The Plastic In My Kitchen

We make bread often, but by the time we're towards the end of the loaves, they're usually at the shattering stage, and fit for nothing but breadcrumbs or french toast. In the back of my head, I wanted a bread box, but I didn't want a huge thing sitting on the counter, taking up space we don't have. Happily, one leapt out of the King Arthur catalog. It's clear plastic, so it takes up little room visually, and it expands and contracts, so that it's only as big as it needs to be. I love it.

But it's plastic.

My favorite measuring cup is a tapered two cup "beaker", marked in ounces, cups, pints, teaspoons, tablespoons, and milliliters. It's easier to read than the standard Pyrex measuring cups, and more useful what with all the different measurements.

But it's plastic.

I love a nice cup of herbal tea while I'm reading in bed in the winter, and my favorite tea is a loose tea that combines chamomile, mint and lavender. Because it's loose, it needs to be made in a tea ball, or the steeped tea has to be strained. A few years ago, I discovered a phenomenal one-cup tea device - it's got a valve and a strainer and you plop it on top of your cup, and the tea flows on in.

But it's plastic.

I try so hard to get away from the plastic in the kitchen. I prefer to store leftovers in glass, like the working glasses (which work as both food storage and big drinking glasses). I refuse to microwave things in plastic containers. I'd rather use a stainless steel water bottle.

And yet, my three favorite kitchen devices? All plastic.

What's a girl to do?