archives: Kitchen & Home
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.
If you’ve ever set foot in a Sur La Table, other fancypants kitchen store, or kitchen of a home cook with delusions of grandeur, you’ve doubtless seen one of these:
That is a silicone baking sheet liner, of which the best-known brand is Silpat. These silicone and fiberglass roll-up sheets come in several sizes to go with various sizes of cookie sheets. Put one on your baking sheet and you don’t have to use cooking spray or parchment paper to get lovely, quick-release baked goods that never, ever stick.
Stick-free cookies! Save the environment from spray-on oils and wasted parchment paper! We all need this, right!….Right?
When I got married, I took the opportunity to register for the kind of specialty cookware I would never have bought for myself, including a couple of Silpat silicone mats. I was going to be an advanced home cook! I had arrived.
Well, I may sacrifice any advanced home cook street cred I might have by saying this, but after several years of using those things I found them…meh. In fact (um, running through mental rolodex to remind myself who gave them to us, confirming that they do not, in fact, read this website, yep, I’m in the clear here…) I gavethemawaytoafriend.
Phew. I feel better.
Honestly, they were a total pain in the neck to clean, and you had to let them dry completely before you rolled them back up and put them away (they never really seemed to get dry with a towel). I used them mostly for cookies and I actually didn’t like the way cookies responded to them. It was like the bottom of the cookie didn’t get hot enough quickly enough, so the cookies spread too much and got thin at the edges instead of setting up properly. Plus, they didn’t brown as well as they did with a regular cookie sheet. (That might be a good thing for delicate sugar cookies, but I’m more a rustic chunky chocolate chip kind of girl, where a slightly browned bottom is a good thing.)
As ashamed as I am to admit it, for those times when I want a non-stick layer, it’s hard to beat plain old wasteful parchment.
The best use, in my experience, for a silicone baking mat like this is as a kneading or rollout mat for pie crusts and bread doughs. The non-stick surface means you have to use less flour on the kneading/rolling surface. This is particularly helpful with pie dough, when adding too much flour can make it tough. But for that purpose, I prefer a larger rolling mat with measurements and rolling guides. (I use this one.)
Look, if you make a lot of super delicate thin lacy cookies, or caramels or other candies- the kind stuff that’s really hard to get off a sheet even with parchment- you might find that silicone baking mats are just the ticket. But otherwise? Save your money.
The verdict:
Do I need silicone baking mats? No!
Silicone baking mats, price varies by size, but a standard-size Silpat model is available for $15 on Amazon.
Here in Chicago, the weather is threatening to jump straight past autumn and into full-blown winter. I wore GLOVES to work yesterday, people. GLOVES. In October. This just isn’t right.
I’m not ready to give up on fall just yet. I LOVE fall. It’s the season of crunchy leaves and rich butternut squash soups and yummy local apples just begging to be baked into rustic spice cakes. It’s just too great to skip, in my humble opinion. So if the weather won’t give us fall, we’ll just have to create it ourselves! I have just the thing:
“What are those?” you ask?
Those, my friends, are cake stencils. Are you the type who gets a little droopy just thinking about the effort involved in frosting and decorating a cake? Me too! Cake stencils are MADE for folks like us. You place a stencil on a cake, dust it gently with cocoa or powdered sugar, carefully remove the stencil – and voila! Beautifully decorated cake, without all the calories and spreading and swearing involved in frosting.
Making a single-layer cake and decorating it with a stencil is a simpler, breezier version of dessert for a casual dinner party or fun holiday party. Just imagine the possibilities- gingerbread dusted with powdered sugar! Super-orange carrot cake dusted with cocoa powder! Apple cake dusted with a cinnamon-powdered sugar blend!
Or, if you have kids and are looking for a super-fun Halloween treat, there’s a set of Halloween stencils- and it’s on SALE!
Can you imagine how cute that witch one would be with powdered sugar dusted on a dark chocolate cake?
I love how easy these stencils are. You could even use them to trace shapes to cut out decorative pieces of pie crust for your Thanksgiving pies! I’m not one for buying lots of specialized holiday gear or decor, but these are so cute, and take up so little space, at such a low price, that they’re hard to resist.
Note: the Halloween set is the only one that’s showing on sale online, but my local Macy’s had both of these, plus the super-duper adorable pumpkin-carving kit, on dramatic sale in store this weekend. If you have a Macy’s near you, it might be worth checking out.
