Last weekend, I had a conversation with a young friend about the wonders of her pie maker. She truly waxed lyrical, going so far as to show me evidence of the fabulous pies she had created and frozen for future use.
I confessed that I didn't have a wondrous pie maker. How, she wondered, aghast and amazed, did I make pies? I told her that I had a truly incredible kitchen appliance. Because I had this one appliance, I didn't need a pie maker, a pizza thingy, a pancake whatsy, a slow-cooker, cupcake whoosit, or, it has to be said, a breadmaker. Yep, one magic kitchen essential.
It's called an oven.
I know. I'm so old-fashioned.
What's your favourite kitchen appliance? Are you a gadget girl (or boy)? And, please tell me, which appliance gathers the most dust in your kitchen?
[image: hmmm, I would like one of these baking dishes from JanFairhurstPottery/etsy to put in my oven]
I read that post...I hadn't heard of it either and thought it sounded too good to b4e true... and my gadget phobia was piqued. However, tonight, I made my first lot of pasta with my new pasta maker and it was so good (and easy) I swear i will never buy mass produced pasta again....I feel like I have let the side down and fallen into gaddetism...but I don't care
ReplyDeleteOh Al, I am a gadget girl. I do have an oven and I can cook everything from scratch if needs be.
ReplyDeleteBUT, I love the gadgets. I love to try them all then wittle out the ones that are dust collecters with cords.
And then the ones that are left - the ones that stand the test of time - well, they become like friends.
Olivia won a fairy floss machine in a disco dancing contest at the drive in last year. Used once. It's been designated in my recent declutter to the op shop...but I had to scrap the dust off first...
I must confess ... I have a Thermomix & it is fabulous!!! The funny thing is it only seems to have "arrived" where I now live (Brisbane) 3 years after where I used to live (Melbourne). When the other mums at school are gushing about their "new" appliance, I love to jump in and tell them that the Thermomix is so 2008 ;-)))
ReplyDeleteI read that too but Im not even sure they exist in the UK.
ReplyDeleteI did join the forum though purely based on the fact that in their terms and condition point 6.2. says: Do not write in capital letters (FOR EXAMPLE, LIKE THIS). This is considered the same as shouting, which is not a necessary manner in being heard in this forum. (it made me chuckle)
I had a candy floss maker too, also only used once as was the chocolate fountain. Opened the bread maker and promptly loss the instructions. The juicer hasn't been used for years and the scary mandolin has never been out of it's box. I DO however use my cooks blow torch on a regular basis!
I am an out and proud Thermomix owner/user. Come round for dinner some time!
ReplyDeleteMrs Woog's post was hilarious and I simply can't get past those 75 odd comments. Hilarious. My mum was telling me about my Bondi cousin who has a Thermomix, but that was months ago and I wasn't paying attention to how fabulous her kitchen and appliances are and just recall some words about 'it does everything'. For 2K, I'd rather save it to get the hell out of my tiny kitchen.
ReplyDeleteSorry, but for my taste I do everything from scratch and another bloody appliance is absurd and the price, seriously! If you have to do it on a payment plan you can't afford it, simple!
As for my favourite kitchen appliance? KitchenAid followed by hand blender. But my microplane graters are my ultimate kitchen tool.
Little Miss Air Gap - I live in Melbourne and I've never met anyone in real life who has a thermomix. Every second person on the interwebs seems to have one though... and I want one. I like gadgets though all we have is a sandwich press as we are limited by storage space. One day, when I have a larger kitchen I will have a cupboard devoted to gadgets!
ReplyDeleteI have this great thing called a whisk. I can use it for mixing up all sorts of goodies - and at anytime of the day or night without fear of waking the baby (unlike those clunky modern mixer-type things that wake up the old dears in the nursing home next door!!)
ReplyDeleteLove it. You can buy them from any good kitchen/cooking store. But can I recommend the ones with the silcon coating (for extra shhhhh)
xxxCate
Well I know you will all be jealous with this one.
ReplyDeleteNot only do I have a wooden spoon,to really mix stuff up I have a whole collection, short handled ones, thick ones, long skinny ones.... Who needs a kitchen Aid??
I don't even have a useable blender. I make my breadcrumbs by hand. They are very big breadcrumbs.
ReplyDeleteIf I got that Woogsy Thermomixertrixter I don't really know what I would do with it. I think I would just look at it there on the bench and it would scare me. x
I love my oven too! Not only does it cook a variety of food for me, it warms my little farm house so nicely.
