Now this will by no means be an exhaustive list of all the many wonderful kitchen items out there. But I wanted to share at least a few of the ones that have really stood out to me and my family. These are the items I would by right away if I had to start all over again. They’re super helpful and I love using them!
Keurig My K-Cup Reusable Coffee Filter
Anyone else got tired of using the standard coffee pot and switched to a Keurig? We LOVE our Keurig, but when we first got it we did miss being able to use our own coffee blends. For a while we just kept a coffee pot around just in case we started missing one of our favorite roasts too much.
But then we figured out there there is a re-suable coffee filter you can get which allows you to use your own ground coffee. And it works really well!
It’s kind of one of those things I think they should really just include with the Keurig machine but fortunately they only cost a few bucks to get. I use the K55 Keurig Coffee Maker so this fits perfectly. It’s also designed to fit the following Keurig K-Cup brewers: K10 MINI Plus, K15, K40/45, K55, K60/65, K70/75/79.
So ultimately, if you want to be able to make that great cup of coffee again using your own coffee and not have to have a separate coffee pot around just to do that, then I’d highly recommend picking up one of these coffee filters.
Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book
During the summer, one of our favorite things to do is make homemade ice cream. It all started when I had tried a friend’s homemade ice cream. I was so impressed with how good it tasted that I wanted to learn how to do that myself.
We started out with an entry level ice cream maker by Cuisinart (that can also be used to make Gelato). I then tried some of the recipes that were included with this ice cream maker and they turned out pretty good but I wasn’t really amazed by any of them.
This led me to start trying different ice cream recipe books for people making ice cream at home. Eventually I came across Ben & Jerry’s “Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book” and this was a winner! Now when we made ice cream it was bursting with more flavor and was a lot more exciting to make and eat. The downside is there is a little more effort with the ingredients, but the payoff in how good the ice cream tastes afterwards is well worth it!
Last time I looked at our local bookstore, I didn’t see it there.
The Vitamix Cookbook
Another essential book in our kitchen is the Vitamix Cookbook. We love our Vitamix and use it ALL the time. We have the Vitamix 5200 and both my son and I use this to make smoothies on a daily basis. The challenge though is we kind of got into a routine and rut of what we liked to make and didn’t realize how much more we could use our Vitamix for.
So someone had recommended the Vitamix Cookbook to me at the health foods store. They were talking about all these cool things like soups, sauces, pancakes, and even entrees. I was kind of shocked as I had no idea you could make all these things.
We ordered the cookbook and started trying all the different recipes. And sure enough, you really can do all these incredible things with your Vitamix! I was actually astounded that we had owned our Vitamix blender as long as we had and that we had never really used it to it’s full potential.
One of my favorite new recipes to make now are apple pancakes. It’s like our new family favorite! So if you’re thinking of getting a Vitamix or already have one, I’d highly recommend picking up a copy of this recipe book.