Thanks to a whole different reason, my kitchen was in a photographable shape for the first time in a long time. It's not that I don't keep the kitchen clean, it's just that I see some parts of the kitchen as a higher priority than others when it comes to scrubbing. But those lower priority parts still show up in photographs.

So I thought I'd show you the tiny, tiny space where the magic happens, even though (or possibly because) thanks to weather and viral bullshit, there hasn't been much magic happening at all. This is my kitchen:

There isn't only war, actually. Sorry about that. It's just that ever since Krugman started a blood feud covered by every minor news organization out there, I'm in a feud state of mind.

Anyway, a week or so ago, Ruhlman put up a post called "My Essential Kitchen Tools" on his blog, and I thought I'd just run down his list and see how I compare with world-famous food author, television personality, and Bourdain confidante Michael J. Ruhlman.

KNIVES:

Ask any chef or cook what their most important tool is, and they'll all answer the same. "Knives". Well, except for Guy Fieri, who will answer his Jimmy Buffett Margaritaville combination margarita maker, popcorn machine, and panini press, if he's being honest. But even Guy is shilling his own branded knives these days, so he probably won't be honest.

See that? I saw that on Ruhlman's blog.

That's an immersion circiulator for the home. The first proper home-kitchen sous vide tool.

I've been using my food processor like a maniac over the past few days, and realized I was remiss in talking about it.

It's a remanufactured Kitchenaid that I got a deal on from Amazon in the summer of last year, after breaking my old crappy Wolfgang Puck-branded food processor that I broke trying to make bread crumbs.

This is my wok.

Technically, this is more than my wok. This is my Universal Cooking Vessel. The Bodum K0810-01 cast iron wok with glass lid. No longer available through Amazon, unless you live in the UK.

Cathy got this for me a couple of years ago after a friend of hers, another avid home cook, raved about it. And it's earned a near-permanent position on my stovetop ever since.

These are my kitchen shears.