Poison, Not Just an 80s Metal Glam Band (or One Woman's Private Struggle with Sugar Ants)

A year ago we moved into a house that counts among its features a rooftop patio accessed via sliding glass doors off the kitchen. Immediately off. Not down the stairs, across the city back yard, and up the stairs to the top of the garage. It is possibly my favorite thing, to be able to step outside to grill, pick some herbs, or water my plants. The downside, a ceaseless parade of sugar ants inside on my counters, seemed a small price to pay. Until this year, that is, when spring came early and so did the ants. They were in such great numbers a week ago that something had to be done. And so I searched for a home remedy that wouldn't poison the dog or put noxious chemicals in our living area. My success was so great that I'm passing it along:

Jammy Borax
Recipe below

Let me be clear: Use Borax with caution and don't leave Jammy Borax around where Fido can reach it.

INGREDIENTS
2 T jam, preserves, honey or sugar syrup
2 T Borax

METHOD
Fashion 1-2 small trays/shallow bowls out of tin foil (or recycled lids from sour cream or yogurt containers, or the like). Just use something you won't use for food later.

Spoon all ingredients into the lid/tray and mix well to combine (if using more than one tray, just do a tablespoon of each ingredient for each tray). Set right outside the point of entry the ants are using. (I set mine on the ground outside our sliding glass doors, next to the outside wall, and leaned a dustpan over it to block the dog from licking it. I also told the dog in no uncertain terms to stay the heck away from the jam.)

The idea is that the ants snack on the jam and then head back to their colony where they either share or infect the queen and kin with the poison. Then you have no more ants. This is what happened for us. Within about 20 minutes the tray was positively teeming with ants. We set out the Jammy Borax last week and I haven't seen an ant inside (or out, for that matter) since. We also spent about 30 minutes smushing every ant we saw inside, just for the sake of immediate results.

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What to Avoid Eating, At All Cost: Dishwasher Detergent

I've been leery about ingesting soap ever since I was about 7.  It would seem that in my first six years I never gave my mother occasion to wash my mouth out with soap. Either that or I gave her plenty of occasion but that it wasn't until my seventh year that she decided enough was enough. What happened was fairly straightforward. I don't recall what I said, but we were in the kitchen and she was washing dishes. I ran off at the mouth, she told me not to speak that way, and I thought we were good.

 It was the lack of contrition that did me in.

She waited a minute or so, then came over the table where I was sitting and asked me to open my mouth. I sensed her true motives and told her, No, I would not open my mouth because I was certain she was going to put soap in it. She said she wasn't going to...and then obviously did. Still, she had the higher ground - I was not just rude, but shameless and disobedient to boot.

Many years passed without soapy incident until this year, when I switched brands of dishwasher detergent. I had been using the generic stuff from Costco for years, but started noticing my drinking glasses were being destroyed. Finish Gelpacs came recommended so I made a change. I have a good dishwasher and normal city water but both were unable to remove the cloying chemical wash the Gelpacs left on my mugs, silcone spatulas, and glassware. Even a sip of water from a clean glass tasted, well, not soapy, but scented. Food should have flavor, not kitchenware.

After the disappointment that was the Finish gelpacs I went au naturel. I'm currently running trials on Ecover's dish washer tablets (procured at Whole Foods) and some Seventh Generation tablets that I picked up at Target - no complaints with either, tho I think I like the Ecover ones better.

Here's a bit of background on the differences between Finish and Ecover/Seventh Generation. Phosphates were banned by 17 states in 2010 because, after they get your dishes sparkling clean, they exit down the drain and into lakes and other bodies of water where they promote unreasonable algae growth that starves fish of oxygen and wreaks the balance of ocean ecosystems. Most major brands have limited phosphates to a trace and Finish can claim to be environmentally friendly since they comply.

But, most major brands do use chlorine bleach, perfumes and dyes which aren't necessarily regulated, nor are they necessarily removed fully from your kitchenware. Since Ecover and Seventh Generation produts are free of bleach, perfumes and dyes, that's what I went with. And my dishes look great.

