5 Kitchen Essentials That Got Us Through a Transient Lifestyle

Over the past several months, we haven't been posting because we just haven't had the time or energy. Through an internship at America's Test Kitchen and apartment-hunting in New York City, we've had to deal with non-ideal temporary living situations: subletting with strangers, renting a room in what basically became an AirBnb hostel, enduring a basement apartment infested with ants.

Needless to say, when it comes to kitchens, we have learned:

• even if your roommates aren't the cooking type, they need almost all of the cabinet and fridge space to store their stale spices, melted plastic utensils, and Bud Light
• whatever you do store in shared kitchens becomes fair game, ESPECIALLY your fancy olive oil you put in the weird spot above the fridge
• ants will eat anything you drop on the floor, including grease. That you thought was soaked into the kitchen rug. 

Here are our five kitchen essentials--what we couldn't live with boxed away:

1) Ikea 365+ stainless steel sauté pan with lid

What we've used it for: making one-pot roasted chicken with vegetables, cooking various pasta sauces like puttanesca, pan-roasting steak, frying pork chops, steaming fish and vegetables 

2) Ikea 365+ stainless steel saucepan with lid

          

What we've used it for: cooking pasta/rice/Israeli couscous, heating up soup, boiling frozen Chinese dumplings, bleaching after AirBnB roommate took it to his room after cooking the worst smelling frozen broccoli ever

3) Ikea 365+ nonstick frying pan

What we've used it for: frying frozen Chinese dumplings, making omelets or any other kind of egg dish

4) Chef’s knife

What we've used it for: cutting, chopping, julienning, dicing, slicing open stubborn Amazon packages, breaking down cardboard moving boxes for recycling

5) Wooden spoon

What we've used it for: stirring, serving, scooping, and unsticking