If You Can't Take The Heat

Getting out of the kitchen is exactly what most of our pots and pans did over my Christmas break.

I love the pot rack that hangs above our breakfast bar.  I know we still have to do the finishing on the ceiling patch (procrastinate much?), but otherwise that pot rack just makes me smile.  It's pretty and functional.

One unintended side effect of hanging that pot rack is that we became painfully aware of how icky our pots and pans were.  All of our cookware is either hand-me-down or a cheap-o singleton that didn't match anything else.  The stainless cookware worked fine but was mottled on the inside from improper care (I only found out about Barkeeper's Friend recently; don't judge).  Our nonstick cookware had definitely seen better days.  Most of it had seen contact with metal utensils, and all of it was falling victim to scratches and flakes.  Not to mention that they all had different handle styles, being from three different sets.  Our other problem is that we had way too much cookware.  The stuff that wouldn't fit on the pot rack lived in a stack on top of our refrigerator and rattled when we opened and closed the fridge.  It looked bad, it was bad for the cookware, and it made you a little nervous about closing the fridge door too quickly.

A motley crew.

All that to say, hooray for Costco!  Or more accurately, hooray for Christmas presents!

Santa brought us a very nice Kirkland brand set of stainless steel cookware!  They have 5-ply bases with a copper core, so they heat quickly and evenly and retain their heat well.  They're safe to 500 degrees, so we can use them in the oven as well as on the stove top.  The handles are curved nicely and stay cool enough to touch when cooking on the stove top.  They also have curved lips which makes it ridiculously easy to pour from them.  Best of all, they're gorgeous.  See?

How excited were we to donate our mis-matched set of worn-out pots and pans?  Pretty dang excited.  

Shiny.

Santa brought us another cookware present, too.  Steve is a big fan of cooking with cast iron.  His mom is an expert at cooking with cast iron, and Steve learned his cooking mojo from his mom, so he's been suggesting off and on for pretty much the duration of our marriage that we get a cast iron dutch oven.  Right before Christmas we wandered into the Le Creuset store at our local outlet mall and left with a severe case of sticker shock.  Santa did us one better and brought us the Kirkland brand 6-quart cast iron dutch oven.  We have heard that the Kirkland brand cast iron is comprable to Le Creuset's, and the reviews online agree.

Isn't it pretty?  This guy is going to live on our stove top full time, we think.  Steve has already cooked with it and looooves it.

My burner pans are dirty.  Keepin' it real.

Obviously Santa was very good to us this year.  Not only are these gifts making our lives healthier (no more worries about flaking teflon!), tastier (hooray for even heat!), and easier (cleaning this cookware is about a million times easier than our old stainy stuff), they are making our home more beautiful.  It's putting me in the mood to do some re-organizing in our kitchen, too.  There's always a project on the horizon, isn't there??