Now You're Grinding in Style!

Kenmore 60572 3/4-HP Garbage Disposal

My first clue was water on the floor of the cabinet under the sink. It didn’t go away after I replaced the faucet (I’d have done that anyway) – that was my second clue – so I pulled the old InSinkerator Badger, I found a hole in the grinder chamber – on the back, naturally – and that particualr mystery was solved: another bottom-of-the-line plumbing fixture bit the dust, no thanks to the sleazeball who sold us this house.

Around our house we don’t use what the industry calls a food-waste disposer very often, since we compost a lot of our scraps. Every once in a while, though, one of us finds a science experiment hidden at the back of the refrigerator, and that’s when a disposal comes in handy.  Since any house on a municipal sewer system is expected to have one of them these days, re-plumbing without a disposer wasn’t an option. We didn’t want to spend a lot of bucks on something we only use a time or two a week, though, do we didn’t go looking for a “silent” model. On the other hand, we wanted one that had a good capacity and would last for a while. After the usual online research, I picked the Kenmore 60572.

They're Right About the “Perfect” Part

Emsa Perfect Beaker 16-ounce Measuring Cup

It was bread-baking day at our house yesterday – you could tell because the dogs were drooling more than usual. The recipe of the week came from a cookbook with recipes for three different loaf sizes, meaning that while one says "1¼ C water," the next larger size calls for "1½ C + 2 Tbsp." Rather a pain, eh? Well, it isn't a pain for us, because we have an Emsa Perfect Beaker measuring cup. Not only is this two-cup beaker marked in cups, it's also marked in tablespoons, so it’s simple to hit the correct mark: you fill it to 1½ cups, switch to the tablespoons scale, and add two more tablespoons... or just fill it to 26 tablespoons.

It seems rare to find a product that lives up to its name, but the Perfect Beaker comes close. It measures up to two cups, dry or liquid – that’s nothing new, since an ordinary Pyrex measuring cup does the same thing. However, it’s also marked in pints, ounces, tablespoons, teaspoons, and milliliters, all in one cone-shaped clear plastic beaker. Scales with six different units are spread around the margin of the Perfect Beaker, clearly marked in bold black letters. On the cup scale, it’s marked off in different increments for more complex recipes: ounces, eighths of a cup, and thirds of a cup. It also works great for mixing liquid ingredients: need three tablespoons of vinegar and three of oil? No problem: just pour! I use it for measuring almost anything, with the possible exception of boiling water.

The beaker tapers to allow more precise measurements at small volumes, so you can measure accurately down to a couple of teaspoons. In that, it’s better suited to liquid measure. The cone-like beaker rests on a broad, stable base; with an hourglass shape that makes it easy to grab and hold when your hands are wet. The opening has a broad lip so you can pour from any direction: no spout necessary.

It Just Looks Like it Came from Starbucks

Copco Acadia To Go Mug

Yours truly is a morning person – yeah, that may be dis-gusting, but it’s true. That’s a good thing for my most recent job: since I got the bulk of my calls for support and project details from Eurasia, I usually hit the office front door at about 6:45 a.m. The good news is that my schedule allowed me to dodge a lot of Houston’s horrendous rush-hour traffic. That schedule did not, however, leave enough time for a second cup of coffee at home, so I would drink it in my truck while I waited out the Bayou City’s interminable stoplights. It’s in the truck that this Copco Acadia To Go Mug made a great impression on me, mainly because it didn't dribble coffee on my shirt. 

Description

Copco’s Arcadia Mug is a sixteen-ounce, double-walled mug made of BPA-free plastic. It’s almost exactly the same size and shape as a Starbucks grande¹ cup. It’s not only the same size, shape and color; the mug’s white lid looks the same and Copco even adds a brown, textured band around the middle that looks an awful lot like one of those insulating sleeves. The band is available in a wide range of colors and patterns, but mine is basically plain vanilla – actually plain chocolate, given that it’s dark brown. 

Can a Kitchen Gadget be Too Cool?

