What is your favorite piece of kitchen equipment?

For some reason nothing beats antiques for cooking! I was in an antique mall for a while and I found a lot of antique cooking utensils at estate sales. The families would price them for a quarter or fifty cents. I have a huge collection that I am storing for the moment as I am remodeling my kitchen. I love the old egg beaters that you crank. I have found a bunch of them during my travels and seem drawn to them. I wish I had the strength in my hand and wrist to lift cast iron, but unfortunately I don't so the pieces are on display.

i love kitchen things to. i was my best customer when i had my antique store. lol

LOL! I know what you mean. The funny thing is that my two newest kitties, Whiskers and Kitkat, have figured out that the sound of the electric opener ALSO means that there is food involved. So I don't stand a chance no matter which opener I use. LOL

Before the advent of pop top lids, the can opener used to be a wonderful way to call the family cats. They'd hear the can opener and come racing for their cat food. The only draw back was if you weren't opening cat food!!! You'd finally have to give up and open a can so that you could get the herd away from your feet!!! I have to dig my electric can opener out again. I put it away so my daughter and family wouldn't use it and break it (they destroyed my electric mixer). The manual can opener I have is the total pits!

I am kind of surprised myself that no one said their wife . I know all about simplistic kitchens...I was a military wife and we had to keep things to a minimum and very simple. I used to be able to move in two car loads! Now it's two moving vans worth!! I don't have the propane to use on my stove, so I currently use my wood burning stove top to cook on. It's great because not only can I do my cooking but I also am saving a ton of money on propane. I would love to visit Egypt. I have read so much about the Pharaohs and everything Egyptian...it would be sooooo interesting to visit the place that all of what I read about happened.

I was given a crock pot by my BF's daughter. I use it constantly during the winter for making soups and chili. During the summer I live mostly on salads and "grab it as I race past" meals. My crock pot is getting to an age that I know that I will have to replace it, and I plan to get one of the programmable ones. I have to relate a funny story. When my daughter called the year before last asking if they could "stay" for a few days (which was actually nine months) I didn't have any food in the house and was busily preparing a batch of Chili in the crock pot. They arrived and I offered them some Chili. My daughter looked at me and told me that her family would ONLY eat her chili. Well needless to say they got one bite of my chili and they polished the pot. A couple of weeks later my daughter decided to make some of her chili. She used dry beans and ignored me when I told her that she had to soak the beans overnight before she cooked them. She made her chili in my electric roaster (I think it's a 10 or 12 quart roaster). She threw all the ingredients in the roaster at once and let it cook for about four hours. Everything else cooked but the dried beans didn't. Nothing she did would make the beans soften up! The huge roaster pan of chili sat in the refrigerator for weeks, no one wanted any. My grand daughters asked me to make more of my chili... (That didn't set well with my daughter!) Well finally I checked the pan and the chili was growing wiskers so I took it to our burn pile by the lake. I checked it a couple of days later and not even the wild animals would touch the chili!!!! Finally someone buried it because it looked so awful- and not even flies would land on it!!!! Every time I make chili it seems like there is a regular group of the single men in my area that ask if they can come to dinner...I always end up with an empty crock pot that night.

I love mine too, but it is for lighting the fire in my wood stove. I can't afford propane right now (for cooking) so I do my stove top cooking on my wood burning "stove" It's actually a enclosed fireplace with an ample top that I can set two pans on for cooking. It's great! Plus not only is it free to cook on but it also heats my house during the winter.

Thank you so much for the idea! I am remodeling my kitchen and because of the fact that there isn't too much cupboard space I am removing the full size dishwasher. I also am eliminating it because it is only me who is in the house and once in awhile I have my BF down for dinner. I don't mind doing dishes by hand, but it would be much more convenient to have a dishwasher. Although it is handy for cleaning my fingernails as I spend a lot of time in the garden and washing dishes does a wonderful job of getting the dirt from under my nails. That counter top dishwasher is making me do some rethinking on my design for the kitchen and the sink area...

I love my frige too, but I wish someone would invent one with rubber sides so that when you have a ton and a half of left overs or other stuff it will all fit in!!! I will say that the frige is the cat's and dog's favorite piece of kitchen equipment because all good things come from the frige!

It makes sense to me to microwave your sponge...not only would it be from the heat, but also from the radar waves! That's a great hint, I would have never thought of using the microwave for killing germs.