Want to read more? 
Cleaner for the Environment, Not for the Dishes - From the NY Times 
Dishes Still Dirty? Blame Phosphate-Free Detergent - From NPR 
Phosphate-Free Automatic Dishwasher Detergents - From Good Housekeeping's Green Guide

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5 Reasons Your Knives Need Professional Sharpening (and where to get it done)

Heck, you don't need five reasons. If even one of the following is true then you simply must take your knives to a professional:

1. You've never had them sharpened.
2. You've been feigning competence with a sharpening steel.
3. You haven't been able to slice a tomato in years.
4. Your blades are bent or damaged from use.
5. You've made the mistake of trying to sharpen them with one of those scary electric sharpeners.

Knives thicken so slowly that it's easy to be complacent. Thicken? Yes - it's the same as becoming dull. A thin edge is what will grab onto the skin of a tomato. A dull, blunt edge is so dangerous because it slips instead of grabbing, often resulting you cutting yourself. When I lived in Seattle I had a great guy take care of my knives.* He was so great that for years after I moved away I shipped him my knives once a year. It was such a pain to do without them for 7-10 days, but they returned to me in such amazing condition that I put up with it (and always tried to send them away if we were going out of town to minimize the hassle).

A couple of years ago my guy retired from sharpening to focus solely on the production of his artisan knives. Amazingly, it took me until last week to find a place in Chicago I could trust with my blades. How did I find it? I asked the cooks at Topolobampo where they take their blades. The answer: Northwestern Cutlery.  The shop was easy to find and even had parking. I arrived with eight knives (2 chef's, 3 paring, one boning, one fillet, one serrated utility) and one pair of kitchen scissors. Twenty minutes later I was back on the road with all my blades, plus a new gyoza forming tool (ours bit the dust last week after about 15 years of active duty) and a new squeeze bottle for piping dessert sauces. I seem to lose one of those every year.

Not in Chicago? Just ask the cooks at your favorite fine-dining restaurant where they take their knives. Then call the shop and ask about their method. A smith who incorporates several different devices and stages of sharpening and polishing will do more precise work.

A few notes on the 5 Reasons:

1. The factory edge on your knife may seem ok but it's nothing compared with the edge a good bladesmith will create. Every time I purchase a new knife (not often anymore as my block is full and I have every knife I need) it goes first to the smith, then into my block.
2. A sharpening steel is a great tool for maintaining an edge, but they cannot sharpen a dull knife. Most people lack the precision needed to use a steel correctly and do more damage to their blades than good.
3. Not sure if you're blades are sufficiently dull to warrant a trip to the smith? It's dull if you have to exert pressure on your knife to make it cut.
4. I've had tips break, had visitors cram my precious blades into a overcrowded dishwasher, and I'm guilty of sometimes using the edge side to scrap veggies off my cutting board. If your knives look bad they cannot perform well.
5. Throw that thing away and spread the word among your friends to do the same. A good professional sharpening will employ an array of stones, buffers and belts. You just can't do that on your own, unless you're prepared to learn the trade and acquire the requisite equipment.

* If you live in New York, Houston or Arlington, VA, you can take a knife sharpening class with him, Bob Kramer, master bladesmith, at Sur la Table. See details here.

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On Marriage and Moonspoons

Moonspoon is a recent discovery. I can't recall where I first saw their wares, but it was either an online or print ad, probably among the home magazine and sites I've been trolling for ideas and inspiration. And then, as I was worming around the awesome shop at Gethsemane Garden Center, I stumbled upon an abundant display of the very Moonspoons that captivated me in the first place: pickle forks, honey sticks, butter boards. It was a fated encounter and I did not leave the shop without a few.