Le Creuset Silicone Cool Tool, 8-Inch

The Problem

Hot pots and pans just don't play well with countertops, which is the mother behind the necessity of inventing trivets. In our many decades as cooks, trivets, potholders and folded dish towels have been pressed into service to protect our counters, but a Silicone Cool Tool from le Creuset quickly put all of them back in their respective drawers. 

The Solution

This thin, floppy silicone pad can withstand temperatures up to 800 degrees F (you could melt lead at that temperature!) yet it’s so flexible you could roll it into a two-inch tube. The 8” diameter pad is less than a ¼” thick, formed into a pattern of raised concentric circles. The circles have occasional gaps to let liquid flow from one trough to the next. The Cool Tool is reversible, since one side is just the negative of the other. It comes with a hole near one edge so you could hang it on a hook. We also have a larger square version of the Cool Tool, a bilious green one that's about 12” on a side. They also make mini versions 4” in diameter.

Living with a Cool Tool The Cool Tool functions as more than a trivet: we also lay one on a cooktop burner that’s still warm, or put it on 'fridge shelf to protect the glass from pots that haven't completely cooled, not to mention that it's softer than a cast-iron dutch oven. If the tool gets dirty, it’s no big deal since the silicone is dishwasher-safe, and doesn't give a rip whether there’s room on the top or bottom rack. Le Creuset says you can use it for a potholder or garlic peeler, though it may be a tad stiff for either job. I'll hold onto my classic hotpads for glass lids, thank you. Another suggested use is as a non-skid mat under a cutting board or platter.

Magic Mushrooms, No; Flour, Yeast, Sugar and Water, Yes: Bread Machine Magic

Bread Machine Magic - Lois Conway and Linda Rehberg

Foodies may look down their noses at the bread machine, but even diehard fans of attitudinal knife- and tantrum-throwers have to admit that bread-machine loaves are an improvement over grocery-store bread. We’re on our third machine now, having made homemade bread more than two decades. We have several tried-and-true recipes, but that doesn’t mean we’re averse to widening our repertoire, so our copy of Bread Machine Magic has been well-received.

Bread Machine Magic: Contents

Authors Lois Conway and Linda Rehberg revised the original 1992 edition in 2003, cutting the original 139 recipes by one in the process.  We've tried several of the remaining 138, to near-universal success. All recipes are written for bread-machine mixing, although a few are supposed to be removed from the pan and baked in an oven. Versions of several favorite recipes, e.g. Anadama, pumpernickel and seven-grain, can be found in the trade-paperback-sized volume, and we also tried out a number of new varieties.

The layout’s typical of bread-machine cookbooks: first comes an introduction and use tips, followed by a set of seven recipe chapters: (white, whole grain, fruit, vegetable, etc.) and an index. The final chapter seems interesting: besides recipes for pizza dough, focaccia, pretzels, bread sticks, English muffins and lavosh; "Specialty Breads" includes a number of out-of-the-ordinary recipes like Sausage and Pepper Bread.

An OK Steamer for Once-a-Year Use

IMUSA 16-Quart Tamale and Seafood Steamer

Holidays all seem to have traditional foods, from turkey and pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving feasts to marshmallow peeps and chocolate bunnies at Easter. If you live in some area of the States, you may have heard a tradition of making tamales when Christmas Eve rolls around. A good reason that the tamal (singular of tamales) is traditionally made on holidays is that making them take hours, especially the part about of wrapping them with dried, water-soaked corn husks. They say that many hands make light work, and it’s true: the more cooks working to roll and wrap these tasty bundles, the better. 

We once found a tamale recipe and gladly committed ourselves to a several-hour process; but the recipe came to us with a fatal flaw: the instructions said to steam the tamales by spreading them flat on a rack over a pan of water and then baking them for an hour – at 450°… Wow, that was bad juju!

Hellfire Enchiladas

These Enchiladas Could Be a Two-Ice Cream Cone Meal!

If you’ve ordered enchiladas in your local Mexican restaurant lately, they probably came out topped with some sort of brown gravy glop, especially if the sign over the door says “Tex-Mex” or the word “cantina” appears anywhere on the premises. Some restaurants now give you the choice of red or green sauce -- red is chile colorado, while green is (unfortunately) usually tomatillo-based instead of chile verde. Commercially you can buy both red and green enchilada sauce canned by vendors like Hatch and Old El Paso, most of which tends to be salt-laden.

