The Perfect Blend

New York City is both the best and worst place to live if you are a food lover. On the one hand, there are an endless number of incredible restaurants and gourmet shops, plenty of people to enjoy them with, and even the most obscure ingredients can be found all year round. On the other hand, if you want to use those ingredients, chances are you will be doing so in a kitchen the size of breadbox. Wait, a shoebox. No, a matchbox. 
Because I suffer from tinykitchenitis myself,  I am always on the hunt for kitchen tools that work well for a lot of purposes and don't take up too much space (I love you, citrus juicer, but you have six parts, take up a whole shelf and only do one thing). That's why I have a special (very compact) place in my heart and kitchen cabinet - same thing, really-  for my stick blender. I have the Kitchenaid KHB300 model, $89 at Amazon.com, but there are other good ones out there for as little as $20.
This little sucker has essentially replaced my blender, Cuisinart and hand mixer, and takes up less space than any of them. It's basically the Optimus Prime of kitchen appliances...in that it's a transformer (get it?) The blender blade can do anything a traditional blender can do, only it does it right in the pot/bowl/pitcher, so you end up with fewer dishes. Pureeing a huge batch of soup is a messy pain with a normal blender, but oh-so-easy with a stick blender. Pop on the food processing attachment and you can chop onions in a few seconds, without any mess. Need to whip up some mirangues for dessert? Pop on the whisk attachment and boom, you're in business. Then, the attachments go right into the dishwasher to clean, and then stow away in no space when you're done.  If it sounds like I am doing an infomercial, it's because I actually feel like I am in an infomercial when I'm cooking with this thing.
So much functionality packed into such a tiny package... kind of like my kitchen.

A Shear Thing

I love a good kitchen gadget- give me an apple peeler-corer, or an egg slicer or a whipped cream maker and I'll be entertained for hours. But the truth is that you don't ever really NEED any of those things, and you can get almost any cooking task accomplished, as long as you have a few solid and high-quality basics: a chef's knife, a paring knife, a serrated knife, and a good pair of kitchen shears. And (arguably) the greatest of these is shears.
You can use a sharp pair of scissors to do almost everything in the kitchen- butcher a chicken, mince herbs, snip the ends off green beans, cut parchment paper or twine, open packages, or `even cut wire or trim flower stems in a pinch (just don't tell my mom I do that). The trick is to get a good-quality stainless steel pair that come apart, so you can throw them in the dishwasher after every use without fear of rust, and sharpen the blades just like knives when they get dull from cutting wire (even though your mom told you not to). I also like pairs with non-slip handles (for when your hands are covered in chicken goo) and built-in bottle openers, for enjoying a tall frosty one when you're done. Here are three worthy pairs. Owning any of them would be shear luck.

Top left, Titanium kitchen shears, $13.50, from Williams-Sonoma; Right, Wusthof come-apart shears, $19.95 from Amazon.com; Bottom left, Shun Classic 'Taskmaster' shears, $39.95 from Sur La Table.

Tiny Bubbles

There are a lot of pros and cons about living in a fifth floor walk-up. For example: my butt has never looked better (pro). On the other hand, we have gone whole weekends using paper towels in the bathroom, because we were out of toilet paper and too lazy to go out just for that (con). And not all of my reasoning is butt-related. JM and I both drink a lot of seltzer water, which, it turns out, really starts to weigh a lot when you take it above ground level. Not to mention the bi-weekly lugging of the empty bottles down the stairs on recycling day. I was starting to get freaky Madonna arms from all that heavy-lifting, when my brother and sister-in-law took pity on me and bought us a SodaStream seltzer maker ($100-200) for my birthday last year. This cute, ingenious gadget is shaped like a penguin and turns ordinary, boring old tap water into delicious, sparkly, festive seltzer water with the push of a button, er, rather, beak. It also comes with a bunch of syrups and flavorings so you can make your own colas and sodas, if that's your thing. Unlike bottled "club soda", the SodaStream seltzer has barely any sodium or additives (it's literally just whatever is in your tap water), so it's hydrating and as good for you as drinking water- but so much more fun!
The maker comes with a canisters of CO2 which carbonates the water. When the canisters run out, they can be exchanged for new, full ones at a retailer near you, or by sending them in (we've had our seltzer maker since June, and have only gone through three canisters). They also come with 1-liter glass carafes, which are machine washable, totally hygienic, and can be re-used forever, so they're good for the environment, too. Plus, they lend your seltzer a really classy vibe. So invest in one and enjoy a little bit of the bubbly.

Quit Your Wining (Or At Least Cut Back)

I'm a firm believer in "everything in moderation", but ever since the Greeks revered Bacchus, we wine-drinkers have had an excuse to overindulge in our favorite libation (hey, if the gods do it...). The case for "drink it if you've got it" is made further by the fact that wine almost invariably turns sour and vinegary when opened and saved for more than a day or so (forcing our hand to open a whole new bottle and feel compelled to finish it- it's a vicious cycle).

Happily (or not, depending on your perspective, I guess), we are down an excuse, thanks to this Vacu Vin Wine Saver, $11. The little gadget (and I love me a gadget) vacuums out the extra air at the top of the bottle, contact with which is what causes the wine to turn. It is inexpensive, easy to use and can save wine from spoiling for over a week. I've long seen bartenders use more expensive tools that do the same thing (don't ask me what I'm doing at the bar as the bartender is shutting it down...), but this one is so affordable that if you save one bottle from going bad, you will recoup your expenditure. Which, when you come right down to it, is utterly divine.