We have some recent additions to our kitchen that have increased our collection of countertop appliances that I want to share with you!  I’d say we have an average to small-sized kitchen – it’s probably 120 square feet if I had to guess, so counter space is a bit limited.  When my husband begged for months to get an espresso machine, I cringed at the thought of adding yet another “permanent” thing to our countertops.  I already felt like I was fighting for enough space to cut vegetables!

In the end though, I lost the battle.  And now, we welcome “Silvia” into our home.

That’s her on the left, next to the coffee grinder named “Rocky”.  And to complete our own in-home coffee shop experience, you can see our tea kettle and the french press as well.

I have to say, they all look sleek and stylish hanging out together, don’t they?  Like they could be best buds.

I’m pretty sure with the addition of the espresso machine, my husband has an internal debate each morning – “coffee? or cappuccino?  or maybe latte?”  Lather, rinse, repeat.

Unfortunately, I get next to nothing out of the whole deal.  I’ve never liked coffee.  I tried really hard when the TV show Friends was popular and coffee shops suddenly became THE place to be in 1998 when I was in high school – but I remember gagging on my first latte and swearing I’d just swallowed arsenic-laced mud.  Coffee and me just weren’t meant to be.  Luckily I can handle the smell, but I doubt I’ll ever become a coffee drinker, much to the amazement of every overnight host whose jaw drops when they ask if I want my morning coffee and I politely explain my lack of interest.

In college, I discovered tea and chai, so at the very least I can now have a lovely homemade vanilla chai latte  But first, I have to learn how to USE the thing!

How about you?  Are you a coffee drinker?  Or maybe married to one like me and don’t quite understand the morning ritual?

And what is on your countertop?  Do you have any prized appliances that have a permanent home there? (I’m thinking a countertop tour is in order!)

At last, at last!  I can reveal to you the compost bin!   It’s been finished for a couple of weeks, but I finally got my lazy butt out there and snapped a few photos the other day and uploaded them.  Sometimes I wish this could all happen magically, don’t you?  :-)
Here it is!

It took my wonderful husband a few days to finish it.  The directions we found online weren’t 100% followable, so we had to improvise a bit as we went.  We also had to dig up some dirt and some old pavers so that the bin had room to “breathe”.

It’s made of cedar, which is rot resistant.   The wood is a little pricey, but we know it will last, so it was worth the investment.  The sides are made of some type of metal chicken wire fencing we got at the local hardware store.  We’re still deciding if we want a lid for the bin yet.

We’ve already started loading it up with some leaves from last fall, and kitchen scraps.

The heat from the sun, and moisture from hot humid Iowa weather, will lead to natural composting of the materials, hopefully resulting in a nutritious compost we can use in our gardening next year.

We situated the double compost bin on the back side of our garage along the alley and next to our strawberry patch.  That way it’s out of site and also get’s a good amount of sun.

For a while we had been collecting kitchen scraps in an old ice cream bucket and stashing it on our back porch until it was full and ready to be taken out to the bin.  But this was both inconvenient and smelly.  After a little research, we bought one of these to make things easier, a bit more stylish, and less smelly

Seriously, it’s the best $35 I’ll ever spend. It’s got a filter to cut back on the smell, and the lid hides any gross old food you don’t want to see. Plus, it looks kinda snazzy, doesn’t it?  I definitely highly recommend it.

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There’s are most recent fun building project.  What have you built lately?

Before I got married, I think I had all of two kitchen items to my name: a crock pot my aunt had given me, and a knife I bought at TJ Maxx since all of the ones we had were dull.  Since then, through the joys of a wedding registry and marriage to a foodie husband, my cooking supply arsenal has increased dramatically.  Having the proper tools and supplies definitely makes cooking more fun.  Plus, I’ve gotten a lot more creative with our menus!

If you’re on the look out to add a few things to your kitchen, or just curious what you should register for, here’s what I would consider my top 10 essential cooking supplies, and some of my favorites.  Enjoy!

