Kitchen Splurge

I am not one of those people that just loves to cook. Over the years I've learned to cook pretty well, but I try to get out of it as much as I can. This has led to a reliance on prepared foods and restaurants, neither of which are good for the budget. Lately, I've been making an effort to cook more from scratch. Since I don't really enjoy it, I want to get it all done at once, so I've been making and freezing food for several meals at once.

Over the last few weeks of doing this, I've noticed some deficiencies in my kitchen equipment, so I picked up several things to make my work less frustrating:

• small bamboo cutting board (so I can stop using dinner plates for cutting onions)
• plastic cutting mats (for rolling cookie and dumpling dough)
• bottle brush thingy (got it so I could clean the kids' plastic drink bottles, but it is too big)
• large glass jar for sun tea
• potato peelers (planning on recruiting the kids for this chore)
• rubber spatula (the old one is disintegrating)
• ceramic casserole dish (the old one is dead)
• extra long rubber gloves
• pretty, light-weight apron (to keep grease and bleach from ruining any more of my shirts)

 And probably some other stuff I can't remember. Anyway, I'm kind of looking forward to having an easier time of my next cooking marathon.