Here’s a version of enchiladas you can make at home with a tomato-based sauce, a sort of salsa ranchera. You can doctor it to be as hot as you want by adjusting the number of chiles in the sauce…

Every Grill Girl Needs a Grill Wok

Cuisinart Non-Stick CNW-328 Grill Wok

See this at Amazon

Combinations of skewered vegetables, fruit and meat tease our taste buds, while watchfully grilled vegetable mixes taste as good if not better than any steamed vegetables.  Thick asparagus spears and large portobello mushroom caps can sit directly on a grill grate but other vegetables tend to slip through the grates. An inexpensive grill gadget turns meals into culinary adventures and turns grills into kitchens.  If you grill a lot, and you enjoy grilled vegetables, a Grill Wok is a must.

Cuisinart’s Non-Stick Grill Wok makes it possible to grill and char combinations of vegetables over the flames. You won’t need to worry about sacrificing roasted jalapenos to the grill Gods. This makes it safe to cook chopped vegetables, roast peppers, or char green beans. Skinny asparagus cooks betters in the grill wok than directly on the grate. 

Seen Your Leftover Onions Lately? I Didn't Think So...

Hutzler Onion Saver

The onion is a staple food at our house, so there are usually half onions (red, yellow or both) buried somewhere in our refrigerator. For years, we just stuck the partial back in the produce bag or tucked it in a zipper bag and tossed everything back into the crisper drawer. Weeks later, we'd find it again beneath the potatoes, somehow converted into the spawn of the slime monster that ate Cleveland (the little Cleveland, in Texas). Apparently lots of people have had that happen to half onions, so the folks at Hutzler produced yet one more made-in-China plastic gadget for our kitchen: the Onion Saver.

Foodies No Longer Need Heavy Frittata Pans: Check out the Silicone

Lekue Frittata Spanish Omelette Pan

 

Years of searching for the perfect frittata pan led me to an unexpected conclusion and I’m not using anything else after this discovery and I was tempted this evening. Lekue is a provider of revolutionary kitchen cookware and the result of a research project between the Lekue and Alicia Foundation on microwave cooking to find the perfect solutions and designs for specific foods – like frittatas. This 100% platinum silicone BPA free frittata pan doesn’t look like a suitable pan. After all, it’s supposed to be a heavy duty pan capable of holding up in the heat of a very hot oven. This is a soft, rubbery, red silicone pan that resembles an omelet pan. It’s designed for the microwave.  

Before cooking your next frittata put away your pans.  This frittata needs nothing else when using the Lekue Frittata Spanish Omelette Silione pan. 

Chop up some garlic and dice a small onion. Put them in the larger diameter side of this frittata pan with a tablespoon of olive oil. Stir to cover the onions and place in the microwave for 3 minutes (based on 800 watts – mine is 1100 and I converted to 70% power on everything). Cover the mixture with the other side of this pan. The onions are soft and the fragrance is wonderful.

Next, I put ¾ cup of diced ham on top of the onions, stirred to coat the mixture with olive oil and

onion mixture and return it at 70% for two minutes. Whisk four eggs with two tablespoons of milk, pour over the onion/ham mixture and sprinkle with a half cup of shredded cheddar cheese. Cook for three minutes at 70%, turn it over and cook for one more minute. The frittata is fluffy, sufficiently dense and not a hint of rubbery. It was quite good.

The microwavable Frittata pan comes with a multi-language, visual set of instructions for making a Spanish Omelet and a Vegetable Frittata as well as Okonomiyaki and Trinxat. The pamphlet has a visual list of ingredients used in the recipes, each represented by an icon and a multi-language list of names. This could easily be useful in foreign language classes. This is in Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan Spanish, English, French, German, Dutch, Italian, Finnish, Norwegian, and Russian.

The top and bottom are hinged together so that they also fit together. The pan is 10 inches in diameter and two inches deep.  The silicone can take the heat of the microwave and it’s dishwasher safe. This lacks a handle, although the hinge can be used for that purpose. It’s not designed for use in the microwave. 

