Slider by IWEBIX

Category Archives: Cooking Gadgets

Activity Hub of My House: Kitchen

Posted on by

 
 

With three boys and frequent teen visitors, our family spends more time together in our kitchen area then any part of the house. Whether it’s meal time, snack time, or just “grazing time”, kids are visiting our kitchen multiple times each day to eat and adults are frequently there to prepare meals. Because the kitchen is such a hub of activity, one of my New Year’s Resolutions is to make this part of the house more efficient and welcoming.

 

 

The year is young, and as a first step to satisfy this resolution I am exploring how to better organize the kitchen and incorporate helpful appliances and gadgets. A well organized kitchen just makes cooking easier, which makes my life easier. I plan to incorporate some of the new kitchen technology trends including Bluetooth (wireless) and personalization. This will allow me to use my other important mom tools (smart phone and computer) to interact with the kitchen and seamlessly plan my day. I want to create recipes that can seamlessly translate into shopping lists. Once the food is purchased and stored in the refrigerator, I would like an automatically generated food inventory list which also details how long the food will last before spoiling. If I know vegetables will soon go bad – time to cook some vegetable soup! I’m also considering adding some color to my predominately white kitchen.

 

 

 

 

The second step will be to reorganize my kitchen and make it a more comfortable central “hang out” location. The kitchen is small, with a breakfast area separate from our dining room. Even on special holidays when we use the dining room, guests always seem to spill over into the kitchen. To accommodate the crowd, I want the flexibility to change our regular family meal space into a space for entertaining as well. For example, it would be great to have a simple way to stream music into various parts of the house, including the kitchen, while we are cooking and entertaining. We can play music on some of the family room’s gadgets, but they are frequently in use (games, videos, etc…) when we would like to share music with our guests. It would also be good to find some multi-device chargers so my kids can put all of their phone in the kitchen to charge at night without lots of wires hanging around. Another idea for re-organizing the kitchen would be incorporation of a dining table that converts to a comfortable lounging area when we have guests. This example of built in seating near the kitchen counter in Houzz looks like a good example of creating extra seating in a small space:

 

 

 

Do you have any new years resolutions to reorganize or retool your kitchen or tips for others who are starting their planning? If so – please share.

 

I am excited to be at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this week and will be stopping by the Whirpool booth to see their new kitchen concepts and get some fun ideas for my kitchen redesign and re-organization. They will be sharing updates on their Tumblr, Twitter and Pinterest. So check it out! I will also be sharing my fun CES updates.

 

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post. All of my words are my own.

 

 

 

Slow Cooker (Crock Pot) – Easy Cooking Gadget for The Kitchen

Posted on by

I enjoy reading all the food blogs, especially Citymama who shares her yummy recipes and  Stephanie Odea who blogs about crock pot cooking. Recently we signed for organic fruit and vegetable delivery and started getting the kids involved with cooking. Luckily I love organizing the list and shopping while my husband likes leading my boys in family cooking sessions. One of my 9 year old twin boys has also declared he wants to be a cook when he grows up!

 

This morning my husband and 9 year old son made a crock pot lasagna that is slowly cooking away (making the house smell great) and waiting for it’s last coat of cheese.  When I posted a picture on Facebook of my 9 year old son preparing the lasagna this morning, one of my friends asked for the recipe. Because we used a really old slow cooker recipe book, I decided to find one online that is similar to the recipe we used. Stephanie O’Dea of “A Year Of Slow Cooking” has a recipe for super easy crock post lasagna that we will try next time. We like to cook vegetarian lasagna to mix in non-meat meals into our dinner schedule, using all types of vegetables including eggplant, mushrooms, spinach, zucchini and more.

 

Slow Cookers ( or Crock Pots as many call them) is a great cooking gadget that provides a simple way to get a hot meal on the table for busy families. The main benefit of a slow cooker/crock pot is the ability to throw in all the ingredients and then have it cook on it’s own without monitoring it. Some crock pots have features such as removable inserts, handles for carrying to pot lucks, timer to set a specific time to cook and a setting that turns the dish to warm after it is finished cooking.

 

My new slow cooker challenge will be to find one we can brown meat in – which will enable our famous Brisket recipe to be prepared fully in the crock pot instead of using a saute pan first to brown. During my research for a new slow cooker that browns meat in the same container,  I found information on Breville Slow Cooker with EasySeal that has a removable non-stick coated cast aluminum stove top insert. But I did not see any timer features (other then the low, high and auto) which I like to use to set to a specific time to cook.

 

Does anyone have any slow cooker recipes to share? Or does anyone have a recommendation for a slow cooker that also browns meat?