Some of my cooking things

Here's a picture of a corner of my dining room. DH gave up and finally put some industrial-grade shelving there so I could pile up some of my books and the tools I use most often.

This is probably 1/15 of my cookbook collection. The rest is stored in my office on two 5'-high bookshelves or they're scattered around the house. I switch out books into the dining room, depending on what I'm cooking most. I also have a binder where I store recipes I find, and my precious cooking notebook is stored here. I take notes on nearly everything I cook. (OK, so I've got a geek gene.)

The equipment you see -- over on the left on the bookshelf is a salad spinner. I use that constantly in the summer. On the top right shelf there's my hand-cranked pasta machine (we're having wild mushroom ravioli tonight!) and my ice cream machine. We make a quart of ice cream once a week in the summer. Between these you can barely see a small lab-grade scale. I use this frequently, mostly for baking. It also has a grams-to-ounce converter and it's sensitive to 1/g. (More geek gene.)

On the second shelf to the right is a 5.5-qt. Le Creuset French oven which gets lot of use. Next to that is an el cheapo Dutch oven from TJ Maxx, which has lasted for years. The inside is a little dark, but it still works fine and is one of my favorite pieces of equipment.

Next shelf you see an antique 1 qt. Le Creuset saucepot with a pouring lip. I like this for melting butter. I don't use it often, but it really comes in handy sometimes. Next to that is a 2.5 qt. white Le Creuset French oven. This gets almost constant use, summer and winter.

On the bottom shelf to the left is my water bath canner. This, too, gets constant use in the summer. I'm always canning jams, jellies, or tomatoes. In the next couple weeks I'll be making pints of spaghetti sauce for the winter with the bounty of tomatoes from our garden. Next to the canner is a humungous Lodge enamel cast iron Dutch oven -- apple green -- a gift from mom for my 40th birthday. You could probably cook a turkey in this thing. I use the smaller Dutch/French ovens more frequently, but when you need something big ....

Next stop, my pantry. First I have to clean it up!