Sep 02

Power Tools!

Now we get to the Tim Allen/Home Improvement part of arming your kitchen. Some people love kitchen electrical gadgets. Others eschew them. We are in the middle camp. Our main consideration: Will we use this appliance  enough to grant it precious space on our counter or in our cabinet? Here are a few other factors to consider as you walk through a kitchenware store.

What are your physical abilities? You may not need a food processor if you’re an expert with a mortar and pestle. If your knife skills are flagging because of arthritis, a food processor can help cut up potatoes and carrots quickly.

What do you cook or bake? For a casual baker (cake mixes, cookies), a hand electric mixer may work fine. If you turn out yeast breads, you may need a heavy-duty stand mixer. A blender is a necessity if you make a lot of smoothies or shakes.

How much of a particular item do you make at a time? If you have a large family, a large rice cooker is a good investment.

Is the time spent cleaning and reassembling this gadget going to outweigh the time saved by using it? See my earlier post, Inspecting Kitchen Gadgets.

The electric gadget that gets the most use here at Casa Sammamish is the rice cooker. We have a small one with an on-off switch and no neuro-fuzzy logic or different settings for different rices. We have small and standard-size food processors, and hand and stand mixers. I picked up an electric spice grinder at a kitchen yard sale several years ago. I admit I don’t use it very often, but it works very well on grinding dried chiles and hard seeds. The bowl and knife assembly are metal, so there’s not much flavor carryover. It’s a unibody construction; however, the bowl is shallow enough so you have less chance of ripping up your fingers during cleaning.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/09/02/power-tools/

Sep 02

Arming Your Kitchen

Over the years we’ve accumulated a large batterie de cuisine, armaments to wage battle against ingredients to make meals. I’ve come a long way from the time a former roommate and I beat egg whites for a soufflé – with a fork. It worked, but our arms were mighty sore afterward. Since we all have limited space in our kitchens for every gadget in creation, let me give you some suggestions on arming your kitchen. This post deals with the non-electric stuff. I’ll cover electric gadgets in a subsequent post.

The bare bones. A chef’s knife, a paring knife, and a serrated (bread) knife will handle most of your cutting needs. Don’t skimp on the quality of your knives. Add a vegetable peeler for carrots and potatoes. Buy some wooden and metal spoons for mixing and serving. A good set of measuring cups: Metal for dry ingredients, glass for liquids. A set of metal measuring spoons. A balloon whisk. A slotted spoon and a ladle. A four-sided metal cheese grater. A set of mixing bowls, either metal or glass.

You can never have too many sets of tongs. They’re handy to flip steaks and chops, and to fish things out of boiling water. Buy some extra-long tongs if you grill.

A thermometer. This is good to test meat for doneness. You can get a pen-type thermometer or get one with a remote sensor in case you’re roasting something and you’re in another room.

Can and bottle openers. The can opener can be electric or manual. Add a sturdy corkscrew if you drink wine. (The first time Julian made dinner for me, his corkscrew fell apart when he attempted to open a bottle of wine. I bought him three corkscrews the following Christmas so he’d always have a backup.)

Not only does ease of cleaning matter, so does usability. If you’re in a mixed household as we are, consider whether these items can be used by both left- and right-handed people. Julian bought a peeler that can be switched for southpaw use, but that’s too much of a hassle. I just grab an ambidextrous y-shaped peeler.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/09/02/arming-your-kitchen/

Sep 01

Inspecting Kitchen Gadgets

These are a few gadgets we have in our kitchen. They’re all quite useful for their purposes. However, to paraphrase an old Sesame Street song, “Some of these things are not like the others.” The difference? Ease of cleaning. The items on the left are dishwasher safe, the ones on the right less so.

In our house, s/he who doesn’t cook cleans up. This can be onerous when the chef du soir uses every implement within reach to make dinner. The dishwasher is a godsend on these nights to get things cleaned up quickly. Trying to get every last ginger fiber out of the Microplane grater by hand is not my idea of fun.

Ease of cleaning also applies to larger tools. Both of us used to have blenders with blades that could be detached from the container. Our current blender has one-piece construction so you can’t pop it into the dishwasher or clean the blades easily by hand. The workaround is to buzz some soapy water in the blender, but even then you may miss some blueberry skins from your morning smoothie. That’s when you have to get out the brush or risk your fingers by reaching into the blender with a sponge.

Julian’s philosophy of kitchen gadgets is that one should consider time spent cleaning them along with time saved using them. Stay tuned for my philosophy of gadgets.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/09/01/inspecting-kitchen-gadgets/

Sep 01

Thought for Friday

I was at work, so I couldn’t watch more than snippets of Aretha Franklin’s memorial service last night. This morning when I opened the article on The New York Times on her service, I read these lines from Stevie Wonder:

“Please remember the greatest gift that we’ve been given in life itself is love,” he said. “We can talk about all the things that are wrong, and there are many, but the only thing that can deliver us is love. So what needs to happen today, not only in this nation, but throughout the world, is that we need to make love great again. Because black lives do matter. Because all lives do matter.”

