Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Furnishing your common house kitchen - dishes, utensils

[Audrey Watson (audrey]

Well, our insurance company required us to add the automatic fire 
suppression (fire extinguisher) to our range hood.  we do have a big 2 
oven 6 burner commercial stove (a regular stove just wouldn't heat big 
amounts fast enough, or fit our 3gallon pots) .  When the common house 
was built (17 years ago? already) we bought a used commercial stove, and 
a used commercial refrigerator.  they both lasted about 15 years, and we 
replaced them both with equiv commercial units a couple years ago.  we 
have a used chest freezer as well, which is useful for frozen stuff for 
upcoming meals, some frozen staples, and things like ice cream cakes for 
celebrations. we also have a commercial dish washer (which it turns out 
is more water efficient than other kinds of dishwashers), and I can't 
imagine how we would wash our multiple loads of dishes in a regular 
dishwasher. I believe it was also bought used, but I'm not sure on that, 
and it is still clunking along.  The only thing I don't like about the 
commercial stove is that the pilots are on all the time, and I that is a 
waste of propane.

However, we do have meals 4 or 5 nights a week, serving 10-35 or so 
people, and up to 50ish people on special occasions and holidays.

The other appliances I'm really fond of are a big commercial size rice 
cooker (really helpful when you cook brown rice which cooks  a long 
time), and a big cuisanart, which we use for chopping things and grating 
cheese, making lots of stuff.  We also have fairly big kitchenaid mixer, 
that is very nice for baking, etc.   And of course I'm really happy with 
the big center island in the kitchen that allows lots of people to cook 
together.  (it has storage for things like pot lids, baking trays, 
cutting boards etc underneath it and a pot hanger above it.  we have big 
stainless commercial pots, and stainless "insert" size pans  (and 1/2 
size ones) for making casseroles and baked things (I think named that 
because they fit in a steam table, but we don't have one of those).
> --audrey
>   
winslow cohousing
bainbridge island wa