Favorite kitchen tools

I unpacked two of my favorite kitchen tools tonight.  They have been sitting in their boxes in my pantry since we moved in November.  One is my Kitchen Aid stand mixer, the other is my Pampered Chef loaf pan.  I'm baking some "Best Banana Bread" right now and the apartment smells so good.

While I was unpacking I was thinking about some kitchen related things and since it's been a month since my last post, I thought I would share my random thoughts with you.

The Kitchen Aid mixer is so wonderful.  I generally use it a few times a year (I need to make this bread more often!) for birthday cakes and chocolate chip cookies.  But it has some great uses.  When I was living at home with my parents, my step-mom would make the most wonderful meatloaf.  She would put the meat grinder attachment onto the Kitchen Aid and we would have a mixture of fresh ground chicken, steak, and pork.  The flavors were so good....now I'm thinking that I want to save up for one of those.  The other neat thing you can make is perfectly smooth mashed potatoes (I haven't done this in about 8 1/2 years though).  They are so creamy and fluffy.  It takes a few more minutes, but then again your arm doesn't get tired from all that mashing.

Another thing I was thinking about was how much I love Pampered Chef stoneware.  We use the round pizza stone all the time.  It just stays in the oven, partly because we don't have any storage space for it and partly because we use it so much.  If I had unlimited money and storage space, I would buy all the Pampered Chef stoneware.  I have the pizza stone, the loaf pan, and a small baking dish.  It cooks so evenly and I've never burned anything.

Which led me to think of my ideal kitchen.  It doesn't have to be huge, but it has to have lots of storage.  The only other specific thing I would like would be a sink that you didn't have to use your hands to turn on.  I hate having high bacteria food on my hand and then having to touch the faucet to turn on the water.  I saw an episode of a kitchen planning show on one of those decorating channels one time that had two surgeons who installed the same type of system in their house that they use at the hospital.  I would love that.  No more raw meat or egg germs having a party on my faucet handle.

So those are my kitchen thoughts for the night.  As an added note, I was not paid any endorsements from Kitchen Aid or Pampered Chef for my post tonight. =)