What I Use
The honest, ad-free, no-Amazon-affiliate list of the things I actually use.
This isn’t a store. It’s the gear, ingredients, tools, books, and odds and ends I reach for in real life, gathered in one place so you don’t have to dig back through years of posts to find that one bottle or that one knife. Everything here is something I actually own and actually use. If I don’t use it, it isn’t here.
I’ve split it into rooms, more or less, so poke around wherever you’re curious.
A quick, honest word before you shop. KaraCooks doesn’t run ads and never will, and I’m not an Amazon affiliate and never will be. Wherever I can, I’ll send you straight to the folks who make a thing, or to a shop I’m glad to point you toward. A few links are affiliate or referral links, and I’ll always mark them; when I use one, it’s because I already trust the thing and the few cents (or the referral credit) help keep the lights on. If something’s really only easy to get on Amazon, I’ll link it there too, but as a plain link that earns me nothing. That’s the whole deal. (The full disclosure page has the fine print.)
Wander In
The tools I reach for on a Tuesday: the boards, the cast iron, the knives worth owning, and the towels that replaced my paper ones (mostly).
The things I use up, ordered straight from the source: the Hatch chile, the spices, the flour, the proteins, and where I actually shop.
The Kamado and everything around it, from the charcoal to the five-dollar hacks I’d fight you for.
How Zach and I take our coffee completely differently, plus the small bar that comes out when there’s a crowd.
Seed-starting trays, the watering setup, the tools that live in the dirt with me, and the bird feeders that beat the squirrels.
Keeping It Out of the Landfill
The honest version: I’m not zero-waste, but here’s what I actually do, starting with Millicent and a compost bin built from barn scraps.
How this blog gets photographed, and why I buy most of it used.
The cookbooks I actually cook from and the books I love, all through my Bookshop.org store so an indie bookstore gets paid instead of Amazon.
Remy, Finn, and Callie’s shortlist: the allergy-friendly food, the toys that survive a pit bull, and the colony-cat supplies, all routing through my Chewy storefront.