a well equipped kitchen

i'd like to share some of the elements of my kitchen that make culinary life a bit easier. i think we can all agree that cooking in a well equipped kitchen can lead to a special kind of foodie nirvana.

here are some of my favorite things in the kitchen:

bar mops sold by the pound

i got these at sam's club and keep them stacked in a drawer. i use them to dry my hands as i cook, wipe down counters and a million other kitchen duties. when one is soiled, i throw it into the laundry and grab another. sometimes i go through half a dozen in a day. i'd rather have 30 of these guys than 2 kitchen towels from williams sonoma (about the same cost). plus, by not using gobs of paper towels, i'm being friendly to the environment.

lots of poly cutting boards

same theory here as with the bar mops. have lots of them so that when they get dirty you can just grab another. if i see them on sale i usually grab a couple, i think i got the last few for $2 each. there's nothing more frustrating than needing a cutting board and realizing the two you own are both in the dish washer. use separate boards for meat and veggies.

quality cutlery

nice knives are worth the investment. i recently got these two beauties for my birthday! not only do quality, sharp knives make your job easier, they're also safer to use. the less pressure you need to exert on a knife to get the job done, the less chance you'll slip and cut yourself.

cookbook cupboard

i dedicated a cupboard in my kitchen to a selection of cookbooks i'm using and storage for my culiary magazines.
organization + recipes = culinary nirvana! the black book in the center is a homemade cookbook (photo album filled with index cards instead of pictures, complete with tabs) of all my family's recipes. i made them with my mom and gave a copy to my sister.

pizza stone

a pizza stone is good for so many other things than cooking pizza. you can bake cookies on it or you can use it to heat left overs that need to stay crisp (like anything fried). i keep mine in the oven at all times. even if you're not cooking directly on it, it will radiate heat evenly through the cooking time as the oven turns the heat off and on to maintain temperature. the darker it gets, the more seasoned it is.