1. All Clad 4 qt Sauce Pan

My mother had the wisdom to give this to me even though I didn’t register for it, and I use it all.the.time.  At least 5 times a week, I would guess.  It’s great for sauces, soups, stews, curry, rice, pasta, and a lot more.  If you’re looking for a good all-around sauce pan/pot, go with this one.  It definitely works well for meals for 2 people, and would easily accommodate

2. 12 inch Cast Iron Skillet

I married a foodie guy who happens to have an entire set of cast iron skillets that originally belonged to his mother!  The thing that’s great about cast iron is if you care for them properly, they can last a LONG time.  Make sure you wipe out the pans with paper towel when you’re finished cooking, scrub with a sponge with no soap (we even have a special cast iron sponge just for cleaning that), and then put it back on the stove on medium heat for a few minutes.  You may need to re-season the skillet every couple of years.  We use our skillet for cooking sausage, bacon, fajitas, some stir fries, and sometimes for cooking boneless chicken breasts.  It’s a great  non-stick alternative since the seasoning of the pan does it for you.

3.  Crock Pot

The best gift ever is a crock pot.  They’re inexpensive and relatively fool proof.  Crock pot cooking is wonderful for families, especially busy ones, since you can prepare food ahead of time and it will be hot and ready to serve with very little fuss.  There are some amazing crock pot connoisseurs out there and there are some awesome books that can get you well on your way to making something other than pot roast.  Some of my favorite crock pot dishes are homemade pizza sauce, jerk chicken, buttered indian chicken, Mexican beef, Indian chili, and African peanut chicken with peppers.  I believe I have a 6 qt crock pot and I definitely recommend one with a built in timer!

4. Le Creuset Dutch Oven

First of all, who doesn’t love cooking with something pretty?  Le Creuset has a bunch of fun different colors to choose from, so why not make it fun!  What makes their pots and pans so versatile is that they are enameled cast iron – so you can cook with them on the stove or in the oven and then plop it right on your trivet on the table.  I have a 6 qt oval Dutch oven, and it is MORE than enough.  You can cook a whole chicken in it, and probably a whole turkey if you got creative.  I’ve made soups, stews, and lentils in my dutch oven – and they’re always yummy.  One word of warning though: enameled cast iron cooking isn’t exactly low fat.  You need a fair amount of butter or oil so things like onions don’t stick to the bottom and burn.

5. Chef’s Knife & Cutting Board

Well, I guess it’s two items, but they go together.  A good chef’s knife is definitely worth investing in. We bought something like this one – great for chopping just about anything.

And here’s a wood cutting board we like – cutting our veggies in peace

6. Calphalon 10 inch Non-stick Omelet Pan

Here’s where the non-stick is put to work!  We love this pan.  It’s great for eggs and pancakes, and anything small you’d like to cook on non-stick.  Ours makes an appearance every Sunday morning for breakfast

7. Food Processor

There’s many different brands and sizes, but I opted for a larger 9 cup Cuisinart since it came highly recommended by many folks.  Food processors are so incredibly wonderful.  I love mine so much, I wish I could sleep next to it.  (Not really.)  We use ours for making hummus, pesto, homemade mustard and spicy mayo, shredding and slicing vegetables and fruits, making bread dough, salsa, guacamole, smoothies, dumpling batter…I could keep going.  If I could recommend just ONE countertop appliance, this might be it.

8.  Deep saute pan

I will confess that this is actually on my wish list.  I currently have a large 5 qt saute pan that works really well and has enough room for everything, but it is large and shallow.  I want one that is a bit smaller and deeper, but can accommodate the same amount of food.  This kind of pan would be great for braising, making most of the Indian food we cook, and many one-pot meals.

9. Kitchen Aid Mixer, plus attachments

Ah, the icon of every newlywed kitchen.  And for good reason.  This thing is a power horse.  Obviously well suited for baking, we’ve also used ours for grinding meat and stuffing homemade sausages!  I definitely recommend the attachment set.

10.  Breadmachine

Another one of the joys of marriage – inheriting a breadmachine!  The one my husband had is a few years old, but it still runs fine.  We make our own bread in it every week and it is delicious.  So much better (and cheaper!) than store bought bread.  Breadmachines are relatively inexpensive and definitely a worthy investment.  You can also make dough, pizza crust, and rolls – though obviously you’ll have to bake them in the oven!

Honorable mention:

Stainless saute pan – we have a 10 inch one that was DH’s mothers.  It is thick and heavy and absolutely wonderful at browning onions or chicken.  Definitely a staple in our kitchen.

