Small appliances
Wait. Haven't you already written about a toaster?
Why yes, yes we have already written about a toaster. Thanks for remembering that. We happen to think it’s one of our better pieces. If you haven’t already read it, you should, if for no other reason than to see all the toaster reminiscences in the comments section.1
We’ll wait.
*checks email*
*scrolls Facebook*
*takes nap*
Welcome back! So yes, that was a piece about toasters.
And how is our toaster these days? So kind of you to ask! Jolene is doing great.
Other than that time where one of us read an online hack that says you can reheat a slice of pizza by turning the appliance on its side.2
Yeah.
You know all the schmutz that drops to the floor of a toaster oven and eventually catches fire? Top loading toasters aren't really built to handle that. More to the point, the *sides* of top loading toasters are definitely not built to handle that.
We managed to escape catastrophe, though, and are very happy with our toast.
Today’s post, though, is not about small appliances. It’s about appliances that are small.
Ok, yeah, that may be the same thing.
It’s also not.
Just go with it, ok?
There has been some … dissatisfaction in our household with our new kitchen. This is expressed mostly in the form of under-the-breath comments about tearing it apart and re-doing it. It’s also possible the phrase, “Whoever designed this kitchen should be shot” has been uttered. Which does seem a bit extreme in hindsight. After all, it’s not like we’re accusing the kitchen designer of being someone who believes the rule of law should apply to everyone, even fascist wanna-be dictators.3
But yes, it’s true that in order to fully appreciate our kitchen one must have both the stature of a giant and the appetite of a gnome.4
We need a not-one-but-two step stool to reach the top shelves and even then only Scott has any hope of grabbing the wine glasses and coffee mugs from the way back.5
But day-to-day, it’s the appliances that cause us the most grief.
Let’s start with the microwave
It’s small.
How small is it?
It’s so small that bags of popcorn catch on the sides so the little turntable rotates but the bag stays put. Which, it turns out, burns a hole in the bag.6 This, in case you were wondering, is not delicious.
It’s so small that a bowl filled with five ounces of frozen blueberries has one edge pretty much dead center of the turntable while the other brushes the walls as it rotates.7 Which results in the bowl coming out of the defrost cycle half cold, half warm. It’s very odd to hold such a bowl. Let’s not even talk about the blueberries. *shudder*
And then there’s the oven
It’s also small.
How small …
Yeah, yeah, yeah, we gotcha.
It’s so small we’ve barely used it.
(Is that really a good indicator of its size?
Maybe not.
What if we told you we’ve barely used it precisely because it’s so small?
Maybe that only makes us weird.
Just go with it, ok?)
Scott likes to bake. In St. Louis, our oven had three racks, each of which was large enough to accommodate a full-sized cookie sheet. Whipping up five dozen discs of oatmealy-raisiny deliciousness8 was a piece of … cookie?9
Here, our oven came with one rack and one … tray? And the rack might hold a half-size cookie sheet? We haven’t actually done the measurements. They probably sell appropriately-sized cookie sheets here, right? It does hold a pair of loaf pans and that’s what we’ve used it for: baking quick breads.
The bigger problem will come when we want to host a large dinner. We have an amazing, expandable dining room table that can accommodate 14, maybe 16 people when fully extended. Our oven can cook enough food to feed … half of them? Maybe? We certainly can’t fit, say, an entire turkey in there. And if we want, maybe, dressing, to cook alongside said turkey?10 Ain’t happenin’.
Ok, so who’s not hungry this evening?!
We’ve also got an induction hob
It’s 23”/59 cm wide11 and has four small burners. We are definitely spoiled. We are used to four burners - two small, two huge - and one warmer. You put two big pots on this one and you have to decide which one gets an entire burner.
Next, there’s the washing machine
We've already gone into detail about this appliance just recently. No need to re-hang that dirty laundry here.
This does, however, seem like the best place to point out that we've exchanged a front-loading toaster for a top-loader and a top-loading washing machine for a front-loader.
Neither has been an upgrade.
