New52 | Week 21

I don’t know about you, but I’ve come to the realization lately that I own a lot of crappy things – especially in the kitchen. Things that serve their purpose (barely) but have obvious design flaws and inadequacies – but you put up with those flaws because you don’t want to get rid of perfectly functional things because that seems frivolous, and I wasn’t raised to be frivolous! My mom owns some kitchen gadgets that may have arrived in the New World via the Mayflower. Things that The Smithsonian may be looking to get their hands on.

You would think that because I love cooking so much I would place a priority on having nice, quality kitchen items – but the truth of the matter is the majority of my kitchen items were acquired during the years when I couldn’t have cared less about cooking. When I was in college my entire kitchen wishlist consisted of:

1. Some round, heat resistant things to cook things IN.
2. Some glass and stoneware items to eat things OFF of.
3. Some metal pokey things to eat things WITH.
4. And a toaster.

Then a few years later I was a young, married woman starting a family and the list became slightly more refined with:

1. A matching set of heat resistant, non-stick things to cook things IN.
2. A decorative set of glass and stoneware items to eat things OFF of.
3. Metal pokey things for a party of 8 to eat things WITH.
4. A canister set of some sort to proudly proclaim my domesticity.
5. And a 4-slice toaster.

It wasn’t until several years later that I would develop a genuine love for meal prep and cooking, and start kicking myself for not having the foresight to ask for nice things when other people were buying them for me.

Am I right?

It’s hard to indulge in new things when you have old things that are getting the job done, to whatever degree they actually get the job done. But I think it all started last year when I picked up a new KitchenAid stand mixer and had an immediate rush of feeling like a real adult. It’s a pricey expenditure, but I managed to find it for a STEAL on Craigslist – and that one mixer allowed me to get rid of a hand mixer, a small capacity stand mixer and a bread machine. All things that irritated me to no end at one point or another because they couldn’t handle a particular job, or took up too much space, or messed everything up. (My small capacity mixer was the sort of thing you see in movies, where if you turned your back on it the entire contents of the bowl would be splattered all over your walls and ceiling.)

I have yet to find anything this KitchenAid mixer cannot handle. I think I could mix concrete it in it if I wanted to.

Then Tom and I splurged on our first REAL knife. You know… a REAL one. A high quality one that is weighted well, cuts through everything like butter and will last a lifetime (with regular sharpening). That one knife rendered a drawer of a dozen knives obsolete. We still keep a couple around in case the REAL one is dirty – but for the most part I only reach for the one, and wash it repeatedly during meal prep.

Then Christine bought me a real pan that I had been drooling over for ages. A lifetime pan. And it has revolutionized cooking for me – I cook almost everything in it. I keep one big pan around for boiling pasta, a big cast iron skillet (necessity), and a medium sized saucepan for hard boiling eggs. I only need the one pan, I can do anything in it. It is a magic pan.

And now I get it – I need to resolve to own better things. One great, high-quality thing can replace a handful of other inferior, aggravating items. Except I still wasn’t really willing to be that savvy of a person, because one of the caveats of our new oven happened to be that it’s narrower than the old one – which was fine for EVERYTHING but our cookie sheets. They would no longer fit in it. When I sat down to order new cookie sheets I went right back to searching for an inexpensive set. Because they’re just cookie sheets and let’s not get out of hand here.

Just for kicks I visited the website of one of my favorite stores, Sur La Table, to check out their cookie sheet offerings and I found myself drooling over their Platinum Professional Bake Sheets. I heard angels singing when I saw them. But $20 a sheet? Unless they were going to clean the kitchen afterward it seemed a bit steep.

When I mentioned my opinion to Tom, he stared at me as though I’d sprouted a second head. He learns lessons much more quickly than I do – and asked me why I feel intent to keep torturing myself?

So I ordered the $20 baking sheets because I need to turn over a new leaf in this department. The goal is to replace the crappy items with lifetime items – but I still have a hard time doing it. I submitted the order, though, then had a mild panic attack shortly afterward because they’re COOKIE SHEETS. Can there really be that big of a difference between cookie sheets?

Yes.

These cookie sheets were forged from magic.

Like all of the other great investments before them, I never realized just how horrible my previous cookie sheets were until the moment I baked on one of these.

They don’t bend or warp as they heat up or cool down, the bottoms of the cookies stay light, golden brown (even on the one pan that I baked for too long), and they have a silicone coating for the non-stick finish – so no Teflon. I just have to tilt the pan up and the cookies slide right off onto the cooling rack.

And they’re pretty.

And now I feel great about the investment. I feel great even though I spent the evening snacking on blood sugar friendly strawberries and cherry tomatoes in order to keep from eating all of these cookies.

Old dog? Meet new trick.

Buy Better Stuff.

About This Project

New52 is a project started by Christine and I that invites participants to live outside the box a little bit more and try things outside their comfort zone. I’m aiming for 52 straight weeks of New, but it’s 100% okay if you decide to participate only once in a while. New52 isn’t about making a life-altering change every week, it’s about keeping an open mind and embracing little changes in your life.

If you participate this week, please leave a link to your blog post, scrapbook page, photograph or other recorded history of your walk on the wild side in the link list below. You can also post images to our Flickr Group! We would love to see what you were inspired to do.