archives: Kitchen & Home
I can tell what you’re thinking: mason jars? This woman is reviewing mason jars? Seriously? I mean, they’ve been around forever, everyone’s grandmother had some in her house, most people already own some- these are hardly the hot new product.
To which I say: true. But mason jars are so fabulously useful, so versatile, so delightfully free of the chemicals that can leach from plastic storage devices, that I feel it’s worth featuring them, even if they’re not terrifically groundbreaking. Plus, it gives me a nice tie in for the real revelation of this post, which is the recipe below. (Already own mason jars? Skip straight to the recipe.)
I used to be intimidated by mason jars, thinking they were something used only by people who make their own jam and can it in hot water baths. That was too out there and scary, the kind of thing that was likely to result in me inadvertently growing botulism in my pantry.
Not so! I bought sets of mason jars in a few sizes several years ago on a whim, and have been surprised at how useful they have proven to be. I use them to store leftovers, to serve drinks in the summer, and to store matchbooks, buttons, coins, and other household paraphernalia. But perhaps most deliciously, I use mason jars to make my own quick pickles. (I like quick pickles because they are designed to be stored indefinitely in the fridge without the hassle of trying to seal with a hot water bath.) My favorite, incredibly easy quick pickle recipe is below, for your summer enjoyment.
So! Mason jars- buy some! And then use them to make the amazingly delicious recipe below.
Quart size canning jars, $10.99 for a set of 12 at Kmart.com or at your local hardware store.
Quick pickled red onions
2 red onions, sliced into rings
1 cup cider vinegar
1 tsp salt
Bring several cups of water to boil in a saucepan. Drop onions in and blanch for one minute, then drain in a colander. Return onions to the pan with the cider vinegar and salt, and add just enough cold water to barely cover the onions. Bring to a boil over high heat and simmer the onions 1 minute.
Pour the onions and the brine into a glass jar and chill. The onions will turn bright pink, and will taste delicious with pretty much everything. We particularly like them on salads and tacos, but I’ve been known to snack on them straight out of the jar.
(If you don’t live anywhere near a Whole Foods, I apologize in advance, because you won’t be able to take advantage of the product I’m featuring here. Normally I wouldn’t do that- feature something that’s only available at one store and not online- but I’m so excited about this I’m making an exception.)
This is Three Sisters Cereal. Three Sisters is a cereal company that makes takeoffs of some of your favorite cereals and reformulates them with whole grains, no high fructose corn syrup, no artificial flavors, and no artificial colors. They have six flavors that I’ve seen at my local Whole Foods:
- Cinnamon Sweets (like Cinnamon Toast Crunch)
- Graham Crackerz (like Golden Grahams)
- Honey Oaties (like Honey Nut Cheerios)
- Honey Puffs (like Honey Smacks)
- Sweet Wheat (like Frosted Mini Wheats)
- Marshmallow Oaties (like Lucky Charms, complete with mini marshmallows OMG)
The most genius thing about Three Sisters is the way they’ve totally reimagined cereal packaging. The cereal comes in thin poly bags instead of boxes, to produce less waste, and the company makes the bags at a facility that is powered by renewable energy sources. Cool, right? Plus, saving that money on packaging means a bag of Three Sisters doesn’t cost any more (and sometimes costs less) than a box of the big-brand stuff at your local supermarket. Bonus!
Look, this is not health food. But if you’re like me and you really like sweet cereals (I eat them for dessert, not breakfast,) it’s such a nice surprise to find your favorites – I’m partial to Graham Crackerz myself – in a format that’s slightly better for you and better for the environment.
Three Sisters Cereal, $3.29 for a 12.5 ounce bag, at Whole Foods
Last week, I co-hosted a baby shower for a very good friend. It was the second shower I’ve hosted in the past few months, and I learned some things from these experiences. I learned that even if they moan and groan, people like it if you have a few games or activities at the ready. I learned that the nicest thing you can do for the honoree is volunteer to write down the gifts as they open them to help them when they’re writing thank you notes later. I learned you can never have too many garnishes for a bloody mary.
