I visit my parents once a year or so, and I like to cook for them. My mother is an indifferent cook at best, and my father can handle making a bowl of cereal, so I know not to expect a particularly well-equipped kitchen. It’s finally arrived at the point where I bring a number of kitchen tools with me because I just can’t cook with what’s on hand.
In particular, there are the same kitchen knives that my mother was using when I was growing up (I’m 44); they’re all serrated, and thus are not only a PITA to use under the best of circumstances, but have never been sharpened or replaced. Seriously, the last time I visited and I suggested that I’d buy them soem decent cutlery for Christmas, my mother couldn’t understand why I would do that - they’ve been working fine for years. I took her most-used kitchen knife, pressed my thumb to the blade, and rubbed it back and forth vigorously. No problem.
Under these billets of steel (I can’t even call them blades), she uses a glass cutting board. Ugh.
So, when I go to visit my folks, I pack:
[ul]
[li]A knife roll with my chef’s knife, paring knife, steel, microplane, and instant-read thermometer,[/li][li]My own cutting board,[/li][li]A little container of kosher salt, and,[/li][li]My favorite whisk.[/li][/ul]
The pots and pans are pretty rough, too, but they work. Plus, it’s hard to get a 10" skillet in the luggage.
Oh, and the other thing going in my Shitty Kitchen Kit: a couple of good quality half-sheet pans and a roll of parchment. Most of the baking sheets I find in people’s houses are about three microns thick and coated with either layers of crud dating back to the Eisenhower administration or some sort of half-assed nonstick coating that probably worked the first time but now seems designed to stick the food to the pan as firmly as possible.
You can do OK covering them with generously oiled aluminum foil, though the pans will warp into unrecognizable shapes and start to smell funny if the oven gets hotter than 275 degrees.
We should come up with a definitive list for the Shitty Kitchen Kit. It wouldn’t be a bad wedding present.
The Shitty Kitchen Kit sounds like a great idea. Here are some of my nominations. Note that these are things that are ‘acceptable’ as opposed to ‘optimum’, and I’m thinking that you should be able to chuck it all in one box and tote it around without any trouble. I picked ten things; spices and/or favorite ingredients would be extra.
High ceilinged kitchens designed for really tall people. A friend has one. I went to her house for Thanksgiving one year. I could barely reach anything. All of my important cooking stuff is stacked on the bottom shelves much to the annoyance of my very tall husband.
It never dawned on me before that glass cutting boards existed till I read this thread. I’d seen them in peoples kitchens and always assumed they were for setting hot pots on to avoid counter damage, and have used them as such. No wonder I couldn’t find their cutting board.
Glass is a terrible cutting surface why would anyone opt for that? Looking at prices the plastic ones are cheaper and to me they are so much more preferable.
I’m a terrible offender here. I’m tall and tend to always use top shelves for storage. Last time I was house sitting for a friend she thanked me for putting away the dishes then scolded me for where I put them, everything was out of reach.
A couple of those silicone liners would cover someone else’s crappy baking sheet, and take up less space in your kit, as they would roll up and eliminate the need for parchment, too. Though that wouldn’t help the funny smell and warping, I guess. Who are these people?
Mixing bowls of decent dimensions. That’s plural, people! And yes, I know you have that craptastic collection of assorted sized plastic, but that’s only to tangibly illustrate the many facets of ‘useless.’ Did someone once tell you that that peeling and blistering on the inside of each one will heal…? Heavy crockery? Stainless steel? Glass? Are you familiar with these materials? Of course you are! Heavy crockery for wrist-snapping dinner plates, stainless steel for showy surfaces, and glass for chopping boards…
It has never taken me more than two attempts to find a given item in the kitchen of any of my relatives, including aunts and second cousins…
except if it’s in SiL’n’Bro’s fridge. If I ever hear that they opened it and the contents came tumbling down, I’ll commiserate but I won’t be surprised. The bug-freak SiL and her Mom share (SiL’s Mom lives with them half the time) means that anything which needs to be stored in the fridge once opened will also be stored there before opening. When the rest of us have soda in cans, we keep most of the stash outside the fridge and replace any can we take out with a room-temperature one: they’ll buy a 36-can pack and despair because “there’s no room!” “Maybe you can find room for a couple of cans and leave the rest in the balcony?” “:eek:”
Apart from cleanliness, my biggest problem with other peoples’ kitchens is that they never put things where they should be. OK, fine, they live there and they can stow their stuff as they see fit, but anyone with half a brain would know that cutlery goes in this drawer and dish towels go in that drawer!
Surely I’m not the only one who finds this??
I hate cooking at my MIL’s. The woman doesn’t own a potato peeler. She peels her potatoes with a paring knife, sending at least 15% of each potato down the garbage disposal. And she rarely wraps things that she puts in the fridge. Yeah, that of pie will be just fine unprotected. No, I don’t want any, thanks.
The solution when we visit them: “Hey, let us take you out to eat!!”
