Want to know what I want for Christmas/birthday/Mother's Day? Music is out. If it's not already on my iPod, it's probably on a shelf or in a box in my basement. Clothes are kind of a non-starter - black t-shirts and jeans are my daily uniform. And after all my years of working as a buyer for Borders, people seem too intimidated to buy me a book.

So what does the savvy gift-giver get me on those gift giving occasions? Kitchen stuff. My magazine rack overflows with cooking mags and catalogs. What my ex-husband calls Kitchen Porn. I'm not talking about some Billy Mays or Ron Popeil plastic thing that can roast a chicken and slice through tomatoes like butter. I don't want anything hawked by that Vince guy who yells into his headset. No Vince, I'm not going to love your nuts.

What I long for is sturdy, often stainless steel, and available at Hollander's or Williams-Sonoma. You can't go wrong with a good bread knife, the top rated garlic press as picked by America's Test Kitchen, or maybe a decent Dutch oven. What I really need is more cupboard and counter space to house all these items, but that's another story.

2009 was a pretty darned good year in the kitchen gadget gift department for me. Back in October I wrote about my new mandoline. I'm still hopelessly in love with it, and find myself reaching for with surprising regularity. Bonus - haven't sliced any bits of my digits with it yet!

Christmas this year brought a whole new slew of fantastic kitchen treats. My baby brother bought me a gorgeous olive wood cheese board from Zingerman's (like I need an excuse to eat more cheese!). We got a beautiful shiny new stainless steel "On Demand" coffee maker from that dispenses coffee one cup at a time. Was it necessary? No. But I love it.

I finally get to throw away my old toaster oven - the one with the door I had to jury-rig closed and that took 10 minutes to barely warm up a piece of toast but that could turn that toast into cinders if you looked away for moment. Now we've got a shiny new toaster oven that not only (gasp) toasts bread efficiently, but also allegedly bakes up a fine pizza on its included pizza stone. Hooray!

The kitchen toy that has gotten the most attention since its grand unwrapping on Friday morning, though, is my beautiful new red pasta maker. It may just look like a hand-cranked series of rollers to you, but to me it represents endless possibilities. I've been buying up different types of flour and comparing pasta recipes online for the past week. I've made tagliatelle in bolognese sauce twice now, once with all-purpose flour and once with semolina. This weekend I might try my hand at some ravioli. There's a thin layer of flour on my laptop keyboard now, but I'm a very very happy girl.