist and tasty than pre-shredded out of a bag.

7. Measuring cups - I have 3 sets, and often have to wash a set to come up with what I need. The same goes for measuring spoons, actually.

8. Pizza Stone - ours was a wedding gifts, and I love it so much that my next big kitchen investment is going to be an entire set of stone bake-ware (hint, hint, dear husband!). Useful for making pizza, bread, or to place on the bottom rack and provide even heat in the oven.

9. Small, non-stick skillet - I have amazing cookware (pardon me for bragging a little bit!). It is, of course, all "stick-less", but does not have a true non stick coating (like Teflon). Why? Because you just can't caramelize an onion in a non-stick pan, of course! However, I found that having a small non-stick skillet is essential when it comes to frying/ scrambling the perfect egg. Love it for this function!

10. Knives - and lots of them! I have 2 full knife sets, and you will generally find at least 6 dirty knives in my kitchen on a given day. Oh, and they have to be sharp. If you don't know how to sharpen them, ask your husband. He will love the challenge of learning, and it gets him to help you in the kitchen!

Well, there you have it! I could go on and on with this list, I'm sure, but these are the top kitchen must-haves that I could come up with off the spot! I'm sure you'll see another list or two in this fashion sometime in the future!

-Sarah