What followed was a shock: my husband did not like the Moonspoons. This baffled me until this morning, as my oldest daughter and I noshed on the apricots procured at the farmer's market yesterday. We had been waiting, impatiently, until today because they needed a day to ripen. We stood in silent reverie of the wonderous fruit and in that moment I remembered: my husband does not like apricots, either. And while this shocks me I take no umbrage on behalf the fruit in a "more-for-me" kind of a way.

But his dislike of the Moonspoon presents a bit of a problem - particularly the diminutive sugar spoon I bought for our Nicholas Mosse sugar bowl. I liked it because it was so tiny it fit perfectly inside the sugar bowl. The lid of my beloved sugar bowl does not have a lip for a protruding spoon. And so the little hammered steel sugar spoon we've been using causes the lid to sit unevenly on the bowl which makes me uneasy in the morning, pre-coffee, and uneasy in the afternoon when I'm twitchy from too much coffee. The tiny Moonspoon afforded me approximately 36 hours of serenity before my husband returned from a business trip, discovered the impostor in the sugar bowl and pronounced his dislike of same. And the fact of the matter is, the dispensing of the perfect amount of sugar into your mug is critical. We had it down with the hammered steel spoon. So it's back, and my tiny Moonspoon awaits another assignment.

That's all.

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Regarding The Joy of Not Cooking

This piece, from The Atlantic, attempts to answer the excellent question of why so many non-cooks posses such well-equipped kitchens. Three paragraphs really stand out. The first is because of these stats:

...in the 1920s, the average woman spent about 30 hours a week preparing food and cleaning up. By the 1950s, when she was raising her family, that number had fallen to about 20 hours a week. Now, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, women average just 5.5 hours—and those who are employed, like me, spend less than 4.4 hours a week. And that’s not because men are picking up the slack; they log a paltry 15 minutes a day doing kitchen work.

The second is because of the nod to South Park:

Jack Schwefel, the CEO of Sur La Table, talks about “the romance” of the high-end kitchen gadgets he sells. Take something like a Margaritaville Frozen Concoction Maker, which has “550 watts of shaving and blending power” and four preset frozen-drink settings and, according to Sur La Table’s Web site, was featured in the March 25, 2009, episode of South Park. (Stan tries to return it to the company but can’t because it’s on a payment plan and he can’t find out who owns the debt.) It retails for $349.95.

The third is where that author answers her question:

If you see cooking as an often boring part of your daily work, you’ll buy the pots you need to finish the job, and then stop. But if it’s part of a voyage of personal “rediscovery,” you’ll never stop finding new side trips to take—and everyone who’s been on a nice vacation knows the guilty pleasure of spending a little more than you should.

All I'd add is that while an enjoyable hobby or passion will always command a tidy portion of your disposable income, that explanation doesn't cover the trend in home building/kitchen design that calls for a six-burner plus griddle dual fuel range in every kitchen regardless of the residents' inclination to cook. This trend can only be attributed to keeping up with the Jones, or good old fashioned bigger is better consumerism.

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Must. Have. This. Knife.

Yours doesn't have to be purple. It also comes in red, blue, yellow and green.

My orange Kuhn Rikon paring knife goes on every picnic, tucked away in my pretty neoprene lunchbox. The lovely orange is easy to find in the grass or in a crowded drawer at home. And the sheath is a lifesaver; the blades are wonderfully sharp for inexpensive knifes. You can toss it into a drawer and not compromise the blade or the hand that goes in search of it.

I've been coveting my sister's serrated version since I made its acquaintance last summer. Breaking bread is so much more civilized when cutlery is involved. If your idea of the best summer picnic involves a crusty baguette, a home grown tomato and a ball of fresh mozzarella then the serrated knife is your BFF.  Everyone knows that you need a serrated knife for bread, but it's also the best choice for a tomato and it will delicately slice fresh mozzarella without squishing it.

The mere existence of a serrated KR had eluded me. Now I find out there's a darling little cleaver. As if I needed hindrances to out-of-doors cheese parties. If any of my Chitown peeps find me huddled in the park clutching a sack from Pastoral and a crusty loaf from Bennison's they might consider keeping their distance, as I'll also be in possession of a purple cleaver and not inclined to share.

