Kitchen Gadgets

I hope my last post wasn't too frightening. When DH read it even he was surprised and he's been getting peeks inside my brain for 14 years now.

Last night I went to a pampered chef party and bought more stuff. Some stuff I needed, some stuff I didn't but I am enamored with gadgets. Any gadget really, kitchen gadgets, electronic gadgets, crafty gadgets ... but today I'll focus on the kitchen.

When Paul and I (Paul is DH - he said I could use his name) decided to eat raw we accumulated gadgets pretty quickly.

1. Masticating Juicer - we got this when we did the juice fast. Love the juice, the cleanup is messy. We haven't used it since moving to raw food.
2. Food processor - I know lots of folks have one of these already, I didn't. We use it several times a week now for raw food prep.
3. High speed blender - we had a standard blender that didn't do much and only made a mess of smoothies. When we moved up to the high speed blender we were amazed. Our smoothies are smooth, and we use it to make sauces for raw food meals, and it's used to make nut milks. We have a Vita-Mix and use it every day - sometimes multiple times.
4. Dehydrator - We got along without this for a while but we have successfully used it to make some nice raw tortillas, cookies and crackers.
5. Spiral Slicer - this was a low cost item. It's great for making 'noodles' out of veggies. We don't use it very often. I don't know that I would consider it a 'must have'.
6. Mandolin - I got ours for $9 at some evil box store. I will eventually upgrade to a more professional version. We use it frequently but it just doesn't slice as thin as I'd like sometimes. It does slice thinner than the food processor plate so I did need to duplicate this particular item.
7. Cheese cloth and a large, fine mesh strainer - this is needed to strain your nut milks. There are also 'nut milk bags' on the market but cheesecloth is cheap and the milks I've made have not been too gritty.

I realize I have been singing the praises of raw eating but want to let you know that it's not a 'diet'. I use the term diet to mean the food we eat not a weight loss program. In order to loose weight while eating raw food, I still count calories. A calorie is a calorie - you can't escape them. If anything, I've noticed that our diet is full of them, nuts and avocados are calorie dense. The saving grace is that the food is very satisfying so we eat a lower quantity of the high calorie items while filling up on the things like greens, veggies and fruit. For us bread is a treat and with very little dairy in our diet we've cut back on cheese and butter as well.