Pampered Chef Food Chopper

This is another staple in my kitchen. I am kind of a minimalist when it comes to kitchen gadgets, but I love this thing! It is really quick, and doesn't require a ton of clean up or another appliance on my countertop. I have had three of these, and my favorite was the Pampered chef one--until I burned it on the stove. Oops. It had a more padded like top that didn't hurt my hand.

It chops and rotates quickly so you can easily dice onions, garlic, herbs, nuts, etc very fast and have nice uniformly shaped pieces. I also like that I have more control with the sizes than with the food processor.

Here is my garlic with the chopper:



It saves the nuts from flying all over the kitchen, my fingers from being chopped off, and I don't smell like garlic. Good things!

The one from Pampered Chef is around $30, and I've other brands at most kitchen supply stores, and even TJ Maxx and Ross for around $10.

My Butterbell bit the dust

This is really one of my favorite little gadgets ever. I love real butter. I don't like margarine. But I hate how the real butter gets so hard in the refrigerator, and so icky and messy when it stays out.

So the Butterbell solved those little problems. You pack a cube of butter into the bell shaped lid, and add a bit of water to the crock to create a seal to keep your butter fresh and cool, but not cold. It stays fresh--they say up to thirty days--and it is so easy to spread.

Sadly, Simone knocked

it off the counter last week and mine shattered. But if you are still looking for Christmas ideas, this is a great little item. I bought

ours for $20 at the local health food store. But I haven't seen them anywhere else. You can buy them online here.

I love my Blendtec Blender!

So, I am in love with my blender. I was trying out a new recipe yesterday for a whole wheat pizza crust. I want to find a good one, and let's face it, a lot of whole wheat pizza crusts taste horrible.

So, I found a recipe that uses soft white wheat and hard white wheat. I have both of those! In my food storage, and they are in giant 45 lb buckets that have never been opened. So I actually opened one up, put a couple of cups in my BLENDER and made flour! It was so cool. I was so excited. Then, my recipe called for cornmeal. But I don't have cornmeal I thought to myself. Then I remembered that I do have a huge thing of popcorn. So I put the popcorn kernals in the blender, and voila! Cornmeal.

I own a Blendtec. I have absolutely loved it. My mom bought a Vitamix and a Blendtec at Costco after Simone was born as a "baby gift." She likes to give me "baby gifts" that will encourage healthy eating. We'd burned through about five of the Costco Oster blenders in the last two years with all of our smoothies. But I could never bring myself to spend $400 on a blender. So she bought it for me. I have absolutely loved it. I tried the Vitamix first, but didn't love how the lid was hard to put on. My mom preferred it over the Blendtec, and I preferred the Blendtec. I loved how it fit under the counter.

I can make nutmilks--no grit at all. Soups, sauces, smoothies, grinds grains, etc. I put whole flaxseeds in my smoothies instead of the ground flax meal, and it grinds it up really nicely. I rarely use flour in my cooking, so it is hard for me to buy whole wheat flour. It just gets old and rancid too quickly. So this is a great little solution.

I didn't know what I was missing before.

The pizza dough turned out pretty good, not incredible. I love chewy crusts--so I've yet to figure that one out. Any suggestions?