The knife's capacity for actual cleaving is untested. It may do well with a small wedge of Parmigiano Reggiano but if you want to chop up a 10-pound block of Cocoa Barry bittersweet, I suspect this is not your tool.

That's all.

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Lo, How a Toaster E're Ticking (or, Sauron's Oster 6297)

I've been toaster shopping.

The toaster oven in the Pinch kitchen is a workhorse. It's used for everything from making toast to baking a handful of fresh-baked cookies. In a given week I've used my toaster oven to make crostini for hors d'oeuvres, oven-roasted marshmallows for s'mores, slow-roasted Roma tomatoes for panini, or roasted a few chicken breasts to serve atop a salad or in a pasta dish.

Why? For small jobs, running a mini oven is way more energy efficient than firing up the wall oven. It's become a mandatory appliance over the years.

I wish they'd last a bit longer, but I generally only get about 18 months out of a toaster oven. When the door on my old model, a Cuisinart Classic, no longer shut, I decided to shop around for a new brand. I consulted reviews all over the web, mostly at Chef's Catalog and Amazon. About ten days ago I made a purchase - an Oster 6-slice model from Amazon. And today, after about a week of cuffing my ears to avoid listening to its insidious ticking timer and applying aloe to the burns I got, unbelievably, from simply opening the door, I packed it up and requested the UPS guy to cast it back into the fiery chasm from whence it came. Among the things Brown can do for you, it so happens, is transport a toaster oven between Lincoln Park and the depths of Mordor.

Then I went back online and found my old timer-less buddy of an oven. It's not perfect, but it's way better than anything else on the market. A toaster is only as good as the toast it produces, and this one really does the job easily, with buttons and dials than anyone in the house can easily operate. Brown should be bringing it to my doorstep in a few days.

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Where Do You Keep Your Brown Sugar?

The Container Store: enemy or savior to the cluttered house? Discuss.

I'm on the fence. I have found several very practical items there. I love the glass juice pitchers and my nice looking short term storage boxes for my kids' school work and the wheeled, wire sports bin that lives in our front closet. But it's all so excessive, the buying of boxes to put your stuff into.

Anyway, on my last trip to TCS I came home with something I'm totally enjoying: an airtight sugar bowl. I popped a ceramic sugar saver in the bottom and have about a cup of brown sugar stored within. It's been a few weeks and it's kept the sugar perfectly soft. I keep the container out with my regular sugar bowl, salt cellar and pepper grinder. I buy most baking ingredients, brown sugar included, in larger amounts to accommodate the semi-professional work I take from time to time. During the winter oatmeal season, when I use brown sugar more frequently I don't enjoy tucking into a big plastic bag.

It's just the sort of unnecessary/awesome thing I often find at TCS.

As for the brown sugar saver it's a barely 3-inch round lump of terra cotta that you soak in water then leave in your brown sugar to keep it from drying out as is its wont. You can pick one up at Sur la Table, the purveyor of every awesome thing you want in your kitchen. Apparently, it's good for open bags of marshmallows, too. The sugar saver, not the purveyor.

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Pinch Holiday Gift Guide

The holiday guide! Last year, readers admonished me for failing to produce a good list of ideas. Here they are. Many of these items are in the Pinch kitchen. If they're not, they're on my list of things that should be.

Thanks to AP for allowing me to photograph her hilarious kitchen plaque. I've been dying to feature it here.

Stocking stuffers or things to tie onto wrapped gifts
Fun cookie cutters - I just stuck some initial cookie cutters in my daughters' new advent calendar as a little gift.

Silicone spatulas and basters- The Rubbermaid spatulas are commercial kitchen compatible, and my personal faves. After shedding too many basting hairs into food, I've switched completely to silicone.

Kuhn rikon paring knife/sheath - These come in a variety of colors. I use mine for picnics and camping. The bright color will stand out in your carry on and serve as a reminder to transfer it to your checked baggage. And you'll be able to find it when you drop it in the grass.

