Saturday, February 5, 2011

Cooking Abroad

Eating in restaurants all the time can get old, let alone costly.  For longer stays, we have tried to find furnished places with kitchens.  But there are always some things that you wish you had, that didn’t come with the kitchen you rented.

This time, we brought with us a number of things.  Obviously, they had to be small and pack well.  No mega food processor with a dozen cutting attachments!  Here is a list of the items:

Vinturi wine aerator.  This was not really essential, but it works well with red wine.
Corkscrew/bottle opener.
Two small kitchen knives.  Most places seem to have had one medium-sized one, but that doesn’t always cut it.  (Sorry for the bad pun.)  (Plenty more where that came from!)
Plastic measuring spoons.  These are English measurements, not metric.
Coffee mugs.  (2) because we like more than the small cups.
Whisk.  This one has a short handle.
Garlic press.
Coffee measure.
Plastic food containers.  A few small ones, to be washed and out and reused for leftovers.
Ziploc bags.  A few medium and a few small ones,  also to be washed out, hung out to dry, and reused.
Salt and pepper shakers, the disposable picnic sized variety.
Splenda in packets.  It is hard to find overseas.  The other sweeteners are easy to find.

After two months here in Santiago, here are two things that we wished we had brought, and will definitely pack when we head to Ireland and Paris in May:

Cookie sheet.  Takes no space at all.
A one-cup measuring cup.
Heat resistant spatula
Wooden or plastic spoon

We also bought a five-dollar Teflon-coated wok here in Santiago.  That will get left behind.

1 comment:

  1. Hello friends!
    Providencia , Santiango is not similar to Palermo Soho , Buenos Aires (Providencia is a new Santiago and Palermo Soho is old Buenos Aires) but enjoy the evenings in Palermo, a mixture of NY Soho, Latine distric, Paris, and old inmigrants districts, Buenos Aires. Rodolfo

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