But mostly I learned that I am a big, fat sucker for pretty packaging and lovely arrangements. I got so much pleasure out of deciding which recipes to bake and figuring out how to set everything out so it looks charming and pretty.
So when I started planning this shower, I knew I wanted to order some things that would help make the presentation look a little more festive and polished. I settled on cupcake liners. And by searching for pretty cupcake liners, I hit the jackpot: BakeItPretty.com.
Oh, my. If you have a food decor problem like I do, this site is DANGEROUS. Retro candy-striped paper straws! Cute cupcake toppers! Dozens and dozens of cupcake liners in adorable patterns and colors!
My friend is expecting a baby boy, so I ordered these blue mini muffin cups weeks ago. I have been wanting to write about them since their twee blueness first arrived in my mailbox, but I waited. I waited, because I care.
See, it’s one thing to look pretty when you’re sitting in a cellophane wrapper, unused. It’s quite another to still look pretty after someone has filled you with batter and baked you at 350 degrees.
I am happy to report that these performed beautifully. They stayed nice and pretty and blue, and they didn’t bleed into the cupcake batter or onto the serving trays (I’ve had both problems with other cupcake liners.) Everyone thought they were adorable.
So if you’re looking to add a little something to your next birthday party cupcakes, might I suggest BakeItPretty? Cheap, easy, and makes you look like a baking superhero.
Mini cupcake liners (also available in other patterns, and in full-size liners,) $2.95 for 50 at BakeItPretty.com
You have doubtless heard that we should all be eating more seafood. It’s a lean source of protein, it has all the good fatty acids, it promotes heart health, etc etc. But you have probably also heard about some of the really unfortunate results of overfishing- threats to biodiversity, the damage to other species (like dolphins) caught in the huge dragnets used to catch huge numbers of fish, and the threat of destruction of entire fisheries and species, like this cod fishery off Newfoundland.
It’s all a little confusing, isn’t it?
I actually have a friend who is a fisheries policy lawyer. (How’s THAT for a specialty, right? I haven’t seen him in several years- in case he ever finds this, Hi Josh!) It was he who first introduced me, many years before it was fashionable, to the concepts of overfishing and sustainable seafood. He carried a card in his wallet, produced by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, that told him which fish were the most sustainably harvested (and thus okay to eat) and which ones were overfished, at risk of extinction, or fished in environmentally problematic ways (and thus to be avoided).
At the time, I teased him mercilessly for it- I had a food budget of about $10 a week, so it wasn’t like I was buying a lot of seafood anyway. But now that I cook regularly, and trying to eat both healthily and sustainably, I find it can be kind of hard to keep track of which fish are okay to eat and which ones aren’t.
So I looked up the Monterey Bay Aquarium and found, to my delight, that they still make the seafood cards. In fact, they’ve improved them, with lists organized by region of the country. There’s even a separate list for sushi!
The lists are helpfully divided into green (good) yellow (acceptable) and red (avoid). They have also identified a list of “super-green” seafood- fish that are sustainable, low in contaminants, and high in omega-3s. (That list includes wild caught salmon from Alaska, farmed mussels and oysters, and Rainbow trout. Full list is here.)
Now, I don’t know that I’m going to cut these cards out and keep them in my wallet at all times, but I do have one printed out and taped to my fridge, and it helps when I’m evaluating recipes to look at the list and see which fish are on the good list for my region.
So as you try to include more seafood in your diet, I encourage you to print out the list for your region and use it to guide your seafood choices. The earth and the fish will thank you!
Monterey Bay Aquarium Sustainable Regional Seafood Guides, FREE! at Monterey Bay Aquarium’s website.
A couple of years ago, my husband invited one of his supervisors and his wife over for dinner at our house without consulting me first. After entertaining panicked thoughts of a 60s-esque awkwardfest with the bossman and his wife, I came to my senses and realized these were nice fun people, close to our age, and I needn’t be afraid. I just needed to develop a really kick-butt dinner menu.
I was going through a very serious Ina Garten phase at the time, so when I read in her cookbook that Lauren Baccall loved her Indonesian Ginger Chicken recipe, I knew that’s what I would make.
