How I Know I Am Now An Adult

I seem to have reached the age of my life where I get really excited about kitchen-y things. Even before I went paleo; in the last couple years I found myself getting gradually more excited by shopping for things like ceramic dish sets and flatware. Now that I am actually learning to cook, places like William Sonoma and Sur la Table are favored destinations instead of blind spots on my mental shopping map. Thus, I resigned myself to the inevitable process of aging when I filled up my Christmas list this year with kitchen supplies and cooking gadgets.


Some of my new toys include:

• A dehydrator. Now I can finally have grass-fed, sugar-and-additive free jerkies!
• A dutch oven. My crockpot and I have reached a straining point in our relationship. More on that to come.
• A new crockpot. I have suspicions that the heating element in my old one is faulty. Also this one has a locking lid! Perfect for, say, bringing an entire batch of chestnut soup to a dinner party without having it spill all over the inside of the trunk.
• A mandoline. Specifically for trying to make vegetable chips, fried in healthy coconut oil.
• An immersion blender. For all the soups!
• A stack of new paleo cookbooks. Mom says that she got every paleo cookbook she could find on Amazon, with the plan that whichever ones I already had, she would keep for herself. Now that I have so many, I hope to do some reviews of these books sometime soon.

This is perhaps the first time in my life that Santa has brought me every toy I wanted. Perhaps he approves of my lifestyle. I probably shouldn't push it by asking for reindeer jerky next year.

Happy holidays to you all!