Christmas has become more about things that we need rather than things we want around here (at least for the adults – for the kids, it remains a wonderland of gadgets and toys to help keep them from driving their parents crazy). I knew that I needed some new pots and pans to replace an old set of T-Fal cookware that we’ve had forever; the coating was beginning to flake off, probably because we threw them into the dishwasher instead of hand washing them like responsible people would. So, for Christmas, I asked my family to supply me with two new nonstick Emerilware pans. Since there are fewer things I hate in the world than trying to chop cilantro (seriously! It won’t stay still long enough for me to get it completely chopped!), I also asked for a sturdy food processor.
My husband has never been the type to just get you what you asked for. It always has to be upgraded. Case in point: when we bought my Honda Pilot, I went in determined to get the low end version, no bells and whistles. I didn’t want to pay for heated leather seats since I live in TEXAS, and just the thought of heated leather seats turns me into a puddle for eleven out of twelve months of the year. I made two mistakes during that trip: 1) we took our son with us, so I was distracted by a two year old who really, really hated that car dealership even though we brought a portable movie player and a sack full of snacks to try to appease him, and 2) I was 6 months pregnant with my second, and generally worn down by the process of growing an entirely new person. My husband, sensing my weakness, managed not only to upgrade to a nicer model, but to also convince me that we needed a DVD player AND HEATED BLACK LEATHER SEATS in the Pilot. We rolled off that lot eleventy hours later with my head swirling in the exact car that I swore we wouldn’t have, thanks to Captain Upgrade. He’s very sneaky about it, in that you almost don’t realize what just happened until everything is said and done, and he’s sitting next to you looking all smug. And you can’t argue because he just got you something super nice, but you want to argue about it.
All of that is explanation for why he ended up stocking out my kitchen like I’m Martha Stewart for Christmas. First, he started with a cherry red KitchenAid Stand Mixer:
Then we moved on to the food processor:
And instead of just the two saucepans and the saute pan I originally asked for, he bought an entirely new set of nonstick cookware, along with two extra pans that he picked up along the way:
There were also smaller gadgets, like a new microplane for the ginger that I love to cook with, tiny whisks for eggs (courtesy of his mother, since my husband seems to think that tiny whisks are the dumbest thing on the planet), pasta measuring rings, and on and on. My cooking skills are thankfully gathering steam so that I can actually make use of all of this, but holy MOLY it feels intimidating to open cabinets and see all of it.
I suppose that this means that I’m going to have to get more creative with my meal plans to make use of it all. Pinterest has been a wealth of inspiration this holiday season with new recipes, and since I hate cookbooks (more on that later), I’ve spent the past few nights curled up in the corner of the couch with my iPad, pinning recipes and transferring them to my Pepperplate app for future use. Luckily, the kids are getting used to wacky recipes and they don’t complain too much, as long as I throw in a Taco Night or spaghetti in there once a week.
So, cookbooks: it always seems that when I’m looking at a cookbook in a bookstore, I happen to only open it to the pages that have the good recipes. Once I buy it and get it home, I discover that 95% of the book is filled with recipes (or author anecdotes, which aren’t recipes and just take up space that could be dedicated to recipes) that I would never in a million years try out. There are only one or two recipe books that I’ve gotten that I make use of (The America’s Test Kitchen Healthy Family Cookbook is one I do use and love); the rest sit on a shelf forgotten due to the sheer volume of wasted space in them. I don’t buy them anymore, relying instead on the Internet to provide me with new recipes to try for free. Some are hits and some are a big, giant miss, but I think I’d have the same luck with the traditional cookbook gathering method, too. With the Pepperplate app, I’m kinda building my own cookbook of things that I know are winners, without the author’s romantic prose about the beauty of leeks thrown in to make me gag.
Now that the holidays are over and I’ve got some time before school starts back up again (only four more semesters to go, which is exciting and exhausting at the same time), I’m turning my attention to making use of all of these awesome gifts I received before I have to jump back in with both feet at the end of January. Once that starts, the kids will probably be getting Taco Night more often than I care to admit.
