A guide to our simple, kitchen essentials! Here you’ll find the exact pieces we use each and every day around our Alpine Table.
Over the past few years of refining and editing our wardrobe and home, we became inspired to design a minimal kitchen too! After reading Marie Kondo‘s work and discovering a hometown classic, called Minimal Kitchen, by our friends in Minnesota, we decided to pair our kitchen down to just a few simple essentials that make cooking dinner easy and the dishwashing load light.
We are all about improving that dishwashing process for a more efficient kitchen so you can do more dancing in the kitchen and more connecting with loved ones! We hope by creating a minimal kitchen, you too will create beautiful moments in the kitchen. We truly believe that if you pour yourself a steamy cup of coffee and put your music on and dance around the kitchen, you create beautiful, lasting moments and the entire process of creating meals for those you love will be more enjoyable, even meditative. We love to create a quiet mindful moment in the kitchen just as much as we do nourishing our connections with others. We believe that is all possible by creating a simple, functional kitchen that also sparks joy! Sink into the moment and lets dive right in.
We are so grateful to have started to build our collection over the years. Two pieces we absolutely could not live without, and use for almost every single meal, are Le Creuset’s cast-iron skillet and Dutch oven. Our collection is currently being built in the gorgeous and warm matte white color. We use these pieces so often and just adore the aesthetic, that you will always find our cast iron atop the stove and there is almost always a delicious soup or pasta waiting in the dutch oven for a quick, nourishing bite. These are the only two pots and pans in our kitchen and we could not be happier about it. It creates such ease when creating a beautiful meal!
We also use our kitchen block for dicing and chopping all of our farmers market goodness. From seasonal fruits and vegetables, to delicious local bread, we use this block for just about every meal and every snack. We keep one trusty small knife, and one trusty large knife to accomplish all of these feats, although a bread knife is soon to be on the list. We adore our wooden bowls purchased at our favorite boutique, Gray, in Excelsior, Minnesota. These bowls are handmade at a mill in Michigan, Holland Bowl Mill. We often come home with a few additional spice and pinch bowls when frequenting Gray. If you’ve ever watched us bake before, you’ll see that we adore these bowls for all of our ingredients. We recently stumbled upon these beautiful wooden measuring cups and spoons while scouting sustainable stores in Boulder.
In addition, we absolutely love our beautiful new dishware from Earthen stoneware in California. We love to support local small businesses whenever possible and purchase these beautiful pieces from Jones and Co in Boulder, Co or Gray Home in Excelsior, MN. The snow coffee cup from the collection completes our morning and is our favorite to gift to friends and family.
We are slowly building a wooden spoon collection too. Currently we love the Olive Wood collection from William Sonoma. I know we’re hoping to find a more local favorite, it is always our goal to support small local businesses in our community. Do you have any recommendations? Please send them our way!
Other favorites of ours are our Vita Mix for warming fall soups and summer green smoothies, and our absolute favorite for making those dreamy olive oil cakes is our KitchenAid mixer. These are investments we are so grateful to our family for! Although we think you would absolutely adore them, build your collection slowly as best fit for you! Wait until you’ve pondered, saved, and created space for these in your home. Maybe build them into a wedding registry or wait for a great sale. We purchased our Vita Mix refurbished from William Sonoma and our KitchenAid Mixer after a macaroon making class in Paris. If you’ve watched our stories, you’ll also see that we are constantly drinking bubbly water! In order to make this a more sustainable, eco friendly habit we invited a Aarke bubbly water maker into our kitchen.
We make coffee by French press each morning for a simple ritual using tried and true products from Bodum. In all honesty, we’ve had our french press since high school and it is still working just perfectly. Our morning collections include a kettle to boil water, a coffee grinder to grind fresh local beans each day, and a French press. We do have the French press in the small size for quick morning coffee and a beautiful large press for weekend mornings connecting with those we love. Did we mention coffee and brunch are our favorite meals?! We are hoping to try a Fellow kettle next with the gorgeous wooden handles.
You may see an espresso machine pop up in our stories from time to time. This was a beautiful gift passed down from family. This espresso machine is the one my father and grandfather used in the kitchen each and every morning growing up. The sound of the espresso brewing is the sound I woke up to every morning. Although this gift is more extravagant than we would purchase, or add to our kitchen essentials, the memories are so deeply rooted! One of our favorite authors talks about the power of curating your classics, investing in fewer but better, and collecting items with deep meaning for your home. Our espresso machine, lovingly referred to as eXpressO at our house, is timeless and meaningful. We also covet Great Gatsby style coup glasses from my great grandmother. We drink everything from sparkling water to green juice and champagne out of these. They really do make the moment! What classics in your home spark joy and happy memories?!
Thank you so much for reading friend!
XOXO
Hal
