ami's Profile

I'm a fan of the Target gift card, assuming that there's a Target nearby.

Hah! I immediately thought, "I bet this would do great with Asians," and -- sure enough -- it's designed by Japanese.

I certainly would like to have one in my home.

What was the one thing, or things, that you were glad you spent money on?
- Trivection oven. It really does cut down cooking time and gives me perfectly tender poultry with crispy skin every time!
- custom cabinets. Almost everything is exactly where we want them.
- low divide dual basin sink. Two basins for cooking prep, but acts like one huge basin when I'm washing cookie pans.
- low-e window. Makes the west-facing kitchen much cooler.

What is your biggest regret in re-doing your kitchen or what would you do over?
- getting pull out shelf in pantry, we never use it.
- too deep shelves in pantry -- so much gets lost in the back.
- getting a dual fuel range. I probably would have been fine with the cheaper all-gas range since I have a second oven that's electric.

What was the smartest decision you made in your new kitchen?
- making both ovens under the counter, which freed up a nice chunk of countertop.
- Corian countertops. Even though I like the look of wood & marble, I'm all about low maintenance.
- keeping the lightboxes hidden on top of the cabinets. They throw light up to our angled white ceiling, which diffuses and reflects the light quite nicely.
- getting a Chinese stainless steel hood for our range. It costs a fraction of most other models but can still handle Chinese cooking. The fan has enough suction that it can hold up a glass wok lid!

FWIW, we replaced paper towels with cut up old shirts and socks. We have a separate bin in the laundry room (which is conveniently adjacent to our kitchen) for these kitchen rags. When the bin is full, we do a laundry load. Using a clean rag each time has encouraged us to wipe down our countertops since we don't have to worry about rinsing out the rag and hanging it to dry somewhere.

We still use paper towels to dry off raw meat & soak oil from a pan though.

We also find that we only have to take out garbage every 2-3wks now that we use a NatureMill composter. FWIW, I strongly recommend keeping the NatureMill out of any living area (i.e. in garage or on covered patio) -- it can get stinky when it's warm and you've just added a fresh load of scraps.

Thanks for the suggestions. The chairs are plastic, but I don't know what kind of plastic.

These chairs are an original set from the '70s (or so we were told and have no reason to think otherwise), and we bought them for our kitchen. We have 7 fluorescent ballasts in the kitchen that we rather like, so changing lighting is out.

I think that we're going to try an Oxyclean paste somewhere in a hidden curve first. If that doesn't work, we'll explore our paint options.

katec, thanks for the Rustoleum rec! It's good to know you had a successful experience with it.

milk b/c my SO is addicted.
random seasonal fruit(s) for snacking.
random seasonal vegetable(s) as a side dish.

we're fortunate in that we have room to buy in bulk if we choose, so everything else is "as needed" or if we run out. our cooking flips between western and asian, so there's no particular non-bulk perishable ingredient that is used for both.

I agree with buffalogirl: I'm saddened by our march to paperless reading materials. I love reading design blogs, but I much prefer flipping through a magazine. I almost never impulse buy mags. I fly every other month, so I subscribe to the mags that I like (currently, Domino is the only one since Budget Living went under) and bring them on the plane with me.

With the diving economy, I'm more interested in home mags than fashion mags. For some reason I feel that redecorating the house is a better use of my money than buying my nth pair of jeans. Obviously I'm out of step with most others since all the home mags are folding.

To be honest, I've never been sold on this concept b/c I prefer that the texture be on the outside of the dish with a smooth interior. It'd be much easier to clean that way, and you would also get the tactile experience when holding the dish.

practicallydone, it's very mean to taunt our lack of delicious fresh cucumbers! I think that you need to share with the rest of the class. ;)

Love it, but we redid our entire backsplash in seafoam green glass tile so I'm a bit biased.