I need some fresh kitchen linens.

DH found the small bottle of bleach i purchased during lock-down and put it in the laundry 'softener' tray. Full strength. Thought he would help whiten the whites. But it ruins the next load of darks. (he did that ten years ago so i hide the bleach)

Not pink! Shocking! But I LOVE IT! It will go nicely with my Duncan the Punkin one. Fall cooking staples! And it was on sale! It's a small one, but useful nonetheless. I love special holiday stuff!

We are entertaining again. Nothing big or formal. Max 8-10+us. One recent favorite and easy prep ahead is DimSum. I can steam vegetables and various dumplings. I have two sets of bamboo steamer baskets. One large 10inch set is probably 30 years old. I've had the 8inch set on the left for a couple years and use it all-the-time.

Looking for a couple more sets.

Maybe another 8inch the same brand for a 4 stack.

My vintage large set fits small tart pans for transporting. I've used them for fresh spring rolls and sushi. The 8 inch fits easily in my fridge for cold things. The three tier might just round out the DimSum table.

Maybe buy the man a big tub of OxiClean? Bleach is great for what you bought it for, but degrades textiles and is supposed to be bad for pipes. ;)

There was a clearance sale, with some extra discounts, and I bought some tools just because they made me happy: A couple cupped and curved, silicone over steel scrapers, small for jars, and large for things like blenders. A blender specific croupier's rake in miniature from Vita-mix for scraping blades—I haven't tried it yet, but the blades are my bugaboo. A really beautiful walnut cooking spoon and matching angled spatula. A special little brush for cleaning crevices in bundt pans. And I also got the Kitchen Aid pasta roller on a great discount, because my recent injury makes rolling out impossible and setting up my mechanical pasta machine not to be thought of, even if I had the oomph to crank it. They use the KA on TV a lot, so I'm hopeful... The (online) shopping therapy was worth it just in itself, but I think these will be good additions to my kitchen.

My wok is back in stock on the Zwilling website. Beautiful carbon steel and surface. Miles above my college wok i retired years ago.

We have oxi-clean and another borax type powder. (eye roll), lol.

Another desire not really needed is noodle/pasta/vegetable baskets. Saw them a dozen or more years ago in a restaurant supply store.

One simmering back burner pot...blanching vegetables, noodles, dumplings, shrimp?....endless uses. Sometimes i want various things blanched at different times....

Some dumb-dumb in the negative comments said it needed a large pot of water....nope, rest on the bottom of the pot, then use the hook on the top edge of the pot to drain.....she put the baskets on the top edge to cook/simmer.

I half a half dozen kitchen scissors. Only a couple are go-to. A double pack a few years ago are garbage....falling apart. My favorite are 20 yers old and similar to this pair recommended.

I just ordered this fish spatula, through ATK it came to $42 total which is insane for a spatula but better than $65. Seems to get good reviews.

FOAS--some of that price pays for the name!

Sleevendog, your recommended shears are very similar to mine, too. Truly excellent. I love the tabs to breaking the seals on jars! I learned the churchkey trick here in GF, but mine is an OXO rather than a proper stamped churchkey, and kind of too thick. I give this kind as token presents.

I noticed what else I got from the sale when I was tidying the kitchen. I had been scouring the appropriate websites for a particular sized square tart pan with no luck. At the sale they had a rectangular one that was otherwise the right size and features, so I got that. Of course, I don't remember what I needed a specifically square tart for... It is tin, but the edges are polished enough that they don't cut fingers, which is a nice feature.

Of course I am. But I’m also paying for something that both ATK and SE rated tops.

I too recently bought a small jar size scraper plllog…lovely being able to get those last bits of vegemite out of the jar LOL. I also bought a dough cutter scraper, so much easier dividing a dough mix into four for flat breads.

I did just buy a new pair of kitchen shears after my old cheapo ones finally came irreparably apart after more than a decade, maybe 2. They stayed nice and sharp all that time too.

New ones look like this, but in blue.

I like having all the extra bits and bobs too. My new ones are Farberware and they were also quite inexpensive - from Marshall's.

For filling jars with powders or ground things I just use a sheet of A4 rolled into a cone. You can change the aperture easily. Pepper, for example, I just grind straight onto the sheet and can then easily pour it into the container.

I went to Home Goods the other day for the first time since before 2020. I needed some thin terry bath mats that don’t seem to be sold on Amz. As I wandered through the kitchen section, I picked up something labeled as a pizza roller similar to what’s shown in the picture below. I thought it might be handy for rolling puff pastry bits or even dough bits when I don’t need the width of a big rolling pin. If it’s not helpful, I only lose a $5 investment.

Speaking of Home Goods, I was amazed at their offering of organizing bins. I could have saved some cash if I had gone there when I was setting up my new-to-me house last year.

No new tools/gadgets but I picked up some fun Spring items for the kitchen…ceramic bunny ”holder” and kitchen towels.

Not quite 2024, but at Christmas our DD and her husband and baby came over to stay in a vacation apartment for two weeks and asked if we had a blender or similar to lend them to make baby food. We have our main house 100km from the city and DH works north of the city so we also have a unit in the city so he can commute during the week.

Because DH doesn't cook much, when I go to stay for any extended period I have to schlepp specialist equipment I want to use, including my very old (definitely 20 years or more) Braun Multiquick, which I love because it is versatile and I don't really need a big dedicated food processor.

I had a small dilemma, because if I lent DD the stick blender I was also most likely going to need it myself. Light bulb moment- I bought a new Multiquick so that after DD used the stick blender I could bring the new one back to our place in the country and leave the old one in the city unit so I wouldn't have to migrate it back and forth :-)

S, congrats on the spice tools! I meant to say before. I have some I love—but for larger things like peppercorns into the mill, I find a dough sized piping tip centered over the hole most useful, better than any funnel!

Colleen, yours is a cousin to my stick blender. Congrats on your new one and the dual use plan.

I bought some five-blade scissors a couple of weeks ago

because I saw someone on a Youtube video using them to chop herbs, and they looked very efficient. They do work well, but so far I've only chopped basil with them. I left them in L.A., but if I had them here, I would have used them to chop cilantro. They really aren't necessary, but I do like the convenience. I did not buy the cheapest ones, but I also do not know if there is really a difference.

Since we are moving everything in L.A. to Cathedral City by the end of May, I'm trying to downsize rather that accumulate more. For the kitchens, I pretty much have everything I need in Cathedral City, and so when I bring what I have in L.A., most of that will be duplicated, but some of what I have in CC is newer and better because I bought some new pans and other things during the kitchen reno here, as I needed to cook on an induction burner while the kitchen was out of commission.

I just found this long lost friend. Went missing 4-5 years ago BC, (before covid), when we did some minor renovations...new wall ovens. Gained a couple telescopic drawers that house kitchen towels and less used tools like potato masher, danish dough whisks, etc.

Not at all a necessary tool, but being a plant based forward diet, nice to have a quick simple salad topping without much effort. Rest in an ice bath with some AC vinegar for a quick 2 hour pickled salad.

It now lives on one of my magnetic knife strips...always handy, no longer lost.

I bought a set of stainless steel mixing bowls with lids and new oven mitts from HomeGoods recently.