New Kitchen Appliances

Thought I would share some of my newest kitchen stuff I've gotten recently!

I received this for a Christmas present this year-love the red color! It's the mini version of the original so you have to fill up the water every time you use it, which is totally fine with me! I bought the little stand soon after and filled it mostly with iced tea, hot tea, hot chocolate and of course some coffee. So far, I'm loving it!




I bought this for myself after Christmas and I love love love it! I only used the immersion blender part of it just once but I use the chopper part quite often. I'm sure I'll start using the immersion part more as I get used to it. But I highly recommend buying one if you don't already own one!




My substitute for a KitchenAid mixer. I bought it on clearance at Target for $24.99. It so does not work as well as an actual stand mixer. In fact, it kind of sucks! I used it to make my peanut butter cheesecake. It doesn't mix up around the bowl well at all-I had to keep turning the bowl and use a spatula to make sure it mixed. And towards the end, when I got tired of rotating the bowl, I just took off the mixer and used it as a hand mixer. But as often as I bake, it will have to do until I can actually afford the real thing.

Summer Spaghetti Salad

My mom used to make this dish for family get togethers...it makes quite a batch so it's good for potlucks and such. I'm bringing mine to a work potluck for dinner tomorrow night. It comes from Taste of Home.

Ingredients:

1 pkg. (16 oz.) spaghetti
3 medium tomatoes, diced
1 large cucumber, halved and diced
3 small zucchini, diced (I forgot to buy zucchini so I used 3 bell peppers)
1 medium green pepper, diced (I used red instead)
1 medium sweet pepper, diced
1 medium orange pepper, diced (this is the extra pepper I used since I forgot the zucchini)
1 bottle (8 oz.) Italian salad dressing
2 tbsp grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp celery seed
1/8 tsp garlic powder

Cook spaghetti according to pkg directions. Drain and rinse with cold water.

I have issues with dicing..I can never get them small enough so I use this little contraption. It takes a little longer, but it gets all the pieces nice and tiny.


3 bell peppers:

Diced bell peppers:

4 tomatoes (for some reason my computer randomly turns certain pictures on their sides!)-I only used 3:

Diced tomatoes:

Add all veggies to spaghetti and mix/fold in well.

Italian dressing: I picked up a 16 oz bottle and only used half. Make sure to keep the other half for when you are ready to eat the salad.

3 spices:

For dressing: Mix together dressing, spices and Parmesan cheese. Then pour over the noodles and veggies.

Pour dressing over spaghetti/veggie mixture and fold in well. Refrigerate an hour before serving or overnight. Just before serving, mix up spaghetti mixture well....you may have to add some more Italian dressing if it looks too dry. Refrigerate leftovers.

Enjoy!