I enjoy kitchen gadgets and have several friends that do as well.

Lori just got a ‘newish’ coffee maker with a bunch of buttons:
http://chikblog.blogspot.com/2010/07/i-am-trying-out-my-new-coffee-maker.html

Some of us spend a lot money on fancy kitchen things, and then people like me get them from the thrift store.

I still am sad about the death of my four dollar thrift store electric iced tea maker. It met its untimely demise when it was plunged from the top of the refrigerator where many things lived due to having a very, very tiny kitchen.

RIP iced tea maker. Maybe I’ll find you reincarnated in a thrift store some day, and I shall again enjoy your iced lazy beverage.

Because I refuse to spend a lot on my kitchen gadget habit, some kitchen gadget friends can’t even cook in my kitchen. How do I get by without a fancy peeling device? Where is my flour sifter? (It’s in the studio being used to sift ceramic material… you don’t want to use it for flour). I didn’t have a garlic press for the longest time.

I like the gadgets because I find them fun much more than I find them a necessity. I got a very nice food processor this past Christmas, but before that I was more than content to use my blender or just chop finely in times where I did not have one.

If I could have a very expensive kitchen, I’d probably have one, but I really don’t mind using what I have.

I have a kitchen gadget friend who doesn’t have a lot of money but has always found money to spend on Stuff. For her, Stuff makes her happy, so much that I feel like I should capitalize it. Kitchen Stuff is one such category of happiness. She has a small toy car you can place garlic into to be chopped. There are rice molds to put sticky rice into fun shapes. A very tiny frying pan is a perfect size to cook a single egg in it.

I guess the flower carrot cutter does make the dish look like it came from a restaurant. A julienne machine certainly speeds up the cutting and likelihood of losing a finger, but a knife suits me fine.

She has a bamboo cutting board shaped like a fish, and I have a wooden one shaped like a cutting board. The only reason I own a bento box is because she gave me one out of her bag-full.

Don’t get me wrong, they’re fun toys, but they’re toys and I don’t need them in my kitchen to cook or bake to my heart’s content and enjoy the food produced. The basic tool gets the job done.

…however I do hope to plug in an iced tea maker again some day.