Thank you, Stevie. Rest in peace, Aretha.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/09/01/thought-for-friday/

Aug 29

Our Wine Cellar

Our red wine collection was outgrowing the kitchen cupboard it shared with our liquor collection. We looked online for free-standing cabinetry to hold the wine. What we saw was either too cheesy or too expensive. So Julian got two black boxes online and constructed the dividers at our friend Bruce’s workshop. He set them up in the geek cave on the lower floor, where it’s cool. The depth of the boxes protects the wine from light. Bruce does good work.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/08/29/our-wine-cellar/

Aug 26

Luau

One of my coworkers was going to fly to Maui the other day. Hurricane Lane messed with those plans, so she and her family had to settle for Los Angeles. Meanwhile, the Friday Night Follies crew put on a luau. Cool weather prevented us from swimming. In fact, most of us wore fleece to stay warm on the patio. Nevertheless, a good time was had by all.

The mains consisted of huli huli chicken and kebabs (beef or all vegetable). I made some Hawaiian coleslaw.  Julian found the recipe online. I used a sack of coleslaw mix rather than getting separate heads of red and green cabbage. The dressing was a sesame-ginger vinaigrette. A ginger grater makes short work of reducing the ginger to a pulp. It works much better than the Multiplane, as the fibers don’t get stuck in holes. Mercifully, nobody made spam musubi. Drinks included a pitcher of potent mai tais. As usual, nobody left hungry.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/08/26/luau/

Aug 21

Haiku for Summer in Seattle

A smoky Tuesday.
Everybody’s wearing
Matching shades of gray.

This was inspired by my commute to work this morning. I looked around at my fellow bus riders and many of them were wearing gray. Maybe we’re trying to camouflage ourselves.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/08/21/haiku-for-summer-in-seattle/

Aug 19

Up in Smoke

This post is not about Seattle’s annual Hempfest, although it did occur this weekend. The wildfires in the western US and Canada have resulted in high levels of smoke. My hair stylist said that she and her husband encountered smoky conditions throughout their road trip to California. The air quality in Seattle last Wednesday was worse than in either Beijing or New Delhi. On that day I could barely see West Seattle from my office. Mount Rainier has been shrouded in smoke for nearly a week. There is no rain in the forecast until maybe next Sunday. Welcome to life with global warming.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/08/19/up-in-smoke/

Aug 18

Proximity Pays?

Over the years I’ve noticed a curious phenomenon in retail businesses. Often competing businesses are located close to one another. A few examples:

  • When I was in grad school, Wegmans opened a supermarket next door to Tops Friendly Market in Ithaca.
  • Cell phone service providers can be in nearby buildings or mall kiosks.
  • Car dealerships are routinely clustered together. This is probably the oldest example in the list. As consolidation occurs, the effect is even more obvious. Many of the dealerships on a particular stretch may have the same ownership.
  • In the new Totem Lake Shopping Center in Kirkland, Whole Foods opened literally next door to Trader Joe’s.

In some cities, this proximity also extends to health care. Three of the largest hospitals in Seattle (Harborview, Swedish, and Virginia Mason) are on First Hill, also known as Pill Hill. There were a couple of other hospitals in the neighborhood, but they were bought out or closed. One has been converted to a same-day surgery center.

The question arises: Who benefits from this? In cell phones and groceries, the consumer is probably the larger beneficiary. If you don’t like the deal one carrier has, you can walk down the street to the next one. If you can’t find arugula in Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods may have it. In the case of cars, the benefit is definitely in the dealer’s corner. (One could say that it’s always in the dealer’s corner.)

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/08/18/proximity-pays/

Aug 12

The PSSST Game

I’ve played a game with my cats over the years that I call The PSSST game. The rules are simple:

  • Hide around a corner from the cat.
  • Peek around and say, “PSSST!”
  • If the cat doesn’t come the first time, repeat.
  • Often if the cat doesn’t come after two or three times, peek around the corner and give a Bronx Cheer. Usually that brings the cat running to you.

I’ve noticed that my male cats are more likely to play The PSST Game than the females. Roscoe would come after three iterations. Jasper would come after one or two. Luka is in between his predecessors. While Chubbette would play, Phoebe would have no part of it. Neli follows the lead of the other females. Maybe the females understand object permanence better than the males.

Permanent link to this article: http://ediblethoughts.com/2018/08/12/the-pssst-game/

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