Martha Stewart harvest cake stencils, $14.99, and Halloween stencils $8.99 on sale, in stores and at Macy’s.com
It’s no secret that I like to cook. Baking, braising, broiling, brining- I do it all, my friends. But I also like to fit into my pants. These likes are in constant tension in my world. Lemon shortbread cookies? Like. My new straight-leg jeans (which I previously would have called “skinny” until the Gap employee corrected me snidely)? Also like. And want to fit into them. Which I won’t if I don’t lay off these cookies. Well, maybe just one more…. *munchcrunchomgsogoodlmunchmunchcrunch*
Hm. We seem to have veered off course there.
To be a little more serious for a second, healthy eating has been a priority in my family for a long time. Since I was six, to be specific. Wen I was six my father, at the ripe old age of 45, had a stroke, It was caused, in part, by high blood pressure and high cholesterol. Nothing says “hey kids, learn how to be healthy ASAP!” like riding in a car to the ER at three in the morning with your unresponsive father passed out in the front seat.
My dad is (thank god) totally healthy now. From that day forward, my mom eliminated virtually all salt from our diet, and we were ahead of the curve on whole grains, low saturated fat, etc. And I’m mostly really grateful for that. As an adult, I don’t eat as restrictively as we did in those early years after my dad got sick, (I keep salt in the house, for example, something my mother hasn’t done for over 20 years,) but it’s a lot easier for me to eat healthy because I don’t have a lifetime of bad habits to break.
But my mom, god love her, does not love flavor. So we ate a lot of healthy food, but it was also often really bland. And I am a food nut. I love food. I love the taste of food. I love the social experience of food. I cannot live a life where every day for lunch I eat the same salad and every day for dinner I have a broiled salmon fillet with steamed broccoli. (My mom can, god love her. I would just be bored to TEARS.)
So as an adult, when I learned to cook, part of my goal was to replicate some of the flavors I’ve come to love in healthier dishes that I felt okay eating every day, instead of just as a special treat. This has involved reading a LOT of cookbooks and magazines. One thing I’ve noticed, reading “healthy” and “light” cookbooks, is how many of them suck. Too many use recipes that just don’t taste good. Or they call for lots of fakey chemical- and additive-laden ingredients that just skeeve me out. (Fat free cheese? No thanks!) I’d rather eat a small portion of the real thing than a large portion of something fake and weird that doesn’t taste nearly as good. (Sorry, Hungry Girl.)
My go-to cooking magazine is Cooks Illustrated, which I trust entirely. They’ve never steered me wrong. So when I learned that Cooks Illustrated had put out a light cookbook, I broke my own “no new cookbooks” rule and bought it.
I am so glad that I did. This book is full of recipes for delicious, normally deadly foods like chicken pot pie and spaghetti and meatballs. And get this- they all taste good! The editors say in the book that they couldn’t find a low-fat recipe for yellow cake that tasted good enough- so they didn’t include one! How’s that for novel? If it tastes like crap, it’s not worth it, healthy or not.
There are SO MANY recipes that have become standards in our house from this cookbook- French potato salad, artichoke dip, amazing turkey burgers, the aforementioned pot pie- and they’re all fabulous. Even the cheesecake is to die for. Is it fat free? No. Is it a lot healthier than your standard cheesecake, while still tasting delicious? Yes. That’s a compromise I can live with.
Technically this book costs more than $15 (the lowest I can find it for is $20.99, on Overstock.com,) so I’m going to have to categorize it as “splurge-worthy”. But I can tell you- we save a lot of money every week because I meal plan and cook most of our dinners at home- way cheaper than takeout- and this is our most frequently-used cookbook. So, despite the higher-than-usual pricetag, I recommend it wholeheartedly.
The Best Light Recipe, $20.99 on Overstock.com, also available at Amazon and other bookstores
This morning while I was wrestling a very pissy 15 month old, Husband comes into the nursery and says, “Hey! I have something for you to put on your blog.” Lordy.
“What’s that?” I say. Meanwhile wishing he’d just contend with his son who recently decided I’m chump change and his father is King of All That’s Better Than Mom.
“You should talk about name brand things versus generic!”
(Blank stare from me.)
“You know that deoderant I used earlier in the week? Well, that was a store brand and I was stinky by 2pm. The other stuff is fine through the day and I’m not rank.”
And there you have it: one man’s experience with Old Spice deoderant v. jenky store brand.