ReplyDeleteThe bread maker the MIL gave me which only ever made lumps of hard dough is sady buried under so much dust.
I have actually heard of a Thermomix. And I've even heard of an oven - that's the thing that heats up frozen fish crumby things, right?
ReplyDeleteStrictly a one-pot screamer here, with maybe pasta or rice on the side.
I have two old favourites..my blender and my hand mixer. I can make milkshakes and purees with my blender and beat cream, cream butter and sugar and make cakes and whisk egg whites with the hand mixer..so that just about takes care of things in the kitchen. On the shelf I have a fancy oveny thingo that has never been used and have a long list of gadgets I've used briefly and given away over the years! I'm keeping it simple in my kitchen now.
ReplyDeleteNaturally Carol xox
I'm with you on the oven... mind you, it is a steam oven....
ReplyDeleteMy hand held mixer is from Coles... $16.95 I think. I do have a slow cooker... that I have used approximately 5 times in 2 years. And apart from my most recent purchase of a new set of saucepans (first time in 9 years), I have no other fancy appliances.
ReplyDeleteBut I LOVE a good oven ;o)
Ok, Clairey, I need a KitchenAid, in fact I have 2 stand mixers... they are my indulgence.. 1 is Onyx Black, the other Empire Red... they are almost Art to me, the form and shape of them on my kitchen counters... sigh.. a boy has to have his toys...
ReplyDeleteRy
Mine is actually my six-hole pie ``tin''. A bit old fashioned, I know, but it does the trick! And no one's complained about my pies yet!
ReplyDeleteWould have to say that the slow cooker is a bit of a hit in this house though.
My butter curler ...I haven't used it since tasty , fatty butter went out of style . But , I keep hoping a plateful of curls mounded on a plate for that special dinner will come back in style .
ReplyDeleteI ♥ my slow cooker. It really is my saving grace, especially in winter!
ReplyDeleteApart from that my best 'gadget' is most definitely my George Forman Grill that sits in the back of the draw as it is too god damn heavy to lift!
Lol! I get what your saying, but I could not live without my thermomix now and I consider it just as essential as the oven :)
ReplyDeleteI forgot about my hand mixer - I do love that. And my whisk. And my wooden spoons. And - now here's one for the books - Cornelius the Popasaurus.
ReplyDeleteWas lovely to wake up this morning to a veritable parade of kitchen appliances...
My favourite kitchen appliance doesn't work very often and needs servicing regularly but when HE does work it is completely automatic and needs no effort from me at all :)
ReplyDeleteThe breadmaker my husband gave me one mother's day. It was a marital low point. Altho now that we are back in the land of sugared bread I am vaguely considering putting it to use.
ReplyDeleteMichelle
I don't have much room for gadgets but I do love my slow cooker to bits. The bread maker was given to someone a long time ago. I will confess to having an electric crepe maker which does make the most beautiful crepes. It has however been sitting in my cupboard for oh, let me see...about 20 years since it made it's last crepe. I'm keeping it though. Hope springs eternal!
ReplyDeleteLucy has just made my day "Olivia won a fairy floss machine in a disco dancing contest at the drive in". Isn't that every little girl's dream?
ReplyDeleteOur gadget that gathers dust is my husband's deep frier. It received a lot of use in his bachelor pad, deep frying Chico Rolls, but since we moved into our shared marrital home, it sits in a deep, dark corner cupboard, feeling fat and unloved.
Lucy has just made my day "Olivia won a fairy floss machine in a disco dancing contest at the drive in". Isn't that every little girl's dream?
ReplyDeleteOur gadget that gathers dust is my husband's deep frier. It received a lot of use in his bachelor pad, deep frying Chico Rolls, but since we moved into our shared marrital home, it sits in a deep, dark corner cupboard, feeling fat and unloved.
I have always been an old fashioned cook, but after a rather nasty incident last week involving a grater, my knuckle, and a double course of antibiotics for the festy infection, I'm going to start buying every kitchen gadget I can get my hands on!
ReplyDeleteI'm very fond of my oven, too. My most favourite kitchen appliance though has to be the dishwasher. Having lived without one for nearly a year now, I realise every day just how much easier it used to make my life.
ReplyDeleteOh, then there is the coffee maker, I love my coffee maker. Especially as it was free...
