Your Cooking Contest is presented by 
I don't think it may sense to invite friends to participate, but I will anyway because it's in the rules. So I invite my dear 
The first thing you must know about my kitchen is that unless I close both doors, at least one of my cats is always going to be there.
Always.
My kittens climb on the table; and when we're out or not watching them, we don't know how far they can go.
When I die, which I hope will be many, many years from now, my spirit will ascend to a happy, heavenly place, accompanied by a kitchen towel dampened in bleach water, and I will descend from time to time to haunt and clean the counters and tables of the houses where spoiled cats live.
The second thing, well, this kitchen is old. This house was built more than 50 years ago. First house of the block. So it goes really well with all my old glassware, old appliances, old cutlery, etc.馃槀
Well, make yourselves at home! Let me offer you a cup of coffee. And just ignore the cat. She totally ignores you.
Oh my! I have so much stuff in my kitchen, as I started buying, collecting and getting hand-me-downs since I was a teenager. The third thing you should know is that I'm writing this post in a rush, as I just realized the contest was closing in less than two hours. That was a misunderstanding. My bad. But here we go.
It鈥檚 impossible for me to talk about all the things I鈥檇 have to talk about, since there are so many. But I鈥檒l tell you about the most important ones and, of course, the ones I can think of right now: my old little stock pot that wanted to be a saucepan, my silicone pastry spoons, my air fryer, my smoothie blender, my baguette molds, and my kitchen scale.
My love for cooking started as love for eating!
My late mother was a terrible cook, albeit of ultra-healthy choices. My father was a very good cook; and still is. I guess it wasn't hard for me to realize that one is happiest when one eats tasty food. I made my peace with the healthy thing eventually, ha ha ha ha.
Adapt or die!All of my beloved mother's children learned to cook at an early age, much to the headache of my poor little mother, who also hated to clean and yet she had to deal with our messes, sticky messes, and burnt pots and pans.
This is the area where I usually work.
You can see that it is a very simple kitchen. I have a big window facing the parking lot, so I have a lot of light when it's daytime, which is perfect, since the ceiling is made of wood and this darkens the room a lot. Darkness is fatal for photos, so I always try to take them when I have natural light.
The counter is as old as the house. It's wide enough most of the time.
But sometimes, I need more space; this is when I move to kitchen table. Cats out and clean table!
I bought this stock pot 24 years ago in a traditional store in my hometown that closed some years ago due to the economic crisis that began to eat up the country. The store was Dorsay; they only sold men's suits originally.
The set came with a larger stock pot, a frying pan, and saucepan. Some burglar stole my saucepan once that I had left it in the backyard kitchen at my father's house. So now my little stock pot is my de facto saucepan. Period.
I use this pot to make vegetable milks, oatmeal, hot cocoa, pudding, etc...
You can see that she has served my kitchen well. She has a war wound; she lost her knob one day when I forgot I had something cooking.
Silicone Pastry Spoons. How can anyone live without one!
I bought the green one ten years ago, perhaps. It's one out of 6 that I keep in the cabinets. The black one was a gift from my niece who is now living in the US. The former is for savory dishes; the latter I use almost exclusively for making cakes and sweets.
My air fryer is also an electric oven. Cakes, bread, cookies, fries (air-fried), sandwiches, peanuts, almonds, cashews, sunflower seeds, flans, custards, almost everything goes into this oven.
It helps me save time and gas! I cry when we have a power outage and my food is half baked. You can imagine. Oh no, perhaps you can't; it all will depend on where you live 馃槓
I keep photos of my little oven when it was brand new. I paid $99 for it four years ago at Ivoo (Lecheria).
I bought my smoothie blender on sale at Daka four years ago. I paid $35 for it. I use it for smoothies and many other things: mayonnaise, pesto, dips, etc...
But when I require "muscle," I use my 25-year-old Oster.
Silicone Baguette Molds. They where a discovery I made at Traki.
It was a bargain. I paid less than $1 for two molds. I love them because they hold the dough in such a way that it takes the characteristic shape of the baguette.
My kitchen scale was a hand me down. I received it two years ago from my eldest sister, and it has been very useful. I'd been using a small one that gave me a lot of work. Here I weigh everything. Nothing is hidden from the great all-seeing eye of Mordor. When the greengrocer thinks he's more clever than me, I find out when I get home and then I cry, ha, ha, ha. Because life is like that, hard and black as an old black bean; the greengrocer will trick you and there's nothing you can do about it.
I hope you have seen enough of my kitchen and my toys, for it's time for me to click on the publish button.
Thank you so much for your visit :)
All text and images are my own. I have taken the pictures with my Redmi 9T cell phone. And if any GIFs here, I've used GIPHY for all them.
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@andresromero 馃枻
@andresromero 馃枻