Back in December, my friend Roz bought her first house. The day she moved in, her mother came over with food in a slow cooker and a pot of peeled potatoes that were destined to be turned into mashed potatoes to celebrate the new home. However, when it came time to mash potatoes, Roz's mom discovered that there wasn't a potato masher anywhere to be found in Roz's fairly extensive collection of kitchen paraphernalia.

Because of this utensil encounter, Roz was not at all surprised when, for Christmas, she received her very own potato masher. The thing is, she's just not much of a mashed potato girl, so this new item didn't fill her with excitement. However, just last night, she turned to me and said, "I'm loving my masher, although I still don't use it for potatoes. Guess what I'm making with it!"

Turns out, it has become her new favorite tool for whipping up batches of guacamole (a trick I plan on trying out this weekend). Now I have a question for the rest of you. Do you have a kitchen utensil or appliance that you resisted for a long time but now you adore? Or, do you have something that you use all the time, but not for its intended purpose?

When it comes to my pots and pans, I don't like to play favorites. I don't want my cast iron skillet to think that it is any less loved than my giant stock pot or the 8 inch non-stick saute pan that I always use for eggs (I realize this might sound a little nutty, but go with me here). However, there is one pot that I love above all others in my kitchen. That yellow Dansk pictured above is my very favorite vessel for small batches of soup, steaming bunches of broccoli and boiling up two servings of pasta (it also makes a mean batch of fondue). I also love the way it looks on my turquoise stove from 1966, cheery, bright and ever so vintage.

Do you have a favorite kitchen item? It doesn't have to be only a cooking vessel, it could also be a bowl, spoon, cutting board or knife (to name a few possibilities). Add your pictures of your favorite stuff to our Flickr pool so we can see your beloved objects.

In most conversations about kitchen tools, I'll be the first to step up and say, "Yeah, it's important to use good tools. They make everything easier." And yet, when it came to pastry blenders, for the last 8+ years I have not been following my own advice. I picked up that green-handled one that you see on the left sometime during college at a thrift store. It never worked well and yet I soldiered on, trying to cream butter and sugar together with wires that were constantly bending and spreading so wide that they allowed an entire stick of butter to pass through unmolested. Oh, and did I mention that the handle spins around?

Several weeks ago, I was down in Washington, DC visiting a friend. During the full day I was there, we spend nearly five hours going to three different thrift stores. During the course of that day, I picked up the pastry blender on the right for $.80 (I like good tools but I'm also cheap). I didn't really think much of it until I used the new one tonight. What a difference! The butter broke down easily, the wires didn't bend and the handle stayed right where it was supposed to. Good tools make such a difference!

Ever since I went away to college, I have found myself accumulating cooking utensils. It started out innocently at first. A spatula here, a wooden spoon there. But then suddenly it turned into 12 wooden spoons, seven different rubber scrapers and a cacophony of whisks, slotted spoons and hand beaters. And then came the knives. I acquired a terrific knife from a boyfriend as we were breaking up and it changed my cooking life drastically. It was a world away from the nearly dull knives I grew up with in my parents' house and there was no going back.

I now have a minor obsession with good, sharp knives. A couple of weeks ago, I found myself surfing a restaurant supply website on a Saturday night (it is an exciting life I lead) looking at knives. I couldn't help myself, I placed an order. They arrived Monday and they are better than any new toy I got as a child (not that you would give sharp knives to children). I'm finding myself looking for excuses to chop and slice, just to get another opportunity to take these puppies out for a little exercise.

One of the nice things about buying knives from restaurant supply companies is that you don't have to pay a whole lot of money to get good stuff. Both the knives I bought hovered right around $20 and are fantastic. And they make cooking even more of a joy than normal.

photo by Marisa McClellan

Obviously, we have the refrigerator to keep our foods nicely stored at a chilly 42 degrees or so. However, if you're a grazer like me, you might be opening that refrigerator every hour throughout the day just to grab a nectarine.

Industrial designer Klara Zavadilova has Coool, a food cover which keep fruits and pastry fresh, protected, and easily accessible during the day. The base plate contains a mild cooling system that sets the temperature inside the domed cover from a control. According to the product description, "The cooling system is CFC-free and free from polluting cooling liquids. An additional ventilator inside the cooling chamber ensures that the cold is distributed optimally inside the cover."

[via: Yanko Design]

Sometimes, cooking for one or two every night is just as much of a challenge as cooking for a large family of six. Whereas cooking for a large family requires savvy stretching of dollars and food, cooking for one or two requires the ability to cook in small quantities without wasting food. Of course, that doesn't mean you can't get creative with leftovers.

The micro rice cooker helps out by allowing you to cook a small amount of rice, and conveniently, too, since the ceramic pot goes in the microwave oven. Once the rice is cooked, you can eat straight from the bowl. It's certainly not any faster, since the uncooked rice still has to be washed/rinsed and soaked for 15 minutes before cooking. If you want speed, then just go for the pre-cooked ready packed rice available at Asian markets.

The micro rice cooker is available at Compact Impact for $44. 

[via: popgadget]

Alright, so maybe it doesn't really say "I love you" to anyone else except yourself since this heart-shaped egg frying pan cooks one egg, but it sure is cute, nonetheless The pan is non-stick and has a lid, though I''m not sure what you'd ever use a lid for when cooking one egg!

