Thursday, January 8, 2009

I Love Gadgets

I am a kitchen gadget collector. I am in heaven when I can roam a Williams Sonoma store undisturbed. I drool over the gadgets I see when I browse the newest cooking magazine.

So you can imagine my delight when I received a mandoline (not the musical instrument) slicer for Christmas. It came in my kitchen red color so it just proved that it was meant to be mine. It's made by Kitchen Aid and is very sturdy while being easy to use and easy to clean. It came with three different plates for slicing and adjusts to different widths.

My new mandoline
I have used my mandoline at least five times so far. Since Rich can't eat anything that is deep fried, it allows me to make home fries or chips that he can enjoy. After slicing the potatoes I coat them in olive oil and salt before baking them.

Before receiving my mandoline I use to slice the potatoes by hand and it took so much longer and the slices were uneven. This sometimes created an issue with getting all the fries cooked evenly. My homefries were a commonly requested item from our college students on Wednesday nights so I spent quite a bit of time in preparing the fries.
The fries are so much better then any frozen fries and are way less expensive. A little more overall work but so worth it.

3 comments:

Lydia McGrew said...

Ooh, if you like gadgets, let me recommend something that I've heard is called an alligator (though that isn't how it's advertised). It was just sold at our local Meijer store (sort of a superstore) for about $10-$15. It's an onion chopper, and it does sort of look like an alligator. You cut the onions into quarters or eighths (I find eighths are easier), put them in, and push down the top. It forces it through a screen-shaped set of blades and chops them up nice and small. It's a bit of a pain to clean, but I really feel like now I'm chopping up onions like they were meant to be chopped, rather than hurriedly chopping them too big like I used to do while my eyes watered.

Quirky Cottage Owners said...

Oh good. Now I know what to do with all the kitchen clutter after I clean out my drawers -- I'll send all of the gadgets to you!
Rita

Kim said...

Lydia- We had a gadget like the alligator but stoped using it. The clean up was a lot of work. Now I use a mini food processor. I lot easier.

Mrs. RGS- I have so many gadgets we have to put some of them in the basement kitchen in our home. Joe and Abigail tease that our next home should be half the size of our current home. We do lots of entertaining and most involves the kitchen.