Ok, so it’s not our typical kitchen. But we are enjoying our coronavirus isolation in Colorado, in a very interesting house. Basically a large performance/gathering space, converted to an immense living studio. (with extra bedroom upstairs) More pics to come later, but the house is just as amazing as the kitchen, and comes complete with a 55 foot (17m) wide living room with white grand piano, and a mountain lion as well! Coming from Asia, though, we are just happy to have an oven. Though in this case, that’s two ovens and a couple of warming drawers. And six gas burners, an oil fryer, and griddle surface…
There are a few kitchen essentials that we travel with. We got a 4 pack of lightweight plastic storage containers when we started in New Zealand, and have kept them since. Hardly any place we stay has storage containers for leftovers, so they are very handy. And they take a bit of space in luggage, but weigh next to nothing. The grey grid object is a silicone pot holder. Useful for handling hot items, and to protect surfaces from hot pans. The 3 Victorinox serrated knives we picked up in Switzerland on our honeymoon over twenty years ago. Very sharp and handy. It’s rare to find sharp knives in rentals. They are starting to dull down now, so will replace them with a new set from Victorinox, but this time with more of a pointed tip. Last, the blue and grey sheets are Ikea cutting boards. Super lightweight. The grey ones are just one of the larger size cut in two. There are a lot of places we stay where the cutting boards don’t look very good, or don’t exist. And these have the advantage that they can be curved into a U shape to slide ingredients into a pan.
Clockwise from the lower left- binder clips, always needed to close a bag when twist ties won’t work. A couple of open cell scrubbies, which we find work great for dishes. We found these in Korea and Taiwan, and picked up a few extra to travel with. A bottle opener, just in case. A folding coffee maker- shown again later. A really sharp veggie peeler, because these are generally non-existent in rentals, or so dull as to be useless. Made by Kuhn Rikon, and highly recommended. But watch the fingers, it will peel anything! A can opener, because there are rentals that don’t have a functioning one. This one is made in Germany, but I don’t see a name on it. A nice pink mesh bag to hold everything. A couple of sturdy plastic zip bags to hold toothpics, twist ties and the like. Since we got these in Korea, of course they have happy breads on the bag! And finally, a knife sharpener by Accusharp. It makes most knives very sharp in about 15 seconds per knife. Doesn’t work on all knives, I think some knife edge angles aren’t correct for it. It shaves a little of the blade edge off using tungsten carbide blades, so I wouldn’t use it on a top end knife set. But it works well for what we need.
Our expanding coffee filter in use. Made by Sea to Summit for backpakers, it has it’s own stainless steel filter built in. Our filter is starting to wear out from stirring with a spoon, but that’s after maybe 700 cups of coffee. Drip coffee makers are rare in New Zealand or Asia, and coffee presses were in about 1/3 of the places we stayed. So this got a lot of use. Highly recommended. If you use one, do take care to insert the filter in the correct direction- fine mesh towards the top.