My final thoughts: Once you become familiar with the ingredient combinations (they are minimal) it’s easy to cook frittatas for two or a larger meal for one in a very short time. If you want a quick meal that’s not processed, try this. Add a side of asparagus or broccoli and enjoy. This was a Christmas gift and it’s a keeper! I’m continually impressed.

Plus: Quick, Healthy, Easy to clean, Did I say fast, Everything can be cooked in one pan

Minus: I'll let you know if one's ever discovered.

Grundtal Rails from IKEA

For the house that lacks ample counter space – or for the foodies who have too much stuff

IKEA’s Grundtal Series provides sleek, modern style for organizing your kitchen and a Grundtal Rail serves as the foundation to the system.  This stainless steel rail supports numerous organizer accessories.  

The rail is round (approximately 3/4 inch) and is available in three different lengths: 20 7/8 inches, 31 ½ inches and 47 ¼ inches.  It's supported by end mounts that hold the rail out 2 1/8 inches.  This is easy to assemble.  Fasteners are not included - walls require different mounting hardware and you'll need to select a fastener suitable for your walls.  Grundtal’s system strongly relies upon their product-specific S-hooks and while they have a variety of gadgets in the system, everyone will want multiple hooks for hanging just about anything.

Bev Key 3-in-1

Open Any Cold One in a Snap with the Bev Key

In summer when the barbecues are smoking merrily away and friends come together for backyard soirees, the coolers filled with chilled beverages are always a mixed bag. There'll be some aluminum cans for kids, designated drivers, and diehard dometic beer drinkers; a scattering of twist-offs for fans of wine coolers; and the old-school pry-off caps for the microbrew crowd. You don't need a collection of openers to fit the different hands and different caps, though, you just need to supply one small, simple tool: a Bev Key.

A Bev Key is capable of opening any single-serve glass or metal beverage container that doesn't have a cork: if you prefer your Diet Coke from a plastic bottle, you're on your own. It's a little donut-shaped recycled aluminum doodad that can double as a keychain fob, which you can use three ways: •   one side of the hole in the donut is toothed, so it can grab the projecting points of a twist-off cap, which doubles your grip. It's especially useful if the bottle is wet and cold •   the opposite side of the donut hole is squared off, so you can use it like a "church key" for prying classic caps. You do have to have good hand strength to make this work •   a slot in the edge fits over pull-tabs and pop-tops, increasing your leverage. Those with pricey manicures find this most useful.

A Bev Key packs all this punch into a two-ounce package, not to mention that it will also keep your keys

Zak Designs E-Z-Roll Garlic Peeler

Peel Garlic in a Flash

There are six numbered drawers in our kitchen, of which five are chock full of kitchen gadgets. OK, one has an image of a cluster of grapes instead of a number; that's the one with the wine gadgets. Anyway, all those little guys were Christmas presents (a long story), and most of them rarely see the light of day unless one of us happens to paw through a gadget drawer hunting for the strawberry huller, the citrus peeler, a pop-up turkey timer, the mini-spatula, the corn butterer... Other people have corncob holders, we have crumb sweeps and colander cleaners. Yup: kitchen gadgets galore.

There are some few gadgets who live outside the drawers because they get used regularly: one of those is our Zak Designs E-Z-Roll Garlic Peeler. Oh, sure, a real cook peels garlic by whacking it with a chef's knife to break the skin, but this thing isn't just fun to use, it's also started many a conversation in the kitchen. The scenario usually goes, a guest asks, "What the hell is that?"

RSVP Onion Goggles

There's no More Tears with a Pair of Onion Goggles

I'm the kind of macho dude who's not prone to tears, except perhaps when it comes to chopping onions. We share kitchen duties at our house, and most of my favorite recipes start with onions - and garlic, too. So a few nights a week you'll find me crying like a baby while I chop and mince. I've heard all the folk remedies - cut onions under running water, breathe through your mouth - but I just sucked it up and chopped away without a crutch. Without, that is, until someone gave me some RSVP Onion Goggles.

