Gearing Up kitchen to cook

Once you have your larder stocked, it's time to buy some tools. Good kitchen tools aren't cheap, but it's better to spend a little more and have it for life than to buy cheap gear that you'll throw out a year later. Besides, choosing the right equipment can go a long way towards keeping fat out of your diet.

• No-stick Cookware - You can cut a lot of fat out of your diet just by acquiring a couple no-stick skillets with tight fitting lids. Not only will they allow you to cook with little or no added fat but they're also easy to clean. What's better than that? This is definitely not the time to go cheap. Cooking with good equipment is a pleasure; cooking with cheap junk is not. A well-made skillet, for example, will distribute the heat evenly and cook food better than a cheap one.

• Stirring Spoons - You'll use these nearly every time you cook. Just be sure to buy wooden or plastic rather than metal, which will scrape the surface of non-stick pans.

• Blender or Food Processor - While it's not essential to have these high-power kitchen tools, they're incredibly handy for making your own low-fat soups, salad dressings, milk shakes, and such.

• Wok -No man should be without one of these babies. If you could have only one pan in your kitchen, you might make it a wok because you can cook just about anything in one. Also, because of the high heats used in wok cookery, you only need to use tiny amounts of oil.

• Broiling Pan - This is essential for keeping your meats from swimming in a lake of liquid fat. All it is, is a pan with a rack on top that allows fat to drain away during broiling or roasting.

• Gravy Separator - This gadget looks like a measuring cup with a spout on it, but the spout is attached at the very bottom of the cup. You pour the liquid into the cup, and the fat rises to the top. Since it pours from the bottom, it allows you to pour the juices back into the pot, and the fat stays in the cup.

• Steamer - This is a great thing to have around for steaming fish and vegetables, and steaming is one of the best ways to cook these foods because the moist heat requires no added fat. In addition, steaming causes food to lose fewer nutrients than boiling does. There are several types of steamers. The least expensive is the collapsible-basket type, which simply drops into any saucepan or skillet. Or you can get a free standing metal or bamboo steamer, which typically has two or more levels for cooking a variety of foods at once.

• Sharp Knives - One of the great pleasures of cooking is having knives that simply slip through the food; one of the great pains is having a knife you have to saw with. Besides, you need them sharp to be able to trim that fat off your London Broil. You need at least three knives: a heavy-duty chef's knife (an 8-inch knife is ideal) for chopping vegetables, a good-size serrated knife for cutting meat, and a small paring knife for, well, paring.

• Microwave Oven - The microwave may may be usurping the place of the dog as modern man's best friend. It's a great way to get cooking done fast without cooking badly. You can, for example, bake a potato in 8 minutes without adding a drop of fat or losing a vitamin.

• Salad Spinner - This is one of those gadgets that takes the drudgery out of washing lettuce or spinach for a salad. Simply rinse the greens, toss them in, and give them a spin. They come out ready to eat.

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