Sadness

Is losing the last 1/8 cup measuring cup from my set of Foley cups.

You may remember I wrote about the search for Foley cups. Since they are out of business, finding those measuring cups was not easy. And now we've lost both of the 1/8 cups. The handle on one cup just flat fell off, and this one didn't survive a close encounter with the disposal.

Alas, poor measuring cup!

Where did they go?

I have three sets of measuring cups in my kitchen. Two are cheap plastic sets by Kitchen Aid I think, plus I have a set of Foley metal measuring cups. We make the majority of our food from scratch and use all three sets at the same time pretty regularly. But the Foley set is my favorite set by far. Partly it's because they stack better, always a good thing in a home with not much storage. It's also because the metal cups have the amounts they measure stamped into the handle, while it's just painted on the plastic cups and the paint is wearing off. Plus the metal cups are a lot sturdier. The other day, when a handle from one of the plastic ¼ C measuring cup broke clean off, I decided to look around online for another set of the Foley ones and order them.

Only Foley is out of business.

I can find other metal measuring cups but they have very long handles which means the cups don’t fit well in our drawer. I also tracked down a set online, and learned to my surprise that Foley, whether metal or plastic, are now considered vintage. Who knew?

So now I need to decide if $14 plus shipping is just way too much to pay for a set of measuring cups.

Kitchen stuff

Occasionally I read Unclutterer, a blog about getting rid of the clutter in your life. Some of the articles are a bit on the extreme side for me, some are pretty funny (every Wednesday is Unitasker Wednesday), and some are pretty useful. The blog owners created a list of their favorite articles this year, which led me to this article by Mark Bittman. If you aren’t familiar with him, he’s got a regular column in the NY Times, has published a bunch of cookbooks, and also has a blog.

I found his article about essential (and non-essential) kitchen equipment both timely and interesting. Most of our kitchen equipment is packed up in storage while we wait and wait for the insurance check to arrive so we can rebuild. Meanwhile, we live in a furnished apartment but pretty clearly the normal tenant doesn’t cook much, or at least doesn’t cook from scratch the way we do. We aren’t reheating take out, we are preparing our dishes from the mostly raw ingredients—or what Dan at Casual Kitchen calls first order foods.

We’ve picked up some things that were missing from this kitchen, and it’s made cooking go smoothly again. The things we’ve bought might make it to your equipment list or maybe you prefer other items:

Measuring cups—the unit came with one glass 1-cup measuring cup. We bought a set, which means we’ll have three sets once we’re moved back.

Measuring spoons—while the unit had a set, we use these all the time, and washing three or four times while preparing one meal got old.

Silicon spatula—how do people manage without these? We are making do with just one and I got a size we didn’t already have.

Cutting mats—sorry, Furnished Quarters, I detest glass cutting boards plus they are awfully hard on knives. Speaking of which . . .

Knives—fortunately, I snagged three knives from our apartment. The ones here barely cut bread.

Wooden spoon—I love wooden spoons, and this place didn’t have a single one.

Bread pans, small rectangular baking pan, two round baking pans, and a 6-muffin muffin pan—the only baking dishes here were a large glass rectangular pan plus a cookie sheet. I’m using those too, but I make our bread and do a lot of other baking as well.

What do you consider essential in your kitchen?