While I've been cooking the past few weeks, I've been paying attention to what I use the most to keep my diet in check. Here's a list of great tools, some of which I own and some that have been recommended by others.
1) Food Scale. I asked for one of these for Christmas, and my mom bought me the Weight Watchers one. It's lovely and calculates points for me (you enter in food names and it does the rest). However, stores have all kinds of good choices. The one thing I would look for when shopping is one that allows you to zero out the weight of the serving dish you're measuring in. That way, you don't have to factor that in AND you can zero out for each ingredient. So I zero out with my bowl, add yogurt, zero out, add fruit, zero out, add granola. That way you know each ingredient is measured on its own, which leads to more accuracy and no chance for math mistakes (or am I the only one who sucks at math?).
The truth is my eyeballs were in cahoots with my stomach to make me wildly overestimate portion sizes. I was eating double of most everything--while figuring calories of single portions. Not cool. Even now! Sometimes I pull out what I think will be a single serving and then I weigh that amount. I'm almost always wrong, and not in the healthy direction. For some foods, it's not a huge difference if you're off a little (e.g., vegetables), but other times, oh boy. Cheese, for example, makes a HUGE calorie difference. Now with my scale, I know exactly what I'm getting.
2) Measuring cups/spoons. Of course, these are also nice staples for cooking/baking with recipes. But for me, these are always (ALWAYS) second preference to my food scale. If you look at the nutrition labels, they list both volume (cups, or tablespoons) and weight (usually in grams) for serving sizes. Sometimes things are hard to measure by cups, but you can always be spot on with weight (assuming you have that food scale).
That said, measuring cups are a useful tool for making sure you're not overdoing it when serving already prepared food. You can even get ladles that are different cup sizes to help you portion out from a dish. Weight Watchers makes a set, but you can find them at kitchen stores, too.
Similarly, there are portion-controlled bowls out there that you can use to eat from as well (fewer dishes=fabulous). I saw some the other day at delight.com that are cute. If spending lots of money isn't your thing, look closely at the disposable containers by Ziploc. They have some rudimentary measuring markers that are better than nothing.
3) Single serving containers. I use both the "permanent" and disposable kind, but these are really useful for taking stuff to work for lunch. The smaller sized ones prevent me from putting too much in, so I tend to buy those rather than the larger ones and filling less. I don't put them in the microwave, partly because they say it's not safe, but also because it tends to wear them out. I have several plates at work, so I dump stuff from my bowls to the plate and cook that way in the microwave. That's up to you, though. If you don't have plates at work, you might consider investing in glass or crockery to take with you instead of the plastic ones. It's heavier, but that just means more exercise, right? Haha.
4) This isn't really a product, and it's certainly not something I'm the first to discover, but something that's helped me with the mind-games element of eating the right amounts is using salad plates instead of dinner plates. My dinner plates are HUGE. If I put a single serving of something on it, it looks more like a snack, and then I'm grumpy. If I put it on my smaller salad plate, then I have a plateful of food, and I'm far less grumpy. The only time I use my dinner plates is when I have a big thing of vegetables or multiple items that I portioned individually. That way I have it all in one spot, but each one is under good regulation.
My bowls are also huge, so I just make sure not to eat anything in them that I haven't weighed out. I could (and have) easily served myself three or four servings of ice cream in those without even knowing it. Seeing a single serving of ice cream in a bowl like that is the definition of depressing, though.
5) A toaster oven. Now that I'm cooking a lot more, I prefer cooking without the microwave. I have nothing against microwaves, but things taste crispier and better in the oven. Being single (or at least cooking smaller amounts of things), though, I hate turning on the big oven just for a sweet potato or an English muffin pizza or whatever. So when I have small things, I just pop them into my toaster oven, and I get all the benefits of oven cooking with a lot less energy consumption. These things range hugely in price, but I can't see spending tons of money on one. I got mine as a hand-me-down from my grandma. At first I wasn't sure how much I'd use it, but now I use it more days than not. I also use that instead of a toaster for bagels and sandwich thins. It's just as fast and you can watch it easier than in a toaster. Bonus.
6) Garlic press. I like my food strongly flavored. And I really love garlic for that purpose. I put it in my vinaigrette, in my pasta sauce, in most of my stir fries, whenever I cook any vegetables in a skillet. The list goes on. I go through multiple bulbs a month (hello, good breath!). A good quality garlic press makes this into the simplest thing to do, and it's better than the minced stuff in the spice aisles because it's fresh and more pungent tasting. Yum. Trying to mince a clove of garlic with a knife is annoying and makes your hands smell like garlic. Get a garlic press and make easy work of more flavorful cooking.
7) Going along with that is a palm peeler. One time I was peeling a sweet potato with my old, conventional peeler, and I sliced the holy bejeezus out of my fingertip. (Shut up. I'm clumsy. Don't you judge me!) It was a bloodbath. I swore then and there never to use on again. Then I found one that's dummy proof. You just slide your middle finger in the holder and peel more safely because it keeps your fingers away from the blades because the plastic part is a shield from getting too close. If you're not so good with sharp objects, this is a godsend. You can also get gloves made of kevlar for kitchen use, and I've seriously considered buying some.
The overall issue here is...use your kitchen! And what's more, prepare your own food! These things make it easier to cook with real ingredients without spending too much time or money on pre-packaged foods.
If you have any other indispensable kitchen items that help you, let me know! I'll add them to the list. Happy cooking.
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