A. Scattergood

Knives in Gary's stall at the Pasadena Farmers Market

In the handful of years that Gary Silverstein of Gary's Knife Sharpening has been in the steel-refining business, he has built up a cadre of loyal Wüsthof and Korin devotees, including us, who make pilgrimages across town to the various farmers markets wherever he makes appearances.

When you drop off your knife, or your entire knife block, as one woman did on our weekend trek to the Beverly Hills Farmers Market to find him, Silverstein will tell you to come back in 10 minutes or so, after you've done your produce shopping. But if you stick around his booth, and if you can fire off your pressing questions at a decibel level sufficient to drown out the loud whirring of his grinding wheel, Silverstein is always happy to share his onion-chopping insights.

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Neatorama's Neatoshop

Ruler Knife

If the OCD Chef's Cutting Board convinced you that everything in your kitchen needs to have some unit of measurement on it, see the natural evolution of the kitchen tool-as-caliper: Creative Kitchen's 6-inch Ruler Knife has a ruler printed directly on its blade (inches on one side, centimeters on the other) so you can "chop with precision!" You also no longer will have to constantly dig through the junk drawer for the one ruler in the house that hasn't been wrapped in red Play-Doh and repurposed as a light saber just so you can cut actual dough to the right length.

Neatorama is selling the Ruler Knife for $11.95, plus shipping, at its Neatoshop. It's a small price to pay, really, for the priceless satisfaction of making everything as uniform and consistent as possible. Well, cheaper than seeing the therapist, anyway.

Patrick M. Gookin II

Pistachio pesto with brown rice from Spork Foods

For sisters Jenny Engel and Heather Goldberg of vegan cooking school Spork Foods, the path for many uninitiated in the possibilities of veganism is sometimes paved with pesto. Built on an unyielding umami-laden trifecta of pistachios, roasted garlic and light miso, the condiment is a veritable Odyssean stratagem. It's purposefully chosen -- served with brown rice and topped with cherry tomatoes and kalamata olives -- for those who haven't been exposed to what Goldberg described as "level two" ingredients like tempeh and seitan. And if you need any mechanical help in the process of making the recipe, check out our recent story: 8 Essential Vegan Kitchen Tools: Spork Foods on Good Knives and Baby Whisks.

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Jenny Engel and Heather Goldberg of Spork Foods.jpg

Jiro Schneider

Jenny Engel and Heather Goldberg of Spork Foods take cooking to a unique vegan-friendly apogee. As full-time sisters, instructors, consultants and now cookbook authors, their relationship to the lifestyle is dedicated. They drop tips on necessary tools -- in no particular rank, save for the chef's knife -- to jump-start vegan cooking in your kitchen. And check back later for their recipe for pistachio pesto.

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Lauren Noble

Kris Morningstar of Ray's and Stark Bar

The opening line of A Tale of Two Cities might as well have been a Dickensinian prophecy for the 21st century at-home cook for whom there is no better and yet more confusing time. You can build a giant cupcake to be topped by home-made ice cream, all paired with your own soda or beer that you've brewed. This wide scope of available gadgetry and tools is just one aspect of a consumer reality creating anxiety in consumers, as psychologist Barry Schwartz warns in The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less. So when Kris Morningstar of Ray's and Stark Bar shared that a cake tester works double -- sometimes triple -- time for him and his crew, it seemed practical to have him elaborate on his kitchen must-haves.

The Southern California native has been praised for his farm-to-table approach and creative nod to the omnivore diet in various stints at restaurants across town. If anyone can tap into resources for use past its prescribed purpose, it would be him. Case in point: Morningstar uses the aforementioned cake tester to measure the doneness of everything from fish to beets and sunchokes.

"All of our cooks have [a cake tester] either in their salt -- they have them poking out of their salt -- or in their chef coat jacket. At my house, it's in my little salt bin so that it's always easy to grab," Morningstar says.

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I got into an elevator empty-handed one recent morning and by the end of a short two-story ride, was the proud owner of a bright orange Le Creuset Dutch oven. A recently married co-worker who'd likely been inundated with new cookware from the registry was trying to get rid of it, for free. "Might as well go to someone who'll use it," he said.

I felt like I'd hit the lottery. Use it? Not only will I use it, it just saved me from ever having to purchase a handful of other massively expensive pieces of kitchen equipment. Yes, Dutch ovens can be expensive on their own, but they're one of the most overachieving multi-taskers in existence. (We know Alton Brown would be proud.) Moreover, they're practically indestructible. As editor Amy Scattergood aptly pointed out, they're like good Italian shoes -- they'll dent the wallet, but you'll never have to replace them.

If you're not so lucky to get one as a castoff, get one somewhere -- a flea market or yard sale if you can't afford one new. In a roundabout way, you will have also purchased the following:

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T. Nguyen

Screenshot of the How Long Will My Coffee Last? website.

If you had more space in your already cluttered head, surely you would have a general idea of how long your 12-ounce bag of coffee lasts. And you would know exactly when to restock so you won't wake up on that one morning when you really need that one cup of joe, only to be sorely disappointed by not one bean left in the bag. Luckily, James Olney created How Long Will My Coffee Last?, an online bean counter that does all the math for you.

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Firebox.com

Gamepad Chopping Board

The original Nintendo controller -- so simple, so rectangular -- is a touchstone of nostalgia for many of us, a reminder of a time when two simple red buttons were all you needed to jump, shoot, and beat Bowser at Mario's own game. UK company Firebox takes us back to the time of Nintendo thumbs with its Gamepad Chopping Board ($23), designed like the ever classic controller.

It's not an exact duplicate, as the designers carefully and artfully considered what exactly you would be controlling: where the original Nintendo logo was placed, you have a cartoonish sliced carrot instead. And rather than the "Select" and "Start" printed on the controller, you have the slightly less motivating verbs "Slice" and "Dice."

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Sur la Table

spoon as paint stick

Shopping for cooking gear can be breathtakingly expensive. Copper pots! French sauté pans! Espresso machines! But sometimes it can be pleasantly cheap, especially if you like to hang out at hardware stores and garage sales and thrift shops. Sometimes even the fancy cooking stores have stuff that you can actually buy these days, like these seriously fun nonreactive silicon stir sticks from Sur La Table. Do they do anything a normal wooden spoon doesn't already do? Of course not, but they're cool and they won't melt or scratch pots and they're $6.95.

Another thing they have going for them is that kids love them. "It's just like a paint stick. Awesome," said one such kid recently, when dragged into the store in search of far more boring stuff. "Jackson Pollock," murmured the other kid appreciatively, the one who still throws spaghetti on the ceiling to demonstrate Newton's law of something-or-another, despite repeatedly being told that it is not a good way to test the doneness of pasta. In any event, a good way to get your kids to stir the risotto.

ThinkGeek

Han Solo Frozen in Carbonite Ice Cube Tray

Because it is not too early, apparently, for Christmas, ThinkGeek has your stocking stuffer: ice cubed versions of Han Solo frozen in carbonite.

If you'll recall from your vast knowledge of the Star Wars universe, Darth Vader and bounty hunter Boba Fett arranged for the the half-witted, scruffy-looking Nerf herder to be thrust in a plume of liquid nitrogen-like fog, encased in carbonite, and securely packaged so Fett could deliver his bounty to Jabba the Hutt waiting on Tatooine.

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