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!