kitchen small applianceThis is one of the handiest kitchen small appliances I've ever had and mine just quit on me. Thank goodness I was able to order a new one before the Christmas holidays get here. I love having a stick blender like this Sunbeam 2 Speed Hand Blender. I've had my old blender for years and the Sunbeam that I ordered has features that I'm really going to like. This one has a removable blender stick so I can put it in the dishwasher, and it even has a chopping blade for bigger jobs. The old stick blender was a one piece unit so I had to be really careful wnen I was handwashing it so I wouldn't get the motor wet. The new one comes with the blending jar so the unit will stand up in the cabinet instead of laying on its side, as it does now. We found the stick blender at Lucia's Store located at http://www.luciasstore.com, a site with some really useful products for the home, garden and kitchen.


Kitchen small appliances are so handy, especially the stick blenders. I make a lot of split pea soup in the winter and roasted red pepper soup in the summer, along with gazpacho. It's so much easier than using a regular blender because there's no worry about pouring boiling hot liquids into a blender and having them come cascading out the top, making a mess on the countertop and the blender. When using the stick blenders, the blender goes in the pot and does the mixing and it's generally a splash proof process. Other indispensable kitchen small appliances for the holidays are the special ones we use for the ethnic food traditions. My lefse grill does a fine job of making the potato tortillas that Swedes eat and a deep fryer for the rosettes that we all love.

These kitchen small appliances have other applications, as well. The lefse grill is used to make big cheese tortillas and the deep fryer is used less frequently, but still used to make chicken tenders from scratch. We like kitchen small appliances because they use less electricity than the big ones and that's important, not just for the electric bill, but also for the environment. We hardly ever use the oven anymore, opting for our kitchen small appliance that's probably the most used device in the house: the convection oven/microwave combo. It's big enough to bake a pizza but must be 1/4 the size. It cooks food just as well as the big oven, too, so it just makes sense to use kitchen small appliances instead of the energy hogs that we had been using before we discovered a better way to cook and bake.