{A Few of My Favorite Things...Part 4}

And welcome back to Part 4 and the final post in my series on a few of my favorite kitchen items!

Click HERE for Part 1,

HERE for Part 2,

and

HERE for Part 3!

This week is all about Miscellaneous, random stuff, that I love!

Silicone Baking Mitts:

Getting things out of the oven scares me to death. I don't know why. I have never been burned (well, I mean, severely anyways!), but for some reason, it just scares me!

However, I feel a little safer with these! They can handle super high heat, they grip things really, really well, they wipe off easy, they are even dishwasher safe!

Plus, if you accidentally drop them into your oven, they will not catch on fire or even melt for a while, unlike their competitors - the old fashioned cloth type. 

Don't ask. Just trust.

Anyways, I think these came from Sam's Club. 

Hand Mixer:

For reasons that I do not even know, we never had a hand mixer when I was growing up and learning to cook. I don't know why, we just didn't.

But in the last few years, we have broken down and finally splurged!

I love this thing for making little things - icing/frosting's, dips, some types of cake batters....just small amounts and thin things. Never cookie dough or anything heavy and stiff like that.

Tip:

If you are mixing something with powder sugar, or flour that tends to "POOF" everywhere as soon as you turn the mixer on, place a towel over top your mixer and bowl. Turn the mixer on low, and beat gently for a few minutes until the powder substance is at least lightly incorporated. This helps prevent you and your kitchen from completely looking like the white thing on that movie Big Hero Six.

This particular hand-mixer was purchased at Walmart, but like everything else, they can be found just about anywhere. 

Microwave Plate Cover:

A clean kitchen is a big deal to me. And the inside of the microwave is just as important as any other area. Honestly, it's one of my weird-kitchen-quirks: don't walk on my floor while I'm mopping, clean the inside of the microwave. Thank you.

This thing is a life saver!! You just set it over your food while you're heating it up. Any splatter big or small (because they simply are going to happen), will happen all over this thing, instead of all over your microwave. And this thing is WAY easier to wash off, or stick in the dishwasher, than either trying to stand on your head or climb mount Everest to get all the way inside your microwave, and use every muscle in your arm to scrub all the nooks and cranny's clean.

This one came from Walmart.

Mini Food Processor:

Aww, isn't this thing just the cutest? I love mini-anything's!!

We have a regular size food processor and I do use it a lot. But this one is really nice for chopping small quantities of things like nuts, celery and onions, etc.

This one came from Walmart, but we also had one once that came from the Aldi grocery store...they sometimes have some awesome kitchen stuff in there for amazing prices!

Kitchen Scale:

I always sort of wanted one of these, but wasn't really sure if I would use it or not. My mom found this one at Aldi's grocery store for like $5, so if I hated it and never used it, it wasn't a huge deal.

Turns out I love it!!!! I use it all the time.

Again, a little OCD sometimes, so when a recipe calls for 3 pounds of potatoes? Yep! I totally weigh that out!

It's super easy to use and it's just awesome!!

Kitchen Cleaners:

Bar Keeper's Friend Squeeze Bottle:

This is the cleaner I use for the stainless steel pans I talked about in Part 2.

You just squirt some of this on those pans and they wipe right out. It's awesome! And randomly, it smells pretty good too!

We get it from Walmart.

Bar Keeper's Friend Shaker:

This is by far my favorite cleaner for our flat-top stove. It works way better than all the other "specialty" things I have tried. It's just a powder that you shake on, gently scrub off with a non-abrasive sponge or cloth, and then wipe clean.

Awesome Orange Spray:

This is an all-purpose, multi-surface, de-greaser spray. I use it on the table and counter tops. It smells great and makes cleaning up a breeze.

You can get variations of this cleaner most anywhere, but we actually get ours from Dollar Tree.

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And that's all folks!!! 

I hope you enjoyed this serious on a some of my favorite kitchen gadgets!!!