When you live in a small space, it soon becomes clear what’s worth keeping and what’s not. For us, these are the items that are worth the space they take up.
Egg Microwave Cooker
One of our favorite drive day, or just busy day, breakfasts (when you want something fast, filling, and handheld) is breakfast sandwiches. This cooks up some Just Egg into the perfect shape for a bagel sandwich and leaves plenty of time for getting the dogs walked before launch time.
Tupperware Microwave Steamer
This is a multi-use all-star. It’s great for steaming fresh vegetables, but using the main bowl, it’s also great for cooking frozen vegetables, pasta, potatoes, rice, and whatever else you want to cook when it’s too hot to turn on the stove.
Instant Pot
Not only can you make excellent winter soups and stews quickly, it’s great for making food in the summer without using the stove. Put rehydrated soy curls and BBQ sauce in the pot on slow cook for an hour and you have an excellent filling for BBQ sandwiches. (I use a whole bag of soy curls and a bottle of BBQ sauce to make prep super easy because leftovers of this one always get eaten.) It goes great with coleslaw and corn on the cob — another Instant Pot go-to. Add one cup of water to the pot, put your corn on a trivet and cook on high pressure for one minute. Perfect corn every time!
Air Fryer
When we lived in a sticks and bricks house, I used the oven all the time. Winter or Summer, who cares? If the kitchen heats up a little, just go to a different part of the house.
In the camper, though, I swore off the oven after the first time we parked after a day of driving and saw 100 on the thermostat. By the time the next winter rolled around, we had already started using the oven to store our mixing bowls.
So how do we make muffins (a household staple)? In the air fryer. We discovered that we’ve been able to adjust any instructions with a little experimentation. We make muffins, cupcakes, crescent rolls, cookies, frozen pizza — you name it, we’ve most likely done it in the air fryer.
Because of that, here are my husband’s honorable mention items for the “worth the space” title: silicone muffin cups, 6” cookie sheet, and 8” cake pans. We use the cake pans as casserole dishes to make lasagna, mac and cheese and anything else we can dream up.
Drinkmate Omnifizz
I love carbonation. I’m not necessarily a huge fan of soda, but I love the pop and fizz. I had a SodaStream for a long time, and I like being able to make my own mixes at home, but given the popularity of powdered water flavors, I wished I didn’t have to make them into syrups to carbonate them. Enter the Drinkmate Omnifizz. Now I can carbonate anything I want. (Special shoutout to the True Citrus brand and their extensive catalog of lemonade and limeade flavors. 😊)
The best part, and what makes this one my top pick, is the amount of space it saves in drink storage. Now, instead of having to stock up on favorite energy drinks when we’ll be away from stores for a while, we can have cases of them in one small drawer.
I can’t thank you enough for turning me on to the Drinkmate! What a gift to myself and to my kitchen. I like to carbonate beverages because my brain read carbonation as a treat. Since I can carbonate any liquid, I’ve made my own ginger soda with fresh, organic ginger. I get to control the ingredients and my experience. I appreciate that you are careful with what you’re willing to recommend. Thank you for being a person of integrity! I look forward to seeing new recipes. By the way, these recipes are great for people who live alone or have a small household, even if they don’t live that RV life!
Thank you for your kind comment, and I’m so glad it’s bringing you joy! 😊