Space-saver?

The second thought that passed through my mind while admiring the clever Nuscup (by Dalla Piazza, a Swissmar company):

Who keeps spices in jars big enough to fit this scoop?

The first thought was, "hey, that's neat!"



You can get these measures in larger sizes, so maybe a big one would be useful. But a bigger one would be no better (and more expensive, and harder to clean, and with moving parts) than one of the Oxo angled measures, which you will be shocked to learn I use in my kitchen. I still have a set of dry measures, too, mostly because they are pretty and my wife gave them to me! Sometimes even a cramped cook has to be given a special pass.

Channeling Rachel Ray

Apparently, Rachel Ray is doing a segment on small kitchens, and covered knives and pots. Freaky, I was just conjuring a post on knives, too. How cool that is...

So, my big observation on knives is this: You don't need as many as the retailers want you to buy. Big surprise, huh?

My smaller observation is this: You should buy the best knives you can afford, especially for whatever you decide your standby is going to be. You use them all the time, and a good knife should last for at least your lifetime. One of mine is on its third generation of user. I prefer a chef's knife, but that's me. You might prefer a santoku or a cleaver of some sort.

I have a whopping five knives, plus a honing rod and a sharpener.

• Henckels Pro 'S' 6-inch chef's knife
• Henckels Pro 'S' 8-inch chef's knife
• Henckels Pro 'S' bread knife
• Henckels Four Star 4-inch paring/utility knife
• An unkown brand of carving knife, for the roast and the turkey (that's the hand-me-down).

As with pots and pans, I have more than I need, but getting rid of a Pro 'S' seems like a shame. I would be happy with just the larger chef's knife, but the other cook in my household has much smaller hands and likes the 6-incher.

I have made some compromises in my cooking life: I have no filet knife, no boning knife, no meat cleaver, no vegetable cleaver. Oh, and no "peeling" knife, no "sandwich" knife, etc.

I also have not yet run into a need for a knife I do not own, so I strongly suspect I have plenty. I do keep my knives in a butcher block tha thas two or three empty slots, though, so if I find the perfect (small, too, my slots are all lower-level) knife, I guess I could buy another without using more room.

I happen to have room for the butcher block, but if you can't find a spot for one, you could buy a magnetic bar and find a handy (i.e. near your prep area) place to hang your knives. Or you could get one of those fancy racks that sits in a drawer, but who has spare drawers? In a pinch, I guess you could buy a knife bag that rolls up, which would certainly save space and certainly be inconvenient.

How's a gearhead to get by?

When you're working in cramped quarters, it can be tempting to find collapsible and otherwise compact versions of everything in sight.

I've been scoping out collapsible colanders - of which there are several choices - but I haven't been able to pull the trigger. Cost isn't a big issue here, but I like my old-school colander, which is a pretty blue enameled job. Nothing too special, but nice anyway.


I think you have to pick your battles: If you don't care for your current non-collapsible colander, and you have a few bucks (or more) to burn, you could save a little bit of room in the kitchen with one of these.

But I think that's largely unnecessary. If you can't figure out a good place to store your colander and it is pretty (like mine!), just tap a nail in under a cabinet and hang it up in plain view, or use it for a second purpose, like as a place to keep oranges...

Some of the "compact" items I've seen seem like more trouble than they're worth. I found a really neat measuring cup, for example, that uses an adjustable bottom to hold more or less material. But the scoop itself is too big to fit in a spice jar, so you'd need to use a spoon to put the spices in the measure. It might work in a big container, but who has room for those?

Pots and pans

When I moved into my cramped kitchen in 1999, I'd been living in much more spacious quarters, so I had a big collection of pots and pans.

• Soup pots? Small and large.
• Frying pans? Four or five - three sizes of cast iron, plus a Revereware pan and a medium Calphalon pan.
• A small saucepan
• A large saucepan
  
• A stovetop-mac-and-cheese size pot
• A Dutch oven
• An absurd plug-in electric frying pan
  

It took me a couple of years to whittle the collection down to the essentials, mostly because I was reluctant to Goodwill so many nice pans.

Now I have:

• One cast-iron frying pan (about 10 inches)
• One small saucepan (stovetop mac and cheese size)
• One large saucepan (mac and cheese for 10)
• Two large soup pots (about 10 quarts).
• That Dutch oven, be it ever so infrequently used.

The soup pots are identical and both contain large and small steaming baskets. I probably only *need* one, but if you're feeding 20-30 every so often, the flexibility is a big plus. As for the Dutch oven, well, they're expensive, so I'm loath to ditch it. I keep thinking I'll do a bean-hole supper some fall, too, in which case it will be wicked useful.