Since my move to Victoria, I have tried out and adopted some appliances and discarded others.
I started with a new set of Paderno stainless steel pots - purchased cheaply in 2006 when Canadian Tire dropped the Royale sets. I have added another sauce pan and the steamer and double boiler (not Royale but who cares). Capital Iron carries Paderno in Victoria. I expect the saucepans and the dutch oven to last for a while. The coated frying pans are standing up well although I think the coating in those pans will break down long before the pans wear out.
I bought a larger enameled cast iron dutch oven at Capital Iron which has become one of my favorite pots.
I started with some decent knives - some with the Superstore house brand and some of the midrange Wusthof Tridents.. I bought a couple new knives last year - I went to Mac for a 6 and a half inch Santoku and a 10 inch chef's knife. The steel is superb - it stays sharp enough for ripe tomatoes with a few strokes of a chef's steel.
When I started to bak, I bought a heavy Kitchen Aid stand mixer. It has enought power to knead bread, and power take-off to run some nifty accessories to shred cheese and carrots and little jobs like that.
I have a pressure cooker, which is a useful appliance. It is a good way to cook dried legumes, saving on the consumption of canned goods, and good for braising and steaming tougher produce. My first pressure cooker was a Lagostina and I wouldn't recommend them. They sell some lines of low-pressure devices which is annoying because a low pressure pot doesn't perform as the recipe books assume. They have some quality issues too, in my experience. I had a problem with the dual pressure fitting which were also the pressure release. I was not impressed. I bought a Presto which was cheaper and better for my goals.
I bought a small cheap Black and Decker rice cooker last fall and a bigger Cuisinart model this spring. It's handy because it delivers the right heat, and turns itself off. This saves playing with the heat on the stove elements and setting timers and watching the pot to make sure it doesn't boil over or cook too long.
When my dad went into the nursing home and gave away things from the house, I took his bread machine. I had been making bread, off and on, for a couple of years but found that making one loaf at a time was just too much effort, and making large recipes led to things going into the freezer - and then they just weren't as good. The machine machine puts out a fresh loaf that last for a couple of day - just about ideal for my needs.
I had a food processor but I never figured out what it was good for. I keep my knives sharp and I found that the machine overdid the onions or garlic - and was a huge mess to clean up, as opposed to watching a knife and a cutting board. Likewise, those slicing and shredding discs don't do anything that a knife or a grater or the attachment on the mixer won't do.
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