These are a few of My Favorite Things and Dreams

I love cooking, but as life just seems to get busier, (even though my girls are now older and more self sufficient) I have come to appreciate certain tools in my kitchen even more. Tools that make prep work, especially, quicker than usual. Tools that just seem to make things a bit easier. AND, because I like to cook, I also love to dream about what I'd want in my ideal dream kitchen. With ideas at our fingertips I'm always drooling over Pinterest or FB posts that say things like "which kitchen would you choose", "which stove would you want"...aaaahhhh! It's torture I tell you. I honestly only have a few items in my kitchen that I really don't use and probably should evaluate getting rid of, except that I always think "BUT, I might use it someday". 

I thought it would be fun to do a post on my favorite kitchen gadgets and also some kitchen "dream items" that I think would be super cool to have. I'll share my favorite brands, but hey, find and use what you like. For a lot of my tools, I use Pampered Chef. I've had so many parties over the years and use those to get the larger items and then just buy the smaller things here and there. They last me forever. Not to mention I love my Pampered Chef Consultant and I think we are secretly twins or something...even our house numbers are the same and for awhile we had the same area rug. 

A Few of My Favorite Things:

Pampered Chef:

Silicone Basting Brush: I was tired of losing bristles in my food. I use this a lot. 
Measure-All Measuring Cup: One of my absolute faves for measuring things like peanut butter, etc...it comes out so easy. 
Pastry Mat: LOVE this! It should be called pastry mat for dummies..lol. with measurements for pies, etc...it comes in handy!
Food Chopper: My favorite for chopping nuts! It is used weekly!
Garlic Peeler and Slicer and Garlic press: Use these pretty much everyday.
Pineapple Wedger, Mango wedger (which I couldn't find online), Apple Wedger...I love the wedger family!
Chefs Tongs: I love these and use them daily...the large and small ones. 

I may have to do a part two. I can keep going. 

The key is, find tools that make things easier for you. I'm convinced you'll love your kitchen more if you do so.  

Some of my favorite larger "tools" are my Vitamix that we've had for going on probably 10 years, my Bosch stand mixer and my Cuisinart Food processor. The Vitamix is used daily and the others regularly enough that they stay on my counter. It was years into our marriage before I got these kitchen tools but I thoroughly enjoy them. So if you're starting out or just can't afford it, that's okay...check places like Craigslist or yard and estate sales for those items. 

Now, for the dreams. Like I said, I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, have always loved cooking and have had a myriad of kitchen appliances over the years. We rented a few apartments where we didn't really have a choice as to what we had. We purchased an older single wide trailer with an older stove and for awhile we had a fridge on the back deck because it didn't fit in the house and we didn't have extra money to buy one, and when we were given one it was a lovely uh, retro-ish pea green. When we finally purchased our first stick built home, we also purchased our first refrigerator (I think the stove and dishwasher might have been there...I don't remember. That was 20 years ago). We still have that refrigerator 20 years later. It's still alive, though I dream of a new one someday.
 

We built the first phase of our home 8 years ago and have been working  on the second phase for the last 2 1/2 or so. It's slow going when you are doing it all yourself. You can find posts on this journey here. This really has me dreaming of my future kitchen. The one we have now is meant to be a laundry/mud room eventually. I love it, and I like the appliances we picked but I also can't wait for the next part to be done. I'm always drooling over the beautiful top of the line appliances out there. Not to mention all the lighting options for over the island.

If you are like me, who loves to cook, you probably love watching cooking shows and you probably secretly, or not so secretly, pretend that you have your own show, or that you could easily compete on Master Chef, or dream of cooking with the cast of The Chew. Or you get to visit Ree Drummond's Ranch. Or that your blog is seen around the world. Please tell me you do, because I do. 

So, a few days ago I was made aware of BlueStar ranges and their website. I'm pretty sure I've seen them around Pinterest and FB, I just don't always pay attention to the brands I'm seeing. Now, I'm one that loves to research and thus found their FB page, their Youtube channel , also on Instagram, AND discovered that one of my favorite hosts on The Chew, Michael Symon has several videos on their channel. Not to mention their ranges are dream and drool worthy. Who wouldn't feel like a professional chef with one of them in your kitchen (they have a refrigerator too that's pretty cool). If you go to their site you can play with and design your own colors. How fun is that? Granted, I think a lot of the colors are awesome, and it would be fun to have a blue, red, or yellow one, but the practical part of me would probably choose something neutral in case I changed my kitchen colors or tastes down the road. 

I created two vision boards (one above and one below) to show you what my dream appliances in my kitchen would possibly consist of IF I could have my dream appliances. And of course since we've done absolutely no landscaping on our property, I included the fact that, while even living in the rainy Pacific Northwest, I would LOVE an outdoor kitchen and entertaining area complete with a fireplace and a pizza oven. We love homemade pizza. 

My dream stove would have burners, griddle AND a grill (charbroiler), oh and I'd have wall ovens too. My dream refrigerator would be french door, and I recently discovered one with french door freezer too....YES. PLEASE! Isn't it fun to dream and imagine. Even if they never became reality, it's still fun. 

I'd love to know what your dream kitchen would include and what your go-to, must have kitchen tools are. 

These are two of my favorites from Blue Star so I thought I'd share a larger view of them. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the look. Actually the layout of our next phases kitchen is similar to this.



With Joy UNquenchable,