Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Registry take 1: Kitchen Gear

Over the past couple of months, we decided to register for wedding presents at a variety of places. It was important for us (me) to make sure that the items on our list really are things that we want for a long time to come.

(Sidenote: My mom sometimes teases me about how I will search high and low for exactly what I want, and when I find it, that's it. I will have it forever, or until it wears out, whichever comes first.)

We cook a lot- 4+ nights a week, not counting the nights that we do a quick meal courtesy of Trader Joe's frozen food aisle. Our current pots and pans are my grandmother's Revereware, as well as a cast iron skillet and a stockpot that we picked up at a discount closeout store.

Image found here.

Seeing as the pots have outlived my grandmother, I would say that she really was set for life. Too bad that modern Revereware is not nearly as awesome.

My grandmother's pots work fine, but the handles don't always insulate against the heat. We decided on All-Clad.

Image found here.

I've become enamored with All-Clad's saucier pan after hearing rave reviews about it on Indiebride.

Saucier pan available here.

It seems that Williams-Sonoma is the only place that carries that amazing saucier pan our of all the typical registry locations. So of we went to Williams-Sonoma.

When we arrived (6ish on a Saturday evening), the store was pretty empty. There was some confusion when we were filling out the paperwork, but it was eventually straightened out. We had done our research and knew pretty much exactly for what we wanted to register. Only exception was knives.

We also spent close to two hours trying out every single knife in the store. The woman that was helping us was well-informed and patient as we went back and forth between several knives. Eventually, we settled on the Wusthof Culinar- mostly because it felt the best in my hands. (Calvin recognized that between the two of us, I'm the one who is more likely to cut myself.)

Wusthof Culinar.

Calvin did pick out a Shun Kaji Santoku that he loves, and added that as well.

Calvin's dream knife.

We did register for the All-Clad pots and pans, as well as other miscellaneous kitchen items, like cookie sheets, muffin tins and a mortar and pestle. During this time, we were left alone, which suited us just fine.

Overall, our experience setting up a registry at Williams-Sonoma was fine. There was some confusion when we were filling out the paperwork, and our password to update online didn't work at first, but things are set up now. Updating the registry online is a different story; things aren't immediately added or removed, making it difficult to make sure that items were actually added or removed. I've got 2 single wine glasses that we put on the registry that took way more tries than it should have in order to remove them. And the registry server seems to be down periodically- and by periodically, I mean nearly every time I try and update it- which is irritating.

Anyone else want to share their experience with Williams-Sonoma? (And has anyone else having difficulty with the online portion of the registry?)

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