Here’s the thing, though: that recipe calls for HALF A CUP of fresh minced grated ginger root. HALF. A. CUP. I bought an entire huge ginger root at the grocery store and spent, no joke, more than half an hour running it back and forth over my little ceramic ginger grater, trying to eke out enough for the marinade. By the time I had enough for the recipe, I was near weeping with exhaustion.
(And after all that, bossman and his wife showed up having already eaten dinner. My husband had failed to communicate when we invited them for dinner that there would actually be, you know, dinner. I believe he said “Katie makes really good desserts!” so they thought they were coming for dessert, and ate out at a restaurant immediately before coming over. That was not awkward AT ALL. And I would NEVER lord that mistake over my husband’s head for years, no siree Bob.)
ANYWAY, this is a (very) long way of saying: I sure as hell wish I’d known about this product back then. The Ginger People make this fabulous minced ginger in a jar, ready to be measured out a teaspoon at a time (or, in the case of Indonesian Ginger Chicken, a jar at a time.) Most recipes only call for a little ginger- one jar of this lasts me weeks or months in the fridge.
One of the best pieces of advice I can give if you’re looking to cook more healthy food at home is this: start with a well-stocked pantry. Have vinegar and honey and onions and garlic and ginger on hand. With products like this, that’s even easier. Minced ginger is great in asian dishes, stir fries, and even vinaigrettes. I do not love the taste of minced ginger if it’s in too-big pieces- but this is so finely minced that it’s more of a thin paste, and it dissolves beautifully in food.
You may have to look around a little to find it in the grocery store- I’ve seen it by the herbs in the produce section, in the Asian foods aisle, and by the spices. For the price, and the amount of time it can save you, it’s worth looking for.
Ginger People Minced Ginger, $3 a jar, at grocery stores and on the Ginger People website.
In two days, I’m leaving for a quick Caribbean vacation. Do you know how happy it makes me to say that? I’ll say it again. “Quick Caribbean vacation.”
We are SO not the kind of people who ordinarily take quick Caribbean vacations (we’re more the “let’s visit an unknown city and contemplate the architecture types) but my husband’s got spring break, and I’ve got spring fever, and a few days sacked out on the beach sounds about PERFECT right now.
You know what one needs for a quick Caribbean vacation? Beach coverups and flip flops and a few dresses to wear out to dinner. But because this is a quick, last-minute, not-exactly-budgeted-for trip, though, I’m not interested in spending a bunch of money on stuff to bring with us. So I’m proud to report that I’ve done all my shopping for the trip (and it wasn’t much) at Old Navy and Forever 21 (where I keep waiting for someone to ask me “ma’am, are you lost? You know this is Forever 21, right? Like, a store named after an age you sailed by TEN YEARS AGO?”)
So you can imagine my delight when I walked into Old Navy and found this dress. It is the perfect dress for this purpose, but I’d argue that it’s a perfect dress even if you aren’t boarding a plane in two days.
Sailor stripes are incredibly trendy for spring, which makes this super fun, but since it’s only $15 (or $7.99 if you get the gray stripe version), you won’t feel despondent when sailor stripes look incredibly dated in a year. It has flattering elbow sleeves (also good for those times when you’ve gotten too much sun) and a short-but-not obscene length. You could easily wear it as a beach coverup with flip flops, but it would be just as appropriate with some sandals and a long necklace for a spring dinner date. It’s lightweight and cool without being skimpy or cheap looking, and I’m just in love with it.
Old Navy Sailor Stripe Dress, $15 for navy stripe, some colors on sale for $7.99 (!) at Old Navy stores and oldnavy.com
One of my best friends has a great story about going on a date with a guy who was an annoying know-it-all all night, acting like he was much more sophisticated than she was, bragging about where he’d traveled, boasting about his foodie pedigree, that kind of thing. At the end of the insufferable evening, he topped it off by ordering the “pot de creme”- pronounced “paht dee creem,” rather than the more traditional “poh duh crehm,” thus redeeming the awful date by giving her a fun story to tell for all eternity.