Microplane zester - No one should be without one of these. I use mine for Parmesan and citrus zesting.

Lemon squeezer - I have the lime and orange versions. I only recommend the lemon, as it accommodates lemons and limes. You just don't need the orange one.

Zyliss Susi garlic press - Incredibly efficient, this thing will amaze you if you've been stuck with the kind of garlic press that requires you to exert tons of pressure yet yields no pressed garlic.

Cheese slicer - You can pick between the wire version and the plane

Foil cutter - I got one recently and surprised myself by using it all the time

Fluted Pastry Wheel & Ravioli Cutter - This is for the pie- or ravioli maker in your life.

Smaller ice cream scoops - Different sizes are so fun.

Good kitchen shears - So many kitchens lack shears. How else are you gonna trim your artichokes, people? You can spend a lot on shears. This is a pretty low-end model.

$30-$50
Nutmeg Grinder - This particular one is kinda spendy. I have a $10 model purchased at my spice shop. The upscale version I bought as a gift has a better design.

Food Mill - These are incredibly useful and require elbow grease rather than electric power.

Salter Electronic Scale - Every cook worth their salt should have an electronic scale tucked in their cupboard.

5-inch utlity knife - I usually don't advocate purchasing knives for people because they're so personal. But this is a knife that every tomato-lover should have.

Good cake pans - Every home baker should have two 8- and 9-inch round cake pans, a 10-cup heavy-weight nonstick bundt pan and an 8-inch heavy-weight cheesecake pan.

Nicholas Mosse Pottery - gorgeous Irish pitchers, creamers, sugar bowls and butter dishes.

Cookbooks - Cooks always enjoy new material. Faves that are not oft found in cookbook libraries are Rick Bayless’ Mexican Everyday and Madhur Jaffrey’s Ultimate Curry Bible.

$50-$75

Pepper Grinder - I have the Atlas but also like the wooden Peugeut models. Salt and pepper sets area also a great idea. Find some good ones with glass (no acrylic!) and metals - copper, stainless or pewter all are lovely.

All Clad butter warmer - Butter should be melted in a heavy bottomed pot - and this one is perfect.

Pizza Stone and Peel - You'll be a pro with this set. My stone resides in my oven almost permanently. It lends some humidity to the dry electric heat.

Really good gifts
Laguiole waiter’s corkscrew - The wine lover in your life will love you for this one. Some sites will engrave it for you, too.

Bob Kramer knife - Bob was my knife sharpener when I was a working chef in Seattle. Now he's expanded his operation and is selling knives through Williams Sonoma and Sur la Table. I normally don't advocate knives as gifts since they're so personal, but I'd make an exception for Bob's knives. I have a parer he made me 12 years ago and it's gorgeous.

Le Creuset - I love the 3 1/2 and 2-quart models and like everything else they make, save the fruit shapes. Who cooks in a blueberry?

Bad ideas
Cheap espresso machines - a Starbucks gift card would be a better gift.

Slap chop, egg separators, anything that screams, "I really have no idea what I'm doing in the kitchen." (For the person who really has no idea what they're doing in the kitchen - a plaque like AP's)

Cookware sets - usually contain unnecessary pieces

Knife sharpeners - have your knives professionally sharpened by someone who knows what they're doing.

Cool gifts you can present in a cute basket:

• Good spices, salt included. Penzey's and The Spice House do mail order. Most cities have a local purveyor.
• Collection of Hot sauce, Mustard, Syrup or Honey
• Good teas: black, green and herbal
  
  
  
• Kitchen towels - I love the stripy absorbent ones from Williams Sonoma
• Kitchen hand soaps

Gifts that don’t exist but should
Cast iron double-burner griddle. Not reversible. No reservoir. Short walls so you can cook breakfast potatoes, but not so high as to steam pancakes. I've been searching for one for like 15 years.

