My Favorite Kitchen Appliances for Healthy and Easy Living!
My sister has a knack for giving me Christmas gifts that I actually love and use for years. Many of them have been kitchen appliances that she has bought for herself and enjoyed so much that she wanted me to have one. Here are some of my favorites!
Nutribullet Magic Bullet Blender. This powerful little machine is great for making fruit smoothies. My favorite ingredients are frozen pineapple, frozen strawberries, coconut water and coconut milk, and sometimes a banana or other berries. Occasionally I will add baby spinach. This drink is very good for replacing electrolytes after a hot, sweaty run! You can also make chocolate milk shakes and other yummy concoctions.
Instapot Pressure Cooker. When she gave me this I was a little terrified of it. I discovered that I was not alone, and thanks to Youtube, I found plenty of helpful videos and learned it was not scary or hard to use at all ! Since we try avoid most grains and eat a lot of meat in my family, the Instapot has been super helpful at quickly cooking meat, boiled eggs, and stews. I love to cook a roast, frozen chicken breasts (30 minutes or less) , pork roast or stew meat with cut up meat and veggies ( about one hour) and it's so fast , even with frozen meat! It's truly a time saver. Boiled eggs only take 5 minutes and are so easy to peel! Today I made black eyed peas in the pot for the first time. So easy and delicious! One of my favorite features is that it will keep the food warm after cooking for hours. I actually gave away my crock pot because I have no use for it now.
Soda Stream. This was my gift for Christmas 2019 and it's already been used many times. No more paying ridiculous prices for carbonated water! We love Topo Chico but it's too expensive. With Soda Stream you can carbonate and flavor your own filtered water at home. I love it! The one she bought for me came with two bottles so the kids have one and I have one.
Lastly, and I think my mom actually bought this one for me, I love my KEURIG Coffee maker. My family does not drink a lot of coffee. Most of us will only drink one cup a day and not all at the same time. We are on different schedules ! I don't like the high cost of the little K cups but I buy the cheapest ones I can, the store brand or whatever is on sale. I know, I know, it's not very eco-friendly, but we are pretty good about that in other ways. This is good for me because if I drink too much coffee I get panic attacks. It's not the caffeine, I can handle large amounts of that. It's something in the coffee itself. I actually went several years not drinking coffee at all, but then I learned I could tolerate a medium or light roast coffee in very small doses without issues. So the Keurig is great for that!
How about you? What are your favorite kitchen appliances and why? Share in the comments!