I’ve been mulling it over all day and have decided to not do a review today, but simply put it out to the masses for you to tell us what’s been better in your experience: generic or name brand?
Leave your feedback in the comments section and be sure to mention a specific product and let us know whether you thought the generic or name brand version was better.
You know how some people love to browse the aisles of Sephora, dabbing on lotions and tinctures, dusting themselves in the fine powdery glow of bronzers, carefully evaluating the subtle differences between two apparently identical eyeshadows?
I am not one of those people. I ENVY those people, as I suspect they know how to apply eyeliner in such a way that it does not look like a toddler was practicing his artwork on your eyelids. I envy them, but I am not one of them.
But I CAN easily burn a couple of hours wandering through stores that sell craft supplies, paper goods, and kitchen wares. John, my husband, finds this habit charming.
Katie: “Look, honey! A ravioli press! If I had one of these I would totally make us ravioli, like, at least twice a year.”
John: “can we go now?”
/scene
Usually, these treks through kitchen and craft stores leave me marveling that anyone is so silly as to purchase most of these products. (Really? You need a separate device for slicing an avocado? It is like the softest food in the world! You could slice it with a chopstick!) But sometimes, my fiscal responsibility flies out the window and I impulse purchase something that seems frivolous, but ends up being AWESOME.
My Opinel knife is just such a thing.
I have long aspired to be a perfect picnicker, (if only so I can maximize my opportunities to use the words “picnicker” and “picnicking,” whose surprising “k” in the middle brings me inexplicable delight.) I imagine myself buying a crusty baguette, visiting the cheesemonger for something stinky and delicious, and taking myself and my darling, sailor-dress wearing children to the Jardin du Luxumbourg to eat and bask in the afternoon sunshine. Sure, technically, I don’t have children, and I do not live in Paris. But I have a vision.
So when I saw the Opinel knife in a bin in a kitchen supply store, I bought it because it looked, with its smooth wooden handle and sturdy looking folding blade, like something a French woman with sailor-dress wearing children would have for her picnics.
It turns out it looks that way because it IS something a French woman would have in her arsenal. Opinal is a family-owned French company that has been making these knives in virtually the same way since 1895.
The design of the thing is brilliant as well as lovely. (In fact, according to Wikipedia, the Victoria and Albert Museum selected the Opinel as one of the “100 most beautiful products in the world.” Don’t I have good taste with my impulse purchases?) When folded, the blade is stored safely stored in the handle. When you unfold it you twist the ingenius metal ring at the base of the blade to “lock” it open so it doesn’t slip.
That blade itself is nice and sharp- I’ve used it successfully on cheese, apples, bread, and once, in an emergency, a Snickers bar. Just wipe it clean when you’re done and you’re good to go.
The one I have is the “number 8,” which is apparently the most popular size. It’s small enough to carry anywhere, but the blade is long enough to slice comfortably through a block of cheese. Recently, I’ve been putting one of these and a corkscrew in the utensil pockets of a hand-sewn picnic mat and giving them to people as shower gifts- huge hit.
Opinel folding pocketknife, $11.95 at KnifeCenter
If you’ve been paying attention to the kitchen gadgets section of stores in the past few years, you’ve probably noticed a dramatic upswing in the number of these for sale:
This is a microplane grater/zester, and I’m guessing several of you already have one in your kitchens. But I’m also guessing many of you are holding out, wondering, as I did, whether you really NEED a separate grating device when you have a perfectly functional box grater sitting in your cabinet already.
A microplane grater has very thin, sharp blades, which create a very fine grate. Its best known for its excellent work with cheese and fruit: it makes lovely pillowy piles of hard cheeses, like Parmesan, and it zests citrus peel thinly so you get the good stuff without catching any of the bitter pith underneath.
But it’s a star at other tasks, too. It grates fresh nutmeg effortlessly (and once you taste freshly grated nutmeg, you’ll be a convert, I swear to god. Buy some at Spice House, it’s cheap.) It shaves chocolate beautifully. And, I was delighted to discover that it excels at grating fresh ginger into a nice fragrant paste, a task that I’ve found to be pretty much impossible with a standard chef’s knife.
All told, given its small stature (its long and skinny and fits easily in a silverware drawer) and its excellent performance in a variety of tasks, I’d say its a keeper.
So: Do I need a Microplane Grater?
Verdict: Yes!
Microplane zester/grater, $11.95 on Amazon