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Method: Cartouche and Ice Bath

Both the cartouche (shown below) and ice bath (shown above) made a recent appearance in the Pinch kitchen. I venture neither are oft used in a regular household kitchen, and it's true that neither are absolutely necessary. But we're not talking sous vide technology here. Both are pretty simple and can be very helpful to any cook.

If cartouche makes you think of hieroglyphs then bravo, you're very smart. But hold onto your headress. A cartouche used in a kitchen is a moisture and heat control device in the form of a flimsy piece of parchment paper. In other words, a cooking cartouche is a lot more complicated than pharaonic ruins.

I only use a cartouche for one thing anymore- poaching pears (tho have used it for stews and tomatoes). It's an absolute necessity in this preparation. First, pears are delicate (especially nice ripe ones). When you poach them you want them to infuse in the cooking liquid (in this case I was poaching 8-10 very small pears in one cup water, 1/3 cup sugar, 1/2 vanilla bean, three or four cardamom pods, one cinnamon stick and the zest of one orange). If I simply used a standard pot cover the heat inside the pot would've gotten too high; the pears would have cooked too quickly and not held as much flavor. On the other hand, had I left them uncovered, too much moisture would have been lost AND the pears exposed to air (they're not completely covered in the poaching liquid) would have become discolored and ugly.

So now you just need to know HOW TO MAKE a cartouche so you can enjoy Vanilla Poached Pears.

You will need a circle of parchment paper roughly the same size as your pot. This is made most easily by starting with a large square of parchment and folding it in half diagonally. (Click here to read David Lebovitz's Guide to Pear Poaching.) Place your finger in the center of the long side (which would mark the center of the square were it unfolded) and fold the triangle in half again, keeping a note of that spot where the center of the square would be. Fold a few more times until you have a thin pointy piece of folded paper. Then, hold the paper over your pot with that center point in the center of your pot (you're just marking the radius of the pot). Using scissors trim off the excess parchment (the part that extends beyond the sides of the pot). Now you can unfold all that paper - it should be a nice circle - and use it as a lid. It doesn't have to fit perfectly. See how I just pressed a slightly oversized cartouche onto my pears and up the sides of the pot:

Ok, so the ice bath. I employ these when I'm pressed for time, as usually things can just come to room temperature at their leisure. An ice bath is handy lots of times: when you need to blend a sauce or soup but it's still too hot (you cannot do so with hot liquid without scalding yourself and making a colossal mess of your kitchen). And when you're running short on time and your ganache is taking it's time to cool and thicken. And when you forgot to make an ice cream base the night before you plan to serve it. Enter the ice bath.

I used ice bath tonite to cool off my tortilla soup in time for dinner. I usually make the soup early in the day but didn't get to it in time today. I like to puree about half the soup - the corn makes it nice and creamy without adding any fat. (And, as predicted, the addition of farmer's market corn was AMAZING!) I don't care to puree all of it because I like to have the soup to have some texture.

To use an ice bath, all you really need are good nesting bowls. I have the stainless steel variety. I wouldn't bother with melamine for a few reasons, not the least of which include possible chemical leach from a hot soup, but also because a stainless steel bowl will, I think, allow its contents to cool faster than a melamine one.

Anyway, fill the bigger bowl with ice, then nestle the smaller one into the ice. Fill the smaller bowl with whatever needs cooling, then stir every so often until the desired temperature is reached. Note: don't go far if you're cooling ganache - left alone for too long and it'll get so hard you'll need to rewarm it and start over. Ganache cools very quickly on ice.

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Where Do You Keep Your Cinnamon Sugar?

The kitchenware isle at Target has yielded a few of my favorite things. This morning's breakfast (oatmeal) reminded me of two such items: big glass storage jars, which are perfect for housing all the bulk items I lug home from Whole Foods (oats, rice, lentils, popcorn...) and my flip-cap cinnamon sugar dispenser.