Giggled at 'How do you make a pie without a pie maker?' I made popcorn in a pot, on the stove, with a tiny bit of olive oil and my SIL was very surprised that popcorn could be popped that way.
ReplyDeleteWe have no microwave - never felt the need for one - and are constantly amused by the question 'but how do you heat things up?' We have a stove and an oven...
My favourite kitchen appliance is my red KitchenAid. It's red, beautiful, and makes mixing butter icing, fluffy frosting and meringue so much quicker and easier. There are some quite elaborate birthday cakes requested in this house and after spending a great deal of time mixing six quantities of butter icing one year I decided that a decent stand mixer was the way to go.
Our dust collecter is the waffle iron. Used once I think.
Oh I love handy appliances, but I don't think I'd use it. (I had to read up on Mrs Woogs post to determine exactly what I was dealing with here...)
ReplyDeleteThe Thermomix does seem like a magical gadget... but I'm with you - oldfashioned if you like.
I made a delicious chicken, mushroom and bacon pie last week... without a pie maker...
Salesmen are yet to branch out and tap into the untouched market of the ultimate do-it-yourself gadget. People... haha
Oh, I love gadgets :D But I dont know which among the appliances gather the most dust... I dont know how to cook so I dont get to the kitchen much, but i think everyone of it is touched by my MAMA already... She hates seeing things untouched and if she does see one, she would go all the blabbering stuffs of how much it cost and yet we are not using it :D
ReplyDeleteI love my le Crusset pans. And my stove. Plus I do have a slow cooker which I would marry x
ReplyDeleteWhen we got married, we got two crock pots as gifts because I guess we seem like especially crock-pot-y people. They sat in my cabinet gathering dust for eight years. Then I became a mom of three. Now? One of those puppies is always sitting out on my counter waiting for me to throw some stuff in and let it work its slow-cooking magic.
ReplyDeleteI like to think that one day my KitchenAid and my Slow cooker will have babies. The result would be a machine that will mix and cook anything you want over various time frames throughout the day. Throw it in, and walk away. Sigh.
ReplyDeleteIn the meantime, the George Foreman was the first thing I got rid of in my ruthless culling when we moved to our current home. It had sat in my cupboar for so long the feet had melted and stuck to the shelf.
Foreman Fail.
We have a few appliances. A toaster, which gets used maybe once a week? A bread maker, which is used about the same. A slow cooker i use a lot in winter. I have a donought maker which has been used once since we got it (2 years ago) and a waffle maker used 5 times since we got it (3 years ago).
ReplyDeleteWe do not own a kettle.
I am with you on the oven. Hands down. But if not my oven i do love my slow cooker and the smells it omits throughout the day.
None of my appliances i have brought myself. I did ask for the bread maker, the rest i didn't.
I do have a slow cooker because putting dinner on at lunchtime means I'm not pulling my hair out at dinner time.
ReplyDeleteBut I hear you about all the other appliances.
I visited a friend who had a pizza oven and like you I thought, the oven no good?
And I honestly thought this woman need to tattoo victim to her forehead....until I ate the pizza
No kidding, the pizza oven made a pizza better than the regular garden variety oven.
I was so convinced that the next day I spent the $120 to buy one. Mr M was livid....until he had a pizza.
So Sam, our pizza guy, lost a customer.
Love & stuff
Mrs M
Got to confess, I love kitchen gadgets, but in our defence we use them a lot. Although the juicer is gathering dust.
ReplyDeleteAnd I have pie maker, which I love, because I am a pastry fiend and give me leftovers and a sheet of pastry and I've got lunch!
The breadmaker we use for pizza dough, bread and just bread dough which we shape ourselves and cook in the oven.
And I am a big slow cooker fan ~ used it twice this week alone: roast chicken and chilli con carne.
Mind you, we are the same with electronic equipment, too ...
I have a blender wich is used in winter for soups and in summer for milkshakes. and an oven. That is all. Not even a toaster, because the griller does a much better job.
ReplyDeleteHands down, without a doubt, my $10 garage sale, beat up, noisy Kitchen Aid mixer. With a dough hook, a paddle and a whisk, it is the most used and best loved appliance I own!
ReplyDeleteI'm with you, Al - I've been given all sorts of appliances and gadgets, like pie makers and hot dog makers and bread machines and whatever else. They clutter things too much. I'm happy with my oven and stove top. Done.
ReplyDelete