Kitchen Gadgets

   In the course of reorganizing and cleaning I have discovered many things. In some ways, it's a little like Christmas as I've found things I didn't know I had. I've been finding a lot of small kitchen appliances that I didn't know we owned.
   For instance, I have a food processor. Once I saw it I knew where it came from. It was a wedding present from a co-worker of mine. He liked to cook and we would sometimes discuss how to make various recipes during our downtime at work. I'm pretty sure it has been used at least once. When we moved it was packed away. Once we got our house I put it on a shelf downstairs and promptly forgot about it.
  I have two waffle makers. One of them is a normal one. The other makes small heart-shaped waffles. I know I've used the normal one. I have never used the heart-shaped one. The heart-shaped waffles are pretty small. There is limited demand for small heart-shaped waffles. I'm guessing it was another wedding present.
  We have a juicer. There was a time when juicing was the rage. You could make healthy juices at home and boost your health. C bought a juicer. We've used it twice. It's noisy and messy. The amount of fruits and vegetables you need to make a decent amount of juice is pretty large. There is a lot of waste. This presents a problem for me. The waste is actually food. It's not really usable after it has been juiced. I could, I suppose, have used it in the garden as compost. My composting skills aren't that good.
  I found an ice cream maker. One winter we bought it as a mutual Christmas present. I like to make cherries jubilee for dessert on New Year's Day. I wanted to serve it over homemade ice cream. C thought it would be fun to make peach and strawberry ice cream like the kind he had growing up. It does work well, except the ice cream is a little soft. We stored the bowl in the freezer so we could use it at any time. A few years back I needed room in the freezer. I took the bowl out and never put it back.
   I wanted a bread maker. We always had homemade bread growing up. I like homemade bread better than store bought. I thought buying a breadmaker would allow me to make homemade bread more often. The challenge is that you need to be at home in order to tend to the machine. I was seldom at home long enough. I made one really good batch of bread with semolina flour. When I tried to make a second batch, I had to leave and didn't get home in time to take it out of the bread maker, knead it and let it rise a second time. I tried to salvage it when I did get home. It didn't work. The bread was hard as a rock. You would think working part time I would find more time to use it, but I haven't.
   There are a few things that I have that I do use. One of them is a rice cooker. I've tried making rice the correct way in a pot. It never turns out for me. It's always too sticky or too dry. I don't have that problem with the rice cooker. In addition, I can use it to make oatmeal and grain porridge. It works really well. We use it a lot.
   In the winter the crockpot gets used a lot as well. Most of the time it is used for making chili. I have made beans, soup, Reuben dip, and a brisket in the crockpot. I think one Thanksgiving we even cooked a turkey breast. I love being able to dump things into a crockpot, turn it on and have a meal ready in a few hours. It's especially handy on Sundays. I put what we are going to have in the pot and dinner is ready when we get home from church.
  The queen of my collection is my automatic teapot. I fill it with water, put tea leaves in the basket and turn it on. I set the pot for what kind of tea I am making and let the pot do the work. It heats the water to the proper temperature and steeps those leave for the right amount of time. I like that I can reuse leaves. I just set the steeping time longer.
   Some of these items are going to Goodwill. The rest will be put somewhere where they will be easy to find and use. I'm really looking forward to using my breadmaker again.....