Salad Spinner – I had never seen one of these until I was older, but I’m so glad I did.  Makes cleaning and drying greens so much easier.

How about you: What’s your favorite pot? Or favorite countertop appliance?  Do you absolutely LOVE that one pan? Or ladle?  Please share!

P.S.  I don’t receive a dime from any of these companies, I just genuinely love to cook and love these items!

We’ve had LOTS of strawberries lately.  We have a tiny strawberry patch behind our garage, providing a few small bites every few days.  Then our CSA share started for the summer, and we got a few more.  THEN our very generous and world traveling friends offered to let us have our free pick of their strawberries while they were out of town – little did we know that their strawberry patch is MASSIVE and takes up nearly a third of their yard!  We brought home at least two gallons of berries!!!

With all those berries, we had to get a bit creative.  I made several breakfast smoothies, jam, and strawberry rhubarb pie!

Let me tell you, this pie was DELICIOUS!  I used the recipe in the Joy of Cooking, which seemed pretty standard.  This was only my second pie crust I’ve made and it turned out perfectly.

BEFORE baking:

AFTER baking:

Seriously yummy

I found this via one of my favorite blogs that often posts links to great freebies. You can print out cute recipe cards!

How cute is that?  Perhaps I’ll print out a few simple online recipes, which are way more portable and kitchen friendly than toting my laptop up and down the stairs

I’m back for part 2 of our exciting edge-of-your-seats installation of our dishwasher.  Let’s get to it!

Yesterday, I told you how we solved our little plumbing and electrical problem by cutting a few extra holes in our cabinet and rerouting the electrical hook-up and cutting the copper pipe so we could thread the hose connection into the sink cabinet base.  Here’s a picture of what the final configuration under our sink looks like:

That’s a lot of stuff going on, so as said in the Princess Bride, lemme ‘esplain.  No, that is too much.  Lemme ‘sum up.

It’s a crazy mess of hoses and wires under there now, but it works!  The Inlet hose attachment comes up through the cabinet floor and then has a loop that sticks into the side of the cabinet before it attaches to the shortened copper pipe.  That large weird looking attachment at the end of the hose is a “leak detector”…or something fancy-schmancy like that.

The drain hose also comes in through the cabinet floor and then loops up high in our cabinet so there is an air pocket before it attaches to the garbage disposal.

The air gap is necessary so that you don’t have back flow into the dishwasher or nasty sewer or disposal smells, which was a major problem with our previous dishwasher.  You can see that for now, we just used a bit of electrical tape to hold the hose up.  Fear not, eventually there will be a more permanent solution.

Last, there’s the junction box, which connects the electrical line that DH changed in the basement to the electrical to power the dishwasher.  Again, eventually we’re going to try to nestle the junction box towards the back of the cabinet so that it’s out of the way.

Once we had all of the hoses and electrical in place, and had leveled the dishwasher, we did a test run to make sure everything worked okay.  We were a bit concerned that all the kinks and bends in the pipes would cause problems, but not so!  Everything worked perfectly!

We finished installing our new dishwasher by putting in a few screws under the countertop and putting on the kick plate, and then she was done!

All bright, shiny, and new!  Looks great, right?

I was a little concerned about how stainless steal would look in our kitchen with our other white appliances, and with our dark cabinets, but I think it’s a HUGE improvement over our old dishwasher.

Here’s a before and after so you can see the difference

Love it!  We’ve started filling it up for our first load, but we already know from our test run that it is SUPER quiet.  This makes me giddy with excitement.

Of course now I must venture into the world of cleaning stainless steal appliances.  I’ve heard of the never ending fingerprints and smudges.  I’m actually more concerned about water.  As you can see, right above our dishwasher is all of DH’s coffee-making stuff (I’m really resisting using a more negative adjective…) and there are often drips and pools of water after he’s finished in the morning, many which will end up on the dishwasher.

Does anyone have any stainless steal cleaning tips?  I’d love to hear ‘em.

Hope you enjoyed our dishwasher installation play-by-play.  I realize a lot of our “problems” are fairly unique to our house, but hopefully it will prove helpful for anyone else who chooses to go the DIY installation route.  We figure we saved about $100 by doing a self-installation.  And since we’re still DIY newbies, we’re giving ourselves a big pat on the back for this one