So yes, pots de creme may seem a little…fussy. But I cannot get over how cute these little pots are. They have the classic lion’s head accent, and each hold two ounces. They’re dishwasher safe, microwave safe, and oven safe to 350 degrees.
And at $13.96 for a SET OF TWELVE, I will FIND reasons to use them. Chocolate pudding! Creme brulee! Really tiny portions of soup! Serving dips and condiments at a party! Heck, I’d use one on my bedside table to hold my rings at night.
If, like me, you’re eying the upcoming wedding season with some trepidation, I’d also note that they’d make an excellent classy-looking, not-too-expensive shower gift.
Set of twelve pots de creme pots, $13.96 on sale at Sur La Table.
This is a cookie scoop:
It is used for, among other things, scooping cookie dough into nice even balls and then releasing it onto baking sheets.
If you had told me five years ago that I would own a cookie scoop, I would have scoffed. Had you told me that I would be writing to sing its praises to other people, I would have guffawed.
Yet here we are.
A cookie scoop is one of those things that seems unnecessary and ridiculous. How hard is it to use a spoon to scoop up cookie dough and make it into nice-shaped balls? Use a soup spoon! Heck, use your tablespoon measure if you want! Who would waste $14 on a device like this?
Well, full disclosure: I didn’t, and I probably never would have owned a cookie scoop had it not been for a spot of good luck. I got mine for free from a restaurant that was going out of business. We knew the owners and after the place closed, they let us come in and take some of their old kitchenware before they sold it for pennies on the dollar at an auction. This is also how I came to own: my favorite pot (All Clad!) my offset spatula, two frying pans, and oil and vinegar cruets. Should you be lucky enough to know the owners of a going-out-of-business restaurant, I highly recommend telling them earnestly that you’re sorry the business didn’t work out, then raiding their kitchen.
And after I got the cookie scoop (which, by the way, would also make a very nice ice cream scoop for making small-size portions, if one were into that sort of thing, which I am not,) I let it languish in my drawer for many months, not thinking to use it even when I was making cookies.
But then I discovered the New York Times Overnight Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe From the Heavens. People, have you tried these cookies? Oh my stars, they are THE COOKIE. If you haven’t made them yet, I highly recommend you do so immediately. Ignore the part where it says you need $8 feves instead of chocolate chips- I use the Ghiradelli dark chocolate chips and they are AMAZING.
Well, this chocolate chip cookie recipe requires you to refrigerate dough for 36 hours. And after 36 hours, dough is really hard to scoop. Plus, the recipe requires huge portions of dough- the size of a golf ball. I struggled and complained as I tried to do it with a spoon, and was about to give up, when I remembered my large cookie scoop…voila! No more wrist-breaking effort and misshapen cookies.
So, if you are making large cookies, particularly those that spend a lot of time in the fridge before scooping: you might want to invest in one of these. If you are looking for a “signature recipe” for bake sales and the like, I highly recommend that this be it, and that you buy a cookie scoop.
So, do I need a cookie scoop?
Verdict: if you want to make the best chocolate chip cookies ever, yes. If you hate perfect cookies, you can probably skip it.
Oxo Large Cookie Scoop, $12.99 at amazon.
It seems as thought it has somehow become Thanksgiving week. What gives, calendar? Why in such a hurry? Are you not enjoying this lovely fall? Hmph.
I cannot avoid it any longer, so today I am going to head to the grocery store after work to stock up on the things I’ll need for my contributions to our family’s Thanksgiving feast. I usually bring the same three or four things: homemade bread, pureed butternut squash (totally plain, for sick sister who can’t eat much), roasted green beans and brussels sprouts, and mashed sweet potatoes.
In thinking about the mashed sweet potatoes, it occurred to me that I need to share with you one of my absolute favorite kitchen tools. It isn’t electric. It does not involve digital anything. It looks a lot like something my grandmother would have had in her kitchen. And yet, it performs better that a bunch of fancy gadgets I’ve tried for the same tasks.
It is: a food mill.
