Saturday, October 1, 2016

Someone’s in the kitchen

Made pancakes this morning. It’s my usual weekend routine, but this time it occurred to me that I could put bacon bits in my pancakes, which made a world of difference. It’s so basic, I don’t know why I didn’t think about it before.

Although China was pork all the time, Turkey marks my third Muslim country, which means pig stuff is hard to come by. And I never miss bacon as much as when I don’t have easy access to it.

Enter Walmart and Oscar Mayer. Combined, these two are able to deliver right to me little bags of real bacon bits. Not just those little rock-like fakon bits that are basically painted Grape-nuts. I like Grape-nuts but not as a substitute for pork.

Anyway, this morning, I tossed in some bacon – real live bacon, made from real live dead pigs – and man, they were good!

To mix them, I whipped out my new little kitchen toy, an egg beater. I had tried to get my awesome KitchenAid mixer here, but didn’t order the right boxes from storage. Someone gave me a used hand mixer and I tried that, but the person was right when she warned me it might burn out. I tried to make cookies, and it died. So on that batch, as in Guangzhou, I used a whisk. And boy, it’s really hard to whisk cookie dough.

After that, I remembered the little hand-crank mixer things. Mimi used to have one and I’ve seen them in antique stores but didn’t think in this technological day and age that someone would still make a non-electric kitchen toy. But Oxo does! I think this is the GoodGrips kitchen people. I have several utensils from them and I like them, so I saw this contraption on Target’s website and knew it would be perfect. I could have gotten an electric one, I know, but somewhere I do have a hand mixer in storage – Mimi’s – and basically I don’t need another one. I could buy one here, but who knows what electrical voltage I’ll have next tour. This way, I have one that will work in every post. I love it.

It’s nice to have a kitchen again, and I’m finally starting to buy adult kitchen-y things. The big one for a kitchen is knives. I’ve never had really nice ones and decided that I should finally splurge. Except I can’t afford – at least mentally – to spring for an entire set at one shot, I’m going to piece meal my own set.

Before deciding on the knives, though, I bought this cool little knife stand. It’s adorable. It’s from a woodworking place called Missing Digit Woodshop, which in itself inspired. I had the little guy for months before finally pulling the trigger on knives. Ultimately, I probably won’t fill up his shield; I really live and die by my ulu anyway.

So for now, he’s got two, a paring knife and a petite chef knife. I went with Cutco. Great reviews and made in USA – cannot beat that. It’s probably only a matter of time before I’m missing a digit, or at least damage a digit myself. So far, I’ve used the petite chef knife once and was amazed at how sharp it is.

Ultimately, I’ll have at least five, I think, although I would like the tables knives and the spatula thing too. The little guy is holding his arm like he’s got a spear, and there’s a magnet in his helmet to hold a long knife so it looks like he’s holding it. In the ad on Amazon it’s a sharpening thing, but I’ll probably get the bread knife and use it for that.

Now I really need to find something to cook, and time to prepare it.

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