Tools of the Domestic Arts

Otherwise known as "appliances." Kitchen appliances in this case. Never in my life would I have thought to write about such a topic but with a lot of time on my hands, with a new influx of cooking gadgets, and at thirty years old (i.e. an adult, though I'm not sure what I'm implying here when I say adult: That adults like me have far too many unnecessary materials? ), here it goes.

Over the years I have slowly gathered a fine collection of appliances, though they mostly started out as gifts. In graduate school, Javier, horrified by what constituted as my cutting board (a ceramic saucer) bought me a high quality wooden board and shipped it to me in the mail (he also mailed a power strip as he was equally horrified that I unplugged and plugged in lamps, my laptop, my toaster whenever each particular need arose).  "That's a very romantic gesture," my friend Joel said at the time. "He's buying you something you need."  I guess Joel was right. Not only is Javier still in my life, but so is the cutting board.

Once I moved out of the Sarah Lawrence dorms and back to Tucson, and eventually in to my own place, the need for practical cooking ware grew, but so did the opportunity for acquiring appliances grow, especially as how my dad saw it. I've received some surprising appliances from Dad, items I may not have bought myself, but most of which I use to this day.  For example, the Bella Cucina Rocket he gave me saved me many a time when I was late to work. I'd blend my yogurt smoothie and then pop out the door and drive to work drinking my breakfast.

The Rocket!

My dad also gave me a quesadilla maker which, though I used it rarely, I have to admit was pretty awesome.  However, it is because I used it so rarely that in a  packing-for-Ohio binge, sadly, it did not make it out to the Midwest.

Pretty red quesadilla machine no more

A pattern emerges in the timeline of my life with kitchen appliances, from the blender and egg beater I bought at Goodwill, to the tagine I asked my sister to bring from Morocco which I prepped for cooking and never used, to the roasting pan Javier wanted for his birthday that, again, my Dad gave him.  From that roasting pan, to incorporating the cast iron skillets Javier brought from Chicago into my cooking rotation, the only place to go in the quality of appliances was up.

As my, and Javier's, cooking ambitions grow, so has our arsenal of supplies. This arsenal has been bolstered, of course, by getting married, though it was preempted by a crowning glory in the way of kitchen machinery: the CuisinArt food processor I received from Javier on my 30th birthday.  Though well used, I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what that sucker can do as I've only used it to make dough: from pizza, to pretzel, to various breads.  Addendum: I did use it once to make an entire pie: from the almond crumble topping to the sliced apple filling.

Back to the wedding-backed influx of arms (err, I mean appliances. I just read a New Yorker article about  Mexican drug cartels and that diction is crossing over into this post).  Truly believing (and rightfully so) that our house was full of wonderful cooking toys, Javier and I didn't register anywhere for our wedding.  But then we got asked: What do you want for your wedding? Or, we were given appliances because, and I take this as a compliment, my reputation precedes me and people know all I really do now is cook and bake. Or we received very generous gift certificates and with that free pass dreams of appliances bloomed in our heads. I guess that's what happens when we have too much of something good, in this case "free money" at prescribed locations: we come up with ways to use it.

Once we received the gift certificates (and I saw a sale at Macy's) suddenly it was vitally important to get a pressure cooker. For one, I know I won't have much time to spend on meals when I start my doctoral program. But also, honestly, isn't it awesome to cook beans in the wink of an eye instead of in a matter of hours? I took the process of selecting a pressure cooker very seriously: I did extensive internet research to see what materials reacted with food and which brands came with instruction manuals. I asked my friends who own pressure cookers what their opinions were, and what meals they made. I finally settled on one and I'm proud to say I've cut the cooking time of long grain rice in half!

Javier too was bit by the bug and it became crucial for him to find a stockpot to better cook hops and malt for the beer he brews.  The remainder of the Macy's gift certificate? Done.  New stockpot. Then I decided I really couldn't stand to eat Kroger tortillas (plus I read how easy it is to make your own in Bon Appétit) so an Amazon gift card bought us a tortilla press. Javier lamented that we still had the Goodwill blender ( a sad piece of equipment, I'll admit: the saucer solution I enacted in grad school returned: once we lost the blender's top, a ceramic saucer became the substitute).  No more blender? Well, Javier spotted a Ninja Prep Master box in his Mom's closet and asked if it was for him. Boom. A Ninja traveled back to Ohio with us in the trunk of our car.

This thing is scary: I cut myself on the blades first thing out of the box

As I mentioned above, we did receive some tangible appliance gifts. The one thing I knew I wanted ahead of time was an ice cream maker, and my friend Beth obliged.  My friend Joon also surprised us with a pretty, retro looking food scale, which has helped enormously when I use recipes out of a British cookbook that is my baking Bible and it switches from cups to ounces.

I don''t know why I'm making this face. I'm truly excited about the berry sorbet about to emerge from the ice cream maker

Retro style food scale

This post is definitely not an advertisement for various appliances, though I do name them by name.  It is, embarrassingly, an accurate reflection of what has been on my mind as of late (not the only thing on my mind, but still, there it lays before you).  At a deeper level, hopefully, is a little bit of commentary of what I mention at the beginning of this post: that someone like me can easily accumulate gadgets and will become swamped with the detritus of consumer desire.

However, I do not plan on our house becoming cluttered with anything, especially machines of steel and plastic.  Let my tools of the domestic arts aid and challenge me in my cooking, and whatever else will go the way of quesadilla maker.