The pan is available from Pink Gorgeous Shopping in the UK for £5.00. The shopping site also has a number of other cute and kitschy items for the kitchen and home. 

The online store for the Museum of Modern Art has some beautifully designed things for the home and kitchen that if they weren't useful at all (another garlic crusher!) they're all little works of art.

These stainless steel salt and pepper shakers are $28 for the pair. They're sleek, yet adorable with their rounded design and "weeble wobble" effect. The base is heavy, so they never topple over.

More salt and pepper shakers:
Ice cream cones
Sleek and magnetic
Pretty little pigs
Self-shaking shakers for the lazy
Peugeot's electric pepper mill

We can make purty shapes like hearts with fancy waffle irons, and even do free-form pancake art, but what about simple toast?

The Pop Art Toaster has stainless steel stencils that you insert into their toasted with bread, and "tattooes" a birthday cake, heart, snowflake, flower, or smiley face onto your toast. It even lets you brand "Luv U," if you want to send that special guest a message the morning after. Just don't ask us if white or whole wheat will give him/her the wrong idea.

The Pop Art Toaster is $40 and comes in red or white.

In most Japanese restaurants and sushi bars, the chopsticks are those ridiculous splinters of disposable wood that don't deserve a proper chopstick rest. However, I always end up folding the wrapper into a nice little "bench" to rest the tips of my chopsticks do that they don't touch the table.

In nice restaurants, you might get a ceramic chopstick rest shaped like a fish or perhaps a leaf, or sometimes it's just a flat, polished stone. I can't remember what they are officially called in Japanese, but these simple shapes in light, pastel colors from Muji in the UK are beautiful for home. 

They're £0.50 per piece.

Sometimes I think I want sleek. Sometimes I think I want geek. Tonight, I want my salt and pepper shakers to squeak. Like little pink pigs.

These are the cutest salt and pepper shakers I have seen yet, except for the little porcelain ducks I swiped from my parent's garage sale. I love that the pink bodies are made of hand blown glass, but they are made from Pyrex, so no need to be all too delicate. The snouts are brass (and they don't really squeak).

The pair is $65.

If you belong to the Sandra Lee fan club because you can't cook, then the Intelligent Spoon is something you and I, a kitchen gadget geek, can share.

The Intelligent Spoon is the product of an experiment out of the MIT Media Lab that detects temperature, acidity, salinity, and viscosity levels with zinc, gold, zener diode, and aluminum sensors. The spoon sends the information back to a host computer for processing and direction. Kind of like a techno-geeky sous chef/cooking school coach.

Um, I doubt it would help you with a fallen souffle, but it certainly would be able to tell you if you accidentally substitute salt for sugar in your cupcakes.

[via: Engadget]

I am a serious night owl. Since it gets real quiet around 3 AM in these parts, I usually have the TV on, just to remind myself that I actually am awake.

But at 3 AM, the only things being broadcast are infomercials, and suddenly I have found myself completely fascinated by the myriad "miracle" time-saving, space-saving, life-saving kitchen gadgets out there. One that I have recently seen is a pasta cooker. You pour boiling water into the plastic container filled with dry pasta, and 8-10 minutes later, you have cooked pasta.

Excuse me for a second, but how does this save time? If you're cooking pasta on the stove top, you boil water and it takes 8-10 minutes to cook. If you use the magical pasta maker, you still have to boil water, and it still takes 8-10 minutes.

Perhaps the only benefit is that you can drain the water straight from the plastic container with a sieve like lid attachment, which means you save yourself from washing an additional colander.

Will wonder like this never cease?!? I hope not, or else I may not have anything interesting to watch at 3 AM.

One of the traditions associated with the lunar new year is house-cleaning. The idea is similar to "Out with the old, in with the new." You "sweep away" all the bad, and make room in-coming good.

The actual tradition is that the entire house should be cleaned the day before New Year's Day, then on the evening of New Year's Eve, all of the brooms and things used to clean are stored away so that there is no danger of accidentally sweeping out the good things that come in once the New Year arrives.

Now, I'm not going to celebrate the Chinese New Year by busting out a mop, but I do think I might stay within the spirit of the celebration by cleaning out my kitchen. There is a drawer in my kitchen, a very deep drawer, actually, that has a number of kitchen gadgets and tools that should be swept out of my house forever. The thing is, none of them are chipped nor broken. None of them are worn, and that is precisely the problem. They never get any use because they are *ahem* useless kitchen tools.

You have them, too. Like me, though, you're just afraid to throw them away because you think that there will be that ONE time two years from now that you will need it.

Trust me, you won't. And there is absolutely nothing in the world you can't accomplish with a spoon and a very good knife. Some highlights from my kitchen drawer:

• Garlic Peeler - okay, actually, this one doesn't even work all that well.
• Garlic Press - so hard to clean, it's not worth the ease of mincing garlic. I use a knife and kosher salt.
• The Brush - this is something that looks like a painful hairbrush that I still don't know what it was intended for.
• Melon Baller - I never make melon balls. I never make anything that needs to have tiny, cute ball-shapes.
• The Syringe - I have never used it, and actually, like the garlic peeler, it actually doesn't work that well. When I have to baste something, I use a ladle. Or a pastry brush. Then again, after finding Alton Brown's recipe for turkey, never will I baste again.

Take the time this weekend to follow the lunar new year tradition and just toss those useless kitchen gadgets! Don't give them to Goodwill. They should be put completely to rest.