{"id":632,"date":"2008-12-25T19:22:48","date_gmt":"2008-12-25T19:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/?p=632"},"modified":"2008-12-25T19:22:48","modified_gmt":"2008-12-25T19:22:48","slug":"xmas-gifts-2008","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/2008\/12\/xmas-gifts-2008\/","title":{"rendered":"Xmas gifts 2008"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In previous years I got all the hardcore kitchen equipment I needed &#8211; a good quality food processor (though I came to discover, while I was cooking Xmas dinner, that it has a crappy lid), a good quality blender and a good quality mixer &#8211; so my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.voxpublica.org\/2008\/10\/thinking_ahead_towards_xmas_wh.html\">cooking items request <\/a>for this year was much less greedy.  And alas, I got the most important things I wanted.<br \/>\nMy mother gave me her old (but barely used) <b>toaster oven<\/b>.  It&#8217;s a Black &#038; Decker and small enough to fit in our very limited counter space.  It&#8217;s great because our old one is probably over 10 years old and had not been working well (i.e. burning toast) for quite a while.  Now I can finally get rid of it!  The only problem with this toaster oven is that it doesn&#8217;t come with a baking sheet &#8211; and I doubt I can find one small enough for it.  That doesn&#8217;t matter for toast &#8211; but it makes it hard to use for things like toasting nuts.  Hmmm &#8211; perhaps I could find a very small aluminum pan to put there?  Or use tin foil to make a little mold? Any ideas?<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"bowls.jpg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.marga.org\/food\/blog\/bowls.jpg\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" align=left><img src=\/img\/dot.gif  align=left width=10 height=100>Also from my mother, a set of <b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Pyrex-Smart-Essentials-Piece-Mixing\/dp\/B000FBUMLQ\/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&#038;s=home-garden&#038;qid=1226973284&#038;sr=8-12\">pyrex mixing bowls<\/a><\/b> I had asked for.  All my mixing bowls are plastic and old &#8211; and I wanted something better quality (so, at least I can feel more luxurious when I cook) that had lids &#8211; so I can put whatever it is directly in the fridge.  I haven&#8217;t opened these yet, but they look very nice and got good reviews.<br \/>\nMom also got me a small (10&#8243; x 14&#8243;) <b>cookie sheet<\/b> that comes with a matching silicone mat.  It&#8217;s Cooking with Calphalon brand.  I&#8217;ve never used a baking mat, and I&#8217;m hoping it&#8217;ll be good &#8211; it&#8217;d beat having to use expensive parchment paper or cleaning baking sheets.  The cookie sheet is on the small size, but I think it&#8217;ll fit in the oven along side my regular large baking sheets.<br \/>\nFinally, my sister Kathy got me a set of <b>CorningWare<\/b>.  It includes a 2.5qt casserole, a 1.5 qt one and a 16 oz one.  Only the bigger one comes with a glass lid, which makes it appropriate for baking in the oven &#8211; but that&#8217;s the one I really needed.  Alas, CorningWare has the weird pricing scheme in that it&#8217;s often cheaper to buy a set of dishes than just one.  I&#8217;m not sure what I&#8217;ll use the little ones for.  The little one would work for hot artichoke-spinach dip (I made some last night for Xmas dinner, and as I didn&#8217;t have one that size I divided it into smaller ramekins).  Any ideas what the 1.5 qt one (which only has a plastic lid) could be used for?<br \/>\nAnd that&#8217;s it &#8211; not many food gifts this year, but then I didn&#8217;t ask for many \ud83d\ude42  I did ask for a dutch oven, but I&#8217;m not really disappointed that I didn&#8217;t get one, as I&#8217;m not sure that I&#8217;d use it very often.<br \/>\nCould it really be true that I don&#8217;t need\/want anything else for the kitchen?  Nah &#8211; I did notice while cooking Xmas dinner that I do need more wooden spoons.<br \/>\nOh, and I forgot, I need a butcher&#8217;s knife, a carving knife and kitchen shears.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In previous years I got all the hardcore kitchen equipment I needed &#8211; a good quality food processor (though I came to discover, while I was cooking Xmas dinner, that it has a crappy lid), a good quality blender and a good quality mixer &#8211; so my cooking items request for this year was much [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-equipment","category-lists","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.marga.org\/foodblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}