Freshly toasted pine nuts: I don’t believe anything else makes the kitchen smell better, except maybe cookies baking in the oven. Cookies that someone ELSE is baking in the oven. Right before they wash their own dishes.
Posts Tagged ‘kitchen’
New purchases beget more new purchases
Posted in Eats, Home, Photographs, tagged adulthood, Australia, ceramic cooktop, cooking, cookware, enamelware, grandmother, home, husband, kitchen, oven, remodeling, stainless steel, stove, thrift store, Tramontina on February 4, 2010| 2 Comments »
Buying cookware is the final stage of entry to adulthood, right?
I am SO there.
I’ve been using the cookware pictured here for about 16 years. Liberated from the home of my dearly departed paternal grandmother, it’s likely older than I am. Wear and tear wasn’t really a problem, however, since she hardly ever cooked much more than a can of chicken noodle soup.
It was some kind of enamelware, with hints of an Australian origin. I was always sort of vaguely aware that I should buy something “real,” since who knows what that stuff was coated with.
One of the larger pots developed a small dark spot on the bottom in the late ’90s. While boiling water one day, I watched the spot rise to the surface, followed by a powdery, brownish red cloud. It seemed to have rusted through from the inside out.
Other than that incident, it was incredibly durable. The only reason I had to get rid of it was because of another very grownup purchase my husband and I made recently: a new stove.
It’s a stainless steel model with a ceramic cooktop that, in theory, will make the kitchen sleek and sporty once we’ve replaced everything else that makes the kitchen non-sleek and frumpy.
The only caveat: The safest way to use the ceramic cooktop is not to use it at all.
It is the drama queen of cooking surfaces. No enamel. No cast iron. No aluminum. Only the flattest of flat-bottomed cookware will do. No hint of moisture on the outside of the vessel. If you spill anything with sugar in it on the cooktop, immediately turn the stove off, call a priest and get him to pray that you can remove the spill before it makes a pit on the surface.
I kid. Sort of. It’s actually a really reliable cooktop, once you get used to it, and the oven is the most accurate model I’ve ever used. And it does make one end of the kitchen look very sporty.
I think I’m even burning extra calories, because cooking without the fear of instantaneously destroying your cooktop doesn’t produce any adrenaline at all.
It might all be hype. Several people have told me that they use anything and everything on their ceramic cooktops. But older enamelware seems to be a consistent no-no – the surface coating has every possibility of actually melting onto the cooktop.
So we bought a set of stainless steel, the only “sure thing” to use. I was pleasantly surprised by the price; my husband found a five-piece set of Tramontina, recommended by Cook’s Illustrated, for around $150 at Wal-Mart, a real bargain compared to most of the luxury brands.
I’ve got no complaints about it. Best of all, some lucky thrift-store scavenger is going to get a few more years of use out of my grandmotherly enamelware. Just beware the small dark spot on the bottom.
The final holiday project: cake balls
Posted in Christmas, Eats, Photographs, tagged Bakerella, cake balls, Christmas, food, gloves, holidays, iPhone, kitchen, party, photograph, red velvet cake, whistling on December 28, 2009| 2 Comments »
I don’t make pretty food. (I also don’t seem to be able to make pretty photographs of light-colored objects.) So why I zoned in on Bakerella’s Red Velvet Cake Balls several months ago is up for discussion.
Whatever the reason, I decided they were the perfect dessert for wherever I was going to spend Christmas. Red velvet cake, mixed with cream cheese frosting and coated in white chocolate, seemed to be the most festive food I could contribute.
I had seen plenty of attempted cake balls on last year’s holiday party circuit. Most were delicious, but they were also about the size of ping-pong balls, making them difficult to eat. Most also suffered from a common rookie mistake: The balls hadn’t been properly chilled before they were dipped in the chocolate mixture, and thus coverage was spotty. Picture big, unruly wads of cake with about 75 percent chocolate coverage.
From the moment I hauled out the mixer, I knew this project was going to turn into a big mess. My old, scratched-up countertop has lost any stain-guarding properties it may have ever had, so I had to be ever so careful not to drop any (OK, much) red batter. Luckily, I had food-safe disposable gloves in the cabinet, because I don’t think I could sell bright red palms as part of the charm on Christmas morning.
Part two of the mess was the actually coating of the cake balls with melted chocolate bark. Bakerella says to use a spoon to dip and roll each cake ball in the chocolate. This didn’t work out for me, and I was left with uneven coverage. A couple of comments on the post recommended using a toothpick for the dipping and rolling; this worked out much better, only it left a tiny hole in the top. A tiny hole that looked way worse after my futile attempts at re-dipping or filling. (I realize now that a little creative drizzling would have upped the wow factor substantially.) And if I didn’t remove the toothpick soon enough, it left a huge crack in the top, leading to a small pile of discards. Tasty, tasty discards.