Onion goggles look a lot like Eurotrash safety glasses or fancy racquetball goggles in thick plastic wraparound frames. RSVP sells them in a boatload of colors, though mine are basic black with bright green trim. The no-fog lenses are slightly polycarbonate, with folding earpieces like conventional glasses. The noticeable difference is the thick layer of soft foam that rims the eyepieces and seals the goggles to your face. The combination of lenses and foam seals out the gases that onions give off; just like Johnson's Baby Shampoo, no more tears!

Thai Beef Tacos with Lime Cilantro Slaw Recipe

Tacos with a Southeast Asian Sensibility

Here's an Asian version of the humble taco that doesn't taste like anything you get at the Bell (or the Cabana). There's neither beans nor cheese; instead it's seasoned with southeast Asian flavors like ginger and fish sauce. If you're in a hurry, you can use the packaged versions of slaw and carrots in the recipe, or you could be more hand-on and pull out your mandoline to shred your own carrots and cabbage.

Sur La Table Prep Bowls

Minimize Cooking Drama with the handy Sur La Table Prep Bowls

Busy cooks appreciate the value of tasty, fast-cooking meals although the trade-off often involves 30 to 40 minutes of chopping. Small prep bowls ease us through the advance preparation making it easier to cook with the confidence of knowing the meal will consistently possess the expected flavors. A household favorite is a red curry fish recipe that cooks within 10 minutes providing a combination of bold complementary flavors but involves at least 20 to 30 minutes of measuring, chopping and assembling. This curry fish recipe cooks in a flash and while truly delicious (in my humble opinion), the mess left behind had been challenging for cleanup.

Sur La Table's Set of Five Prep Bowls saves grief for the dish washer and simplifies preparation. The bowls are BPA-free melamine and are available in four fashionable colors, they nest for easy storage, they're top-shelf dishwasher safe and microwave safe. Each bowl has two volume indicators inside for measuring chopped items. 

Red Curry Tilapia with Coconut Sauce Recipe

Spice up Tilapia with Red Curry

When wanting a slightly less healthy, but fragrantly delicious version of tilapia the answer is always easy. Red curry, combined with fresh basil and coconut milk always wins. Reduce the calories by using light coconut milk without sacrificing flavor. Serve over brown rice rather than white rice to experience an interesting combination of flavors. Tilapia with Coconut Red Curry Sauce
Serves 4

Fusionbrands Silicone Food Pod

There are Food Pod People at My House

We love silicone! Not least because of the loads of fun silicone products showing up in kitchens these days. There is more than variations on hotpads and trivets, too: we also find gadgets we’d never even dreamed of. One such product is the Fusionbrands Food Pod sold by HIC (Harold Imports Company).

Mac & Cheese, by Ellen Brown

Who Says Macaroni and Cheese Has to Come from a Blue Box?

The Baby Boomer generation got stiffed when it came to food while growing up. If you don't remember how, consider these two words: TV Dinner! Many of us didn’t even know until just recently that macaroni and cheese doesn’t always come in a blue box. Ahhh, that humble casserole of yellow cheese melted over pasta: my mouth waters.

There are probably very few dishes more closely associated with “comfort food” than macaroni and cheese; which is probably why, the upturned nose of many a self-styled gourmand, it's made a hearty comeback recentl. It's on the menu of gastropubs and chichi restaurants alike, and I even tried a bacon and spinach version from Tucson’s Eclectic Café recently. That's probably because just before we left on vacation, I cooked my first batch of mac-cheese from Ellen Brown’s Mac & Cheese, “Philly Cheesesteak Mac & Cheese” (p. 138). I found it in a section of "Hearty Macs"; and it is definitely yummy in the tummy!

KitchenAid Utility Whisk

Whisk it Away with your KitchenAid Utility Whisk

The well-equipped kitchen must have at least one whisk, and probably several. Because we like to think ours is a  well-equipped kitchen, we have two. Possibly three. Maybe even four... Our previous utility whisk had a wooden handle, which lasted something like a year before splitting. It still functioned, though, after I wrapped the split handle with some bright copper wire I found around the shop. It even looked better than the bare wood, if you ask me. That lasted for fourteen or fifteen years before we had to replace it with a new KitchenAid Utility Whisk.

