Equipping My New Kitchen

Last week I wrote about my adventures restocking my kitchen. This week I’ll share how I’ve been equipping it. We were able to bring some stuff from home, but there’s no way we could carry a set of pots and pans and still meet the airline’s weight requirements!

From the photo above, you can see I have a ceramic cook top on my stove. I’m liking it better than I thought I would. My oven seems small and missing a rack, but I’m sure it will be fine for us. Everything’s in Celsius. Fortunately there’s a handy guide on the stove. Rick’s cousin bakes her cakes directly in the tray provided and it looks like you would purchase baking sheets to slide directly into the oven instead of resting them on a rack. [??? Please chime in if you know if this is true or not…]. I took the measurements from the tray we have and stored them in my phone just in case.

Everything else you see in the photo has been easy to find, although some of it is really expensive compared to what you can purchase in the US. You know the first thing I purchased was a bright red dutch oven :). The other pot is a common shape and has an enameled interior as do most of the frying pans we’ve come across. Rick and I love the traditional look of the garlic stoneware container. We paid a euro for it at the local flea market. Rick’s cousins think we were ripped off, lol.

There are small mercantile shops all over the place (similar to Family Dollar) and I think I’ve been in most of them within two miles of my apartment. The mercantiles have been our source for utensils, plates, a few of the spices in the cabinet, and other household items. We’ve been purchasing as much as possible from the local vendors but when necessary we’ve made the trek to the local shopping center which houses an IKEA and a Leroy Merlin, a home improvement store.

I haven’t had the IKEA experience before. Wow! It’s an impressive store, but if you’re in a hurry fugeddabowdit! I love the furnishings and kitchen items we purchased there, but I’m not in a hurry to visit any time soon! I felt like a mouse in a loud, overheated maze!

In September I wrote about some equipment I had to have, and I brought quite a few items with me. (I traded space/weight with a jacket I didn’t wear that often.) My bench knife is missing from the photo, but you can see my danish whisk and favorite knives (with the white handles). I brought the micro-plane because, quite frankly, it’s wasted on my son. The measuring cups and spoons have dual measurements listed. I thought they would come in handy as I’m not ready to embrace a kitchen scale on a regular basis.

IKEA yielded a grater, cutting boards, salad spinner and other organizational items we haven’t installed yet. The only thing I had difficulty finding was baking trays. They were located in a mercantile a little outside of the area I normally shop. Luckily I had the measurements in my phone! Although they don’t fit in the slides, at least they fit in the oven, hahaha.

The closest thing to WalMart I’ve seen is called Carrefours and their selection of just about any item is basic and limited. Same for the large department store, El Corte Inglés. To be honest, I prefer the charm of the locally owned shops over the big stores, but there are limits! The toaster oven (pictured above) and the coffee maker were much cheaper at the big shopping center. However, we were able to purchase an oil filled heater for less at the local appliance store. As with the food items, it’s a matter of knowing what’s for sale in the various stores and how much it’s going to cost you. Even so, we are spoiled in the US between the choices we have, the trade agreements that allow for cheap goods and the absence of a value added tax on goods and services (as much as 21% in Spain).

We made a conscious decision not to purchase a microwave, but we had to buy a refrigerator and a front loading washing machine. From what we’ve been told, it’s not uncommon for people to purchase their own appliances and take them with them. In our case, the land lady graciously agreed to reimburse us in the form of a reduced rent.

So, there you have it! It’s been an adventure equipping a new kitchen! The only thing I don’t have from my list of indispensable items is a stick blender, but I have narrowed down my choices. I’ll manage without one for the time being. I’m ready to start cooking!