The non-discards were also delicious. And I guess they looked good enough to eat, since I don’t have that many left.
I’m almost sad to see the holidays end, since now I don’t have much reason to turn the kitchen into my own experimental lab. My solace is the hope that the office Whistling Guy will take the Christmas songs out of his repertoire.
Culinary pursuit ends in delicious victory
Posted in Christmas, Eats, Photographs, tagged appliances, childhood, Christmas, cookies, cooking, crystallized ginger, food, ginger, Gingeroos, hummus, kitchen, Las Vegas, molasses, Nashville, oven, OXO, photograph, recipes, Trader Joe's, vacation on December 14, 2009| 14 Comments »
I’ve been on a cookie odyssey for a couple of years in search of a proper substitute for Trader’s Joe’s Gingeroos, which I discovered while vacationing in Las Vegas. (And yes, I DO always visit grocery stores on vacation. You should too.)
I don’t think molasses was a big component of my childhood treats, because these cookies were richer, darker, more sultry than any I had ever tasted. Chunks of crystallized ginger closed the deal … these were my new go-to favorites, only it was not to be. Double tragedy: The nearest Trader Joe’s is two hours away in Nashville, and they don’t seem to stock Gingeroos.
Admittedly, by cookie odyssey, I mean that I found one nearly suitable recipe and tried it a couple of times before my oven joined the Great Appliance Rebellion of 2009, rendering all cookie-baking attempts futile at best, infuriating at worst.
Then, November. My search is renewed after installation of a new stove.
I had found this recipe last year, but never got to try it. Miracle of miracles, it appeared in a sponsored link atop my gmail last week. It was culinary fate.
Triple Ginger Cookies, from the recipe journal 101 Cookbooks, are a huge ordeal to make, but they’re worth every minute. They’re what I call “grown-up cookies.” Not everyone will like them – they give off a bit of heat – and they’re not the kind of cookie that you eat a half dozen of in one sitting with a big glass of milk. You relish one or two with a cup of coffee or other hot adult beverage that may or may not be spiked with Bailey’s.
Just to make things interesting, I also made my own crystallized ginger for the recipe. I remembered paying a premium for crystallized ginger last year (around $4 extra a pound at the Fresh Market), and this recipe uses A LOT. The clerk at my Asian grocery store said they hadn’t received a shipment of crystallized ginger in months, so my backup bulk supply option was off the table.
Crystallizing ginger was a pretty big ordeal, too, but it made the house smell DELICIOUS and it reinforced my assertion that I do too need that OXO mandoline that I’ve got my eye on.
I’m not going to claim they’re just like Gingeroos, but they’re close enough.
Next kitchen project: the perfect hummus recipe. Also maybe, just maybe, fixing that hole in the ceiling.
So you don’t want to sell me an appliance today
Posted in Home, tagged appliances, big-box stores, competition, credit card, customer service, economy, home, home improvement, Huntsville, kitchen, remodeling, repair, shipping on November 9, 2009| 3 Comments »
You’re the manager of a big-box home improvement store and the economy’s hit bottom. Do you cut employee hours across the board, so much so that potential customers can find no one to take their money?
It looks like you do.
I spent 20 minutes in the appliances section of a huge home improvement store yesterday, waiting with another lady who kept pressing the “please come sell me something” button to no avail. I had the exact make and model of the appliance I wanted in hand, on a printout given to me a few weeks earlier by one of the store’s employees. All I needed was for someone to order the appliance and charge a large amount of money to my credit card.
But no. The section of the store in which NOTHING is priced UNDER $500 and most everything is priced OVER $1200 was completely unstaffed on a Sunday afternoon.
What’s funny is that the OTHER big-box home improvement store had already pulled a similar stunt with me and my remodeling dollars several weeks before.
I’m not begging anybody to take my money. If showing up is half the battle, you guys LOSE.
What a boon for the local mom-and-pop stores that have survived the competition. I bet bad customer service experiences get more people through their doors than anything else.
Every appliance in my kitchen is going to have to be replaced in the next couple of years. It’s very handy to have a list of the stores that don’t really want to sell me anything.
As Pictured Below: Dude
Posted in As Pictured Below, Cats, Photographs, tagged animals, catnip, cats, Doritos, iPhone, kitchen, munchies, photograph, Trader Joe's on August 13, 2009| 1 Comment »
I recently broke out the catnip, hoping to stoke 13-year-old Yang’s appetite. I also added two Double Wide Cat Scratchers from Trader Joe’s to a expansive collection of cat accessories.
Now I have two stoner cats who sleep on their respective cat scratchers for hours at a time until they’re forced to make a mad dash for the kitchen when they hear the refrigerator open.
Anyway, they’re eating better, although I don’t think they should be scarfing down so many Doritos.
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