Within 48 hours of returning home to our stick house for the summer, we had used a blender, bread machine, waffle iron, food processor and panini grill – all appliances we left behind when hitting the road six months ago.
Every RVer has that one gotta-have gizmo they just can’t live without, right? What’s yours?
For those of us without a basement in our rig, storage space comes at a premium. We keep our toaster in the oven when we roll. Kinda gives new meaning to the term toaster oven, eh? Too bad a margarita machine won’t fit inside our Magic Chef oven! Guess we’ll stick to making Republic Texas Tea.
Our jar and bottle opener — the kind that gives you extra leverage for the tough-to-open jars. I’m not big on gadgets. We have a toaster, a microwave, an oven and a little BBQ. For a while when we were based near friends I borrowed a smoothie blender, and gave it back because I never used it and it was always in the way.
Oh man! You guys have gave me so many ideas! I was going to say a can opener! lol!!! Now, I think a toaster and a blender for smoothies is on the list!!! 🙂
It’s fun reading about everyone’s fav appliances! We have quite a few, but I think the best is our Cuisnart blender/food processor-Bill makes smoothies for breakfast & then it has a separate attachment for food processing. We also have an electric wine bottle opener, which I LOVE, a toaster which is used daily, & a small rice cooker-rarely used.
Maria – I LOVE glasses vs plastic & have also brought along my china dishes, I mean, I am living in this thing, not occasionally camping & I hate drinking out of plastic!
One of the best pieces of advice I read before our trip (well there were many) was to not bring a kitchen gadget that does just one thing. Our kitchen space is very limited, only two cabinets for plates and food and one large food drawer so the only large, technically “unneccesary” gadget is our Keruig. They even make them smaller now than the model we have, but luckily it tucks away nicely in the corner of our tiny counter. Brian loves coffee and the thought of his measuring coffee out each day (meaning coffee grounds always collecting on the counter) was just too much for me to handle, so Kcups are a nice relief.
One thing I really want that I don’t have yet: cast iron Dutch oven. I’m going to wait until summer is over to aquire that.
One thing I just acquired that doesn’t need to be in an RV but I am adamantly going to take with me everywhere I go: new Spiegelau beer glasses. Glass is just about the dumbest thing in an RV but once you’ve done a taste comparison of your favorite beer in a regular ol pint glass compared to a beautifully German engineered Spiegelau glass, you may never want to go back. I know I won’t!
We started out with one of those camp toasters too! It didn’t last long. When we fulltimed, we carried around a vegetable juicer. I ended up not using it much because it took too much water to clean and we boondock a lot. I have to say now that we part time, the only real gadget we have is our magic bullet mini blender.
Nice to hear you made through your winter adventures. I have a crock-pot and a blender that is a must for us! O yes and a handy battery can opener too! Catch ya later.
I have not got started yet being a full timer, but I think the one thing in my kitchen I would probably bring along is the one thing in my kitchen right now – a coffee bean grinder.
Jim forgot to mention that MY favorite kitchen gadget I take in the rig is my Cuisinart Mini Food Processor. Found it at a thrift store for $2 and ever since I went (almost) vegan, it’s come in extremely handy. Our other gadget is a Cuisinart hand blender. Tiny thing that does wonders for sauces and such. Those are two things I can’t live without. Oh, and the Toaster. Seriously, that’s it for our gadgets….I think!
We totally started out with one of those stove top toasters. It as pretty terrible. The toast was rock hard and didn’t brown. It finally rusted or something which gave me a reason to toss it. I find frying bread in a dry skillet makes great toast.
Can’t say we a guilty appliance pleasure. The stove top peculator is the closest thing I can think of. Oh wait, we do have a griddle (gift), crockpot, and a tiny george foreman (gift). But we never use those two of them and rarely use the other. We should get rid of them, so we can downsize.
Good to hear from everyone! Didn’t think ya could downasize much further than a 12′ Arctic Fox Camper! 😉 Skillet toast sounds like a great space-saving idea, another reason we love cast iron.
Thanks, Jim. You sure can… and boy are we ready! This is what we are currently looking at: http://www.flippac.com/THE_FLIP_PAC/indexp.html.
I hear nothing but good things about cast irons I have never owned one, but have killed every one I have touched.
Oh gosh… we gifted our soda maker on to the Tacky Texans before we left for the Virgin Islands last fall. We do miss it, for sure.
While in the VI, we loved being able to have space for a couple gadgets. The ones we indulged in while there was a Ninja Blender/Food Processor and a small rice cooker.
Now that we’re looking at vintage buses as our next possible mobile substrate – we’re fantasizing about all the kitchen gadgets we can finally have again after 4 years of sharing less than 80 sq ft of RV space 😀
If I find one of those soda makers at a yard sale this summer, I’m all over it, they look neat.
Hey! I used to use that same toaster when I camped in my little 12′ T@B trailer! But now that I drive a palatial Winnebago View, I bring a fancy $8 toaster 🙂
My favorite kitchen gadgets are my crock pot and camping ball ice cream maker. Never use them at home, so it’s always a treat when camping!
We were just talking about getting one of those! 🙂
Our VitaMix was our guilty appliance pleasure… though we also had a rice cooker, toaster, popcorn popper, and small george forman grill. We had a lot of extra storage, lol!
We’re not on the road yet, but we’ve discussed this at length and it is clear we are not leaving port without the french press. Nice to agree on something. =)
This is one of a small number of issues that may eventually drive us to get a bigger 5th wheel. We have the same rig you do (Arctic Fox 5th wheel), but ours is only 21 feet with no slide-outs, so we’re very very limited in storage space. On the other hand, we only live in it 3-4 months each year in Baja, not most of the year. I have a blow dryer for my hair, but that’s the closest it comes to anything like a kitchen gadget. Each spring I go through the cabinets and pull out more stuff that we didn’t use, and I’m almost at the point where I can ADD a kitchen gadget — and I can’t wait! What should it be??? Still enjoying following your adventures and musings.
I like having a toaster, but if we could make any space, I’d bring along our blender! Thanks for following and commenting!
Hey Katherine! I didn’t realize your AF was smaller than ours, you guys are hearty!
Still following your adventures too. So glad that you made it back from Baja!
Well, I’m almost ashamed to admit it but we’re rather heavy on the gizmo’s being HUGE food fans…so we’ve got a blender, a food processor, kettle, grinder (for herbs/coffee) and 3 expresso makers (one traditional pull-down Italien electric, one stovestop and one french press)…just to be on the safe side.
We may well be nuts…:)
Nina