Convenient Cooking and Cleanup with Maytag

We're going on 4 months now, living and working with our Maytag kitchen appliances. Having gone from this:

to this,

There's no doubt that our kitchen has been vastly improved, both visually and functionally.

Cooking dishes like lasagna, which require the use of the stove, microwave and oven have been so simple, especially that I don't have to travel across the room to defrost the spinach before adding it to the skillet.

And here's the dish, right out of the oven, perfectly cooked.

Having a dishwasher has probably been the biggest and most-welcomed change, as our original kitchen was without one.  This required some new cabinets, sink and counter top to accommodate it, but it was well worth it.

Cleaning up after meals is SO much easier.  We use the Maytag dishwasher every day, mostly after dinner, when we've created enough dishes throughout the day to run a full load.  It's seriously been a huge improvement on our family's life, requiring less time standing at the sink with hands in soapy water.

While I'm not an expert on dishwashers, having never owned one, I know that with the Maytag JetClean Plus dishwasher, I don't spend time and water rinsing the dishes beforehand.  We just scrape off food bits and load them in and the high-pressure spray jets do the work.  95% of items come out perfectly clean, and on occasion I have some with some food buildup (mostly utensils that had some dried sauces on them).

The dishwasher has revolutionized life in the kitchen, and that statement is not a hyperbole.  I'm not afraid to pull out all the pots and pans to bake and cook, since I don't dread cleaning up afterwards. Bonus points for doing a great job getting sippy cups and their dreaded valves clean.

Another integral addition to our kitchen is the Maytag over-the-range microwave, which works hard whether it's softening butter or reheating leftovers.

I use the microwave every day, mostly for reheating leftovers, but also when making popcorn, heating beverages or even warming up our flax neck warmer.  It can even fit a 9x13" casserole dish inside (the entire WideGuide rectangular glass plate moves around the edges of the microwave, rather than rotating like a carousel),

something which can't be said about my old microwave, a dorm room castoff. 

The Maytag microwave has lots of bells and whistles, which I'll admit to not using much out of laziness.  Sometimes you have to stand there for a while as the LED panel scrolls through the options, trying to read which numbers to press for which kinds of food.  But if I do take the time to do it, these features are worth it.

The microwave is powerful, and I've boiled coffee to where it actually overflowed the cup onto the glass plate.  But when I use the pre-set beverage option, it comes out perfectly warmed due to the sensors inside the unit.

Probably the most-used button is the 30 second one, which I use to heat up leftover pasta for the kids.  I don't use the "kids meal" button much, again with the LED scrolling and waiting, but we also don't have a lot of pre-packaged kids meals in our house.

Participating in the Maytag Dependable Kitchen Moms program has been an amazing experience, one that I'm sure to continue blogging about in the future here at Katydid and Kid.

Maytag has impressed me with their innovations that help people enjoy cooking and spend less time cleaning up.  Unlike the appliances I grew up with, including microwaves that simultaneously burned and undercooked food and  dishwashers that you had to actually WASH the dishes before loading them, these new Maytag appliances are so smart, anticipating what we need in the kitchen from cleaning extra-dirty dishes to evenly heating a casserole.  It's been a pleasure working with such a renowned brand.
  
You can learn more about Maytag via their Facebook page, @MaytagBrand on Twitter and by checking out the other Maytag Moms (including the laundry moms) by following us on Twitter under the hashtag #MaytagMoms.  We're all wrapping up our thoughts on these appliances and would love for you to read our posts.
Disclosure: I wrote this post participating in an Maytag Moms Dependable Kitchen Ambassador program by Mom Central Consulting on behalf of Maytag. I was provided with a Maytag kitchen appliances set, including a refrigerator, microwave, dishwasher, and range to facilitate my post.