It works like this: you place the mill over a big pot. You scoop whatever you want mashed, pureed, smooshed, etc into the top of the food mill fitted with one of the three milling plates. You turn the crank. Beautiful, chunk-free, seed-free, skin-free puree falls out the bottom of the mill into your pot. You marvel, and wonder how you ever lived without this thing.
There are three different plates, from fine to coarse, which allow you to mash and puree foods of different textures. It works great on separating the seeds and skin from tomatoes, pressing applesauce into a super-smooth texture, and, of course, making the world’s most perfect mashed sweet potatoes with barely any effort. And, at $21.85, it’s hardly even a splurge. (There are fancier versions out there, but this is one kitchen appliance where the cheap-o version has served me so well I can’t imagine why you’d pay 2 or 3 times as much just for a stainless steel version.)
So if your schedule for the week includes turning dozens of potatoes into a smooth fluffy mash, I HIGHLY recommend the RSVP food mill. You’ll never go back to your old hand-masher again.
RSVP Food Mill, $21.85 on Amazon, also available at kitchen supply stores.
BONUS: Recipe for Absolutely Perfect mashed sweet potatoes
(from Cooks Illustrated, my favorite cooking magazine on earth.)
Ingredients:
4 Tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 4 pieces
2 Tablespoons heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar
2 pounds sweet potatoes (2-3 large), peeled, quartered lengthwise, and cut crosswise into 1/4-inch thick slices (cutting them into even slices is important for the way they cook in this recipe, which kind of steam-braises them.)
a pinch of black pepper (optional)
Instructions:
1. Combine butter, cream, salt, sugar, and sweet potatoes in a 3 -4 quart saucepan. Cook, covered, over low heat, stirring occasionally, until potatoes fall apart when poked with a fork, 35-45 minutes.
2. Mash potatoes with a masher or put into the hopper of a food mill and process into a warmed serving bowl. Stir in pepper, if using. Serve immediately. (You can also keep them in a warm oven if the rest of your feast isn’t ready yet. I’ve even made these a few days ahead and reheated on the actual day. You can do that too. I won’t tell.)
Is it too much information for me to share with you, the internet at large, that we have been having some plumbing problems at our place? Until we convince our building/landlord that they should perhaps address this situation like YESTERDAY, we have become a household where cleaning the toilet has gone from a “once a week when we clean the bathroom” activity to a “every day, sometimes twice depending on how much coffee a certain someone has been drinking” kind of thing. It’s enough to drive one to booze, frankly.
But I am a giving person, and instead of drowning my sorrows in Makers Mark, I have figured out a way to turn my pain into your gain. Since all this scrubbing has us going through toilet bowl cleaner at a rate that dramatically exceeds our normal usage, I decided to take advantage of this opportunity to test several of the various “eco-friendly” toilet bowl cleaners on the market.
In the old days, we were all so naïve, weren’t we? We all cleaned our toilets with bleach- and chemical-based products that used animated anthropomorphic bubbles in their advertisements, and we never thought much of it.
We’ve all grown wiser, though, and have come to realize that “chock full of chemicals and fumes” is perhaps not how we’d like to describe a product that we use in small, non-ventilated spaces mere feet from our toothbrushes. Great brands like Method, Mrs. Meyer, and Seventh Generation have stepped in with great natural alternatives designed to keep some of those nasty chemicals out of our kitchens and bathrooms.
But: when it comes to cleaning a toilet, I really want the product to WORK. I want shiny, clean, disinfected toilet. I just can’t deal with a cleaning product that doesn’t make the toilet sparkle, no matter how earth-friendly.
Thus began the quest for the perfect eco-friendly toilet bowl cleaner. Our contestants today shall be graded on value, fragrance, bottle design, eco-friendliness, and performance, plus any other factors I feel you ought to know. Let’s begin, shall we?
Method’s Lil’ Bowl Blu
Value: $7.49 for 24 ounces, or 31.2 cents per ounce
Fragrance: Smells fine, a little herbal, but mostly not very strongly scented
Bottle design: has the skinny end for squirting up under the rim, but the large bulbous disc-shaped main bottle was a little hard for me to grip securely, and was awkward to maneuver in the 360 degree turn around the bowl.
