Freewrite // Day 9

5 Kitchen Items That Bring Me Joy Every Day

Do they bring you joy, too?

When I first moved out on a budget, there was one room that I invested in stocking up with goods first: the kitchen.

As an avid foodie, I eat three square meals a day (maybe five if you count all the snacking), so I wanted to ensure that my food-making space had all the things I needed.

Here are the five things that bring soul to my kitchen, some thrifted, some bought all sale.

All loved to bits and pieces that I’ve probably written several poems aout them already.

[1] Pourover ($2)

I’m surprised I haven’t already written a poem about my gorgeous thrifted pourover given that when anyone asks whether thrifting is worth it, I talk about this item.

Since I moved into a place with limited space in a kitchenette, I opted not to have a coffee machine, which would be a permanent fixture that took up that precious space.

Instead, I looked into getting a pourover. At first, I thought I was limited to getting a $5 plastic one or having to pay full price for a $20 ceramic one — plastic just seemed a bit sketchy to use with boiling hot liquid into coffee I’d drink every day, so I really wante da ceramic one.

But I didn’t want to pay $20, and I complained about it, day after day, to my partner. He remembered.

And on one fateful date to thrift some kitchen items, he spotted this beauty among the mugs. A beautiful ceramic pourover that would typically cost me $20 to $30, being sold for $2.

No stains. No cracks.

Just beauty.

And this beauty brings me joy every morning ❤

[2] Microwave ($10)

As someone who used to buy a lot of frozen foods for reheating and has now shifted into batch making food over the week, the microwave has been an incredible part of my food life.

Did you know that microwaves are typically $100+?

I hadn’t even thought of this because the first places that I lived had microwaves built into their kitchens. Realizing just how expensive these machines can get (but knowing how integral they are to my life), I also had to thrift this one.

I found this one at a local “free and for sale” type Facebook group, where another student was moving out of town for good and needed the microwave gone.

This microwave must have been passed down for generations of college students because the student who passed it on to me sold it to me for only $10. Plus, when I looked up the model for some stock photos, none existed. You can’t find this model anywhere anymore.

And, as mentioned in the poem, the buttons speak of a weird era where microwave cooking was all the rage. People cooked so many things in the microwave then that there are buttons on this appliance for rice, soup, ground meat, HOT DOGS, fish and SEAFOOD (in a microwave??).

Seeing it in my kitchen every morning gives me a little chuckle that I hold such a relic from the past that’s still functioning so well.

[3] Rice cooker

The rice cooker is an appliance that permeates every single East Asian household. It’s been so interesting because so many cultures have rice as staples, and my South Asian friends have noted that it’s more typical to learn to cook rice in a pot than to use a rice cooker. (History of the rice cooker piece someday? Stay tuned!)

I really admire that skill because I have tried to make rice in a pot a few times, but it’s such an art and such an involved task that I inevitably use the rice cooker for most things. Plus, my rice cooker has a compartment for steaming, so I can steam vegetables or eggs.

It’s a full meal in one go.

I bought this at full price because I found that I couldn’t figure out if the ones at thrift stores truly worked, but it was $18.

And I eat rice at every meal. Sometimes including breakfast.

[4] Slow cooker ($40)

I’d never heard of a slow cooker until I was 24**, and once I learned what it was, I knew I needed one.

As someone learning to cook and someone with a weak constitution and hyperactive immune system, learning to cook meat has been a wild journey. I’ve since mastered some of it so that I no longer have to overcook all meats, all the time (it was a tragic but necessary educational period of my life, my friends).

But the slow cooker was the appliance I needed to make juicy meats of any variety with no effort. In fact, no effort, unattended cooking is my style:

I love nothing more than to put a bunch of ingredients in and leave it unattended for a long period and then come back to a whole meal. It’s magic. I don’t say this often, but this is the era I wish to live in, and it’s all because of the rice cooker and the slow cooker.

**Until recently I figured out that this is actually not true — I just didn’t know what it was called in English, and the ones I kept seeing advertised were oblong in shape. The one we actually had at home for slow-cooked soups was round.

[5] Magic Bullet — gift

My Magic Bullet is one of the classic ones that come with a main blender, two blades and four cup-like receptacles.

For me, it’s incredibly useful for two specific things.

One, I never saw this coming, but I became a smoothie person? It turns out that the best way for adult, responsible me to trick childish, picky eater me into eating fruits was to blend them into a pulp.

Two, hummus? The hummus you make in a magic bullet might not be as smooth as a more professional or bigger-sized blender, but it’s still passable, especially if you don’t mind some chunkier bits to add to the texture. Hummus single-handedly made vegetable consumption a snack option, and I could not have done it without my Magic Bullet.

All in all, these kitchen items were scouted for versatility and frequency of use and I’m always looking for new ways to experiment with these tools for new recipes without adding new appliances to my kitchen.

In a way, these five kitchen items (along with my 3 different egg pans) make up a functional kitchen.

For me, anyways.

What’s in your kitchen?

Hi I’m Lucy Dan 蛋小姐 (she/her/她) and we’re on Day 9 of my free-writing challenge, where I pick a topic, and run with it. It’s only the 9th day and I’m already feeling the clouds open up in my brain to let the sun through. I like writing again. That’s incredible, right? Ps, you can listen to this and other poems re-imagined in podcast form!

^ by Kasun Ranasinghe