Year of the Snake Noodles

Here's a tasty dish made with spaghetti noodles that's not in the least Italian. It comes from a 1989 cookbook published by a Denver-based health company. 1989 was the Year of the Snake, hence the name. We often substitute jerusalem artichoke spaghetti for the whole wheat variety, which reduces the fiber content but improves on whole wheat spaghetti's somewhat lackluster flavor.

Proctor Silex 48350 Coffee Maker

The 1961 VW Beetle of Automatic Drip Coffeemakers

Not all of us stop at the local Starbucks for a tall half-caff no-foam skinny vanilla latte every morning. I mean, some neighborhoods don't even have a Starbucks, plus some people find doing that inconvenient, expensive or both. For them, there’s a whole world of coffeemakers out there to let you do it yourself before breakfast.

Ever since Joe Garagiola started selling Mr. Coffee back in the ‘70s, an automatic drip pot has been the country's favorite coffee pot. There are zillions of variations: built-in grinders, timers, cleaning sensor, auto-off… or there’s your basic sixteen-dollar pot. That would be the Proctor-Silex 48350. If this appliancewere a car, it would be the so-called "key and a heater” model without chrome, radio, tinted glass, anything fancy. But the, the great thing about a basic model like this is that there’s not much to go wrong; and when something does the item's so cheap it’s basically disposable.

The Original Muffin Top Pan, Chicago Metallic

Muffin Tops or Buns, Chicago Metallic's Got Your Number

Maybe it's because I'm male, but I never heard of a “muffin tops” before seeing the movie Eat, Pray, Love. Maybe it's 'cause we guys call them things Dunlops (meaning that my spare tire has done lopped over my belt), a motorhead thing instead of a food thing. In reality, I don't use The Original Muffin Top Pan™ to make muffin tops, and don't intended to make them: I make homemade hamburger buns instead, and it does it well.

Anadama Bread Recipe

There's an old wive's tale about this bread. Seems that one grumpy old New Englander and his old wife, Anna, got into a more contentious squabble than usual; so she went home to mother (or perhaps to their daughter). That left the curmudgeon to fend for himself in the kitchen. When he ran out of bread, the man figured he could do it himself as well as his wife. He scrounged around in the pantry, and devised his own recipe from whatever he found. It turned out to be a recipe that makes some darned good bread. When he tasted his first slice, the old man smacked his lips and chortled, "This is for Anna, damn her!" And that's why we call it Anadama Bread.

Aroma Housewares ARC-150SB Rice Cooker

The Rice is Nice from Our Aroma Rice Cooker

Our aging Oster rice cooker still works, though it's just a matter of time. In an unusual fit of anticipation, we replaced it with a cooker several generations newer. The Aroma Rice Cooker ARC-150SB has features unheard of in the Oster's day, which cooks white rice. Period. The new one cooks white or brown rice, has a timer that lets us start our rice up to 15 hours in advance, and came with a steamer tray. The owner's manual has recipes for dishes like soup and stew to make in the pot. Haven't tried them; probably won't...

The Recipe Rock Rocks!

Architec Recipe Rock

Like many other household cooks, ever-increasing numbers of our recipes come not from cookbooks and magazines but from emails and websites. I don't trust myself to leave my precious laptop next to a hot burner with a pot of boiling water, though, so I print my recipes and keep them in a big folder. That's why many family favorites are covered with burn marks and splatters. A letter-size sheet of paper takes up more counter space than I can spare, though; so I was quite pleased to find an Architec Recipe Rock in my stocking one holiday season.

OXO Good Grips 1/4-Cup Angled Measuring Cup

You Don't Need to Bend Over to Read Liquid Measures with an OXO Angled Measuring Cup

Sure, some celebrity chefs like to prattle about their kitchens bare minimum of gadgetry, we all know that they really spend most of their time squalling like a colicky infant at their sycophants while they preen for the camera. The whole world buys kitchen gadgets like they were going out of style, and why should my house be any different? In truth, we have more gadgets than you can shake a stick at, and one of them is an OXO Good Grips Angled ¼-cup Measuring Cup. Alton Brown can kiss my grits (quick-cooking, of course), thanks.