To give credit where credit is due, they got the refrigerator about right here
When we arrived at Rua do Salitre, there was a dormitory-sized fridge in the kitchen. We asked our landlord if we could upsize it and they graciously agreed. As we were straight off the plane and still in our “how can we re-create here what we had there” phase, we may have erred on the “too large” end of that spectrum. We never really fully used that fridge and it took up a lot of room in the corner of the kitchen.
The fridge here is in the Goldilocks zone, size-wise. We would prefer another drawer maybe, and it’s definitely too high off the ground, but it’s generally the right size.
Mind, it’s not a US fridge. Fresh off the plane, we would have been aghast. In St. Louis, we had a modest side-by-side that gave us water and ice out the door. Plus a chest freezer in the basement. You know, the minimum.
This one is great if you’re not cooking a ton and you’re going to the market frequently.
The freezer, though?
Itsy-beenie, teenie-weenie… oh, you get the idea.
Finally, we have a dishwasher
Which we don’t really use. Like, ever.12 We turned it on once and ran a cycle with it empty because the manual said we should. Also, we wanted to make sure it actually worked so we didn’t find out after the warranty expired that we should have gotten it fixed.
This one is bigger than the one at Rua do Salitre, at least.13 Given our particular needs, we’d actually like it to be smaller. Or even non-existent.
Could we trade some of the under counter space for a larger stove and/or washing machine? We’d love to.
Perhaps when the muttering about re-doing the kitchen becomes unbearable we will.
That’s all for now.
Love from Lisbon,
Scott & Amy
Seriously, there are 31 comments on that story. That still blows our collective minds.
Amy here: It was me. I deserve to be tossed under the bus on this one. One of those hacks that sounds great until you actually think about it. About the gooey cheese melting onto the heating elements all along the sides of the toaster. Yeah, that was fun.
Wait. *Checks survey results* That was NOBODY who said they wanted to read more political rants? You sure it wasn’t EVERYBODY? No? Whoops. Sorry. *crosses fingers and hides hand behind back* It won’t happen again.
What can we say … one of us has been known to play some Dungeons & Dragons.
Fortunately, we drink neither wine nor coffee. I know, right? Why DID we move to Portugal?
Now it should be noted that these are bags from the Liberty Store. Which means they are US-sized bags. Made for US-sized microwaves. Are there smaller bags of microwave popcorn available in Portuguese grocery stores? Maybe. Honestly, though, we’re kind of over microwave popcorn by now so we’re unlikely to find out. At least until Amy’s braces come off.
Bowl purchased here in Portugal, so not some abnormally large US behemoth
Yeah, wasn’t our first choice either. Til we tried the the recipe in the King Arthur Baker’s Companion. Then they became our go-to. *sigh* Those are some seriously good cookies.
No, we didn’t eat them all. It’s not that hard to offload homemade baked goods. Most people don’t complain if you knock on their door and hand them cookies. What they did with those cookies, we don’t really know, of course.
But who in Portugal would ever want to cook a turkey and dressing at the same time? Hard to imagine. Side note: If you are wondering why we are cooking our salad dressing, we’re referring to the better way of cooking stuffing.
Yep. That’s small.
“We have a dishwasher,” we tell people. “His name is Scott.”
which we never ran once in the ten months we lived there
It is my belief that kitchens and appliances are designed by men who have never used either.
Yet again, I got quite a chuckle out of reading one of your too relatable posts. I think the toaster saga might have been my first encounter with your blog, in fact.
I was going to suggest that if you have a table that seats 14 to 16 people, perhaps you are still not quite out of the recreate-here-what-we-had-there phase, but then I read the footnote about DnD and was like, "Ah yeah, that checks out." We have been debating whether we want to have our custom DnD table shipped from the U.S. or just have another one made here. (There's a game table manufacturer in Porto!)
In fact, thanks to having a group of friends over to introduce them to the joy of DnD last week, I can confirm that they do indeed have popcorn bags here, as one of our guests brought some. They are appropriately sized for the small microwaves here.
Probably best to abandon any hope of ever cooking a turkey here lol. Could you even buy a whole one here if you wanted to?
If you haven't seen it, may I suggest you check out my recent humorous post about an encounter with takeaway packaging? I feel like you folks would appreciate it.
https://open.substack.com/pub/jdgoulet/p/thats-not-juice?r=10bxpq&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web