A beautiful kitchen is one without a lot of gadgets and wires, in my ninja opinion. The coffee maker, in my case, is a must, but otherwise, I don’t want machinery crowding the counter.
I don't believe in non-stick pans
I recently bought these pizza pop-tart-like pastries (so healthy, I know. at least I wasn’t making pizza with pop tarts), and upon returning home, realized I do not own a toaster! Undeterred, I found a great way to toast without a toaster oven at home:
Simply grab a skillet, set it to medium, toss some salt (I used large grain natural sea salt) in it, and prop the bread or strudle on top! I think this works because it sits so closely to the heat, but doesn’t touch it because the grains keep it suspended. After a minute or so on each side, I had a nice toasty pizza tart ready to eat. I did, incidentally, brush off each side to prevent excess sodium intake.
Unlike salt roasting, as pictured here by faithfullness farm:
click the photo to check out how to do that
I only used a sprinkle of salt… like just enough to prop it off the hot bottom of the pan.
Incidentally, I’d like to put in a good-word for cast-iron and copper (my fave) skillets and frying pans. Many questions have been raised about the safety of nonstick cookware, mostly because of environmental concerns about perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA)—also known as C-8—a chemical used to bond the nonstick coating to the pan. It’s been shown to cause cancer in lab animals. One of my life philosophies is, when in doubt, keep it simple, so I think it probably can do more good than harm to stick to cooking pans that aren’t coated in chemicals.
One more aside- to keep copper pans sparkling like new, you can use salt and lemon to shine them up like magic! Apparently ketchup works too.