Eco-friendliness: High. Method’s blog explains that they use xantham gum, a natural ingredient, to thicken this product, plus plant-derived lactic acid (way less sketchy than the battery acid used in other toilet bowl cleaners). Method also gets mad props for their super-honest and up front disclosure policy. You never have to wonder what’s in their products- they tell you.
Performance: meh. While I can vouch for the naturalness of xantham gum (I use it in baking for my sister who can’t eat gluten), it didn’t really do a good enough job of creating a thick goo that sticks to the walls of the toilet. Once I started scrubbing, it didn’t foam up at all, and it took a lot of elbow grease to get the job done. Not my fave.
Overall: while I love Method’s commitment to eco-friendliness, and I give them MAJOR props for being so up front about what they put in their products, this particular product just doesn’t do it for me. (BUT, if you are not using method’s stainless steel cleaner yet, get out and buy some. A.mazing.
Seventh Generation’s Emerald Cyprus and Fir
Value: $5.39 for 32 ounces, or 16.8 cents per ounce
Fragrance: The “fir” in the name was a huge reason why I bought this one, because I am irrationally enamored of anything that smells like pine trees. Sadly, the scent here was pretty mild, and mostly like citrus with a little herbal tone to it, not at all like the thicket of pine trees I’d been hoping for.
Bottle Design: The shape of the bottle is pretty standard, and the flip-top squirter is long and skinny and does a decent job of getting up under the toilet bowl rim.
Eco-friendliness: Also good. Like method, uses xantham gum and lactic acid, plus “plant-derived demineralizer and cleaning agents.” Non-toxic and biodegradable
Performance: Well, it’s a little hard to say. The liquid is clear, so it’s hard to tell how well it clings to the wall of the toilet bowl. But it foamed up nicely and got the toilet looking sparkling and smelling fresh with minimal effort on my part. I was pleased.
Overall: Nice big bottle + plant derived natural ingredients + excellent foaming action + pleasant, if mild, scent = happy user.
Clorox Green Works Natural Toilet Bowl Cleaner
Value: $5.49 for 24 ounces, or 22.8 cents per ounce
Fragrance: strongly citrus scent, no chemical undernotes (that was a happy surprise; Clorox regular toilet bowl cleaner used to require me to leave the house for an hour after I used it just to get some fresh air.) Some users at drugstore.com seem to HATE the very strong citrus-y smell, but I found it pleasant.
Bottle design: the best of the bunch. Clorox has clearly learned some lessons from its years of non-eco-friendly product experience: this bottle gets right up under the rim easily, squirts smoothly, turns well.
Eco-friendliness: a little tougher to tell. It, too, uses xantham gum and lactic acid, and also uses citric acid. The website has a lovely display showing some of the ingredients, but not all. A look at the label also lists a “cocunut-based cleaning agent”, and tells us that it contains no bleach or phosphorus. That’s good: those are both no-no ingredients that are common in non-eco-friendly toilet bowl cleaners.
Performance: very good. The gel squirts on thickly and sticks well to the sides of the bowl. It’s green (clever, Clorox peeps, dying this stuff green- but don’t think you’re fooling me, I know that that color comes from the “yellow and blue dye” that you list on your ingredient list, not from its inherently natural properties) but the color lets you see that yes, it’s sticking well. It foams up nicely with scrubbing, and got my toilet sparkling clean.
Overall: I was happily surprised at both the performance and the fact that this was an environmentally low-impact product from a brand that has historically not really been known for it’s earth-friendliness. Probably the best cleaner of the bunch.
So, which one will I buy again?
Well, there are actually two additional eco-friendly brands that I want to try – Mrs. Meyer and J.R. Watkins – but I’m hopeful that we will have this plumbing problem resolved before I have to buy two more bottles, so I didn’t want to wait to share my findings thus far. (Have you tried either of the ones I haven’t tried yet? Email me!) But of the three I’ve tried so far? For performance, Clorox Green Works was the clear winner. If you’re looking for the best combination of value and performance (like maybe if you aren’t facing plumbing problems) I’d go with the Seventh Generation.