Cinnamon sugar belongs in every pantry. In the Pinch kitchen it's used most frequently for crêpes. It's also dusted on sliced pears or apples for my children, or tossed into a fall fruit salad. Having cinnamon sugar ready-made and easily dispensed is a small convenience I greatly appreciate.

I've only had this dispenser for about two years. Up until its discovery in my Chicagoland Target, my cinnamon sugar was stashed in a recycled Horizon plain nonfat yogurt container. I can still picture the blue and white container, permanently stained with cinnamon.

Cinnamon sugar is a 4:1 sugar to cinnamon ratio. Make it 5:1 to tone it down a bit. But start with 4:1. You can always increase it.

Cinnamon Sugar

In a medium sized mixing bowl combine:
1 cup white granulated sugar
1/4 cup cinnamon

Whisk to combine. Pour into container for storage.

* The dispensers are also available at The Container Store.

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Now Recommending SplashShopper for iPhone

They did it! Now that Splash Data has launched an iPhone desktop version, making setting up and syncing the device possible AND adding great sorting capabilities I can wholeheartedly recommend the SplashShopper application for iPhone. And I can add another recycled Treo to the Treo graveyard in my desk drawer. Wahoo!

For all you iPhone users, SplashShopper can be had (assuming you've downloaded the new OS) from main screen App Store. You will need an iTunes account to purchase it. At $9.99 it really is a steal. It will totally streamline your grocery shopping. The Books, Wine, and Gifts lists are also quite helpful for jotting down wines you enjoy, books friends have recommended and gift ideas as they come to you.

I'm confident you'll get as much out of it as I do. □

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Evaluating Splash Shopper for iPhone

I did my gopher dance this morning when I saw that the great, all-powerful Splash Shopper was included among the web apps for the new iPhone OS. I’ve been an iPhone user for nine months but haven’t relinquished my frumpy Treo because I can’t stock my kitchen without Splash Shopper.

After fidgeting around with the iPhone version for more hours than I’d like to admit, I’m no longer doing the happy dance. My eyes hurt and my hands are twitchy. I’m disappointed with the release. Looks like I’m stuck with the Treo for awhile longer.

Splash Shopper for Palm OS has served me incredibly well. Here’s why I love it:

1. Filtering by store, or category (i.e. vegetables, cereal, condiments) allows one-stop-shopping or hitting a variety of stores with a list of what you need at each store.

2. Desktop application/sync keeps everything backed up and is easier to enter multiple items or new lists.

3. Allowing me to create multiple shopping lists - a shopping list just for an upcoming camping trip and another for my daughter’s beach birthday party.

4. Keeping track of recommended items like wine, music, movies, books. Also, the GIFTS category helps me remember what birthday gifts I need to purchase and organize my Christmas shopping.

The iPhone version fails both sorting/filtering and desktop/syncing. The sorting feature was what made the original software so brilliant; without it it’s pretty lackluster. The desktop version, which will include syncing to the iPhone, hasn't been released yet. Since it’s much easier to start a shopping list via your desktop the new user would benefit from waiting for software updates. Attempting to use the software in its current iteration will only cause frustration.

I encourage new users to wait for updates before purchasing. For now, I’m keeping my version and will waste some more time tweaking it. It’s been a slow summer.


photo courtesy Splash Shopper

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The Must Have Item for the Summer Kitchen

I have a small fleet of juicers ranging from the hydraulic Norwalk to my most recent acquisition, the Amco Enameled Lime Squeezer, pictured above. This newest one will replace two lesser performers. I also have the orange model - slightly larger to accommodate, yes, oranges - on order from Amazon.

This tool is way more efficient than I ever imagined it to be - reducing a robust lime to an inverted puck with a gentle squeeze of the handles. It's similar in efficiency to the Zyliss Susi Garlic Press.

This juicer has been recommended before but I didn't get it until I saw Rick Bayless use it at a cooking demonstration a few weeks ago. Chefs often scorn kitchen gadgets, so I knew this thing had to be good when he whipped one out and sung its praises.

Since receiving my lime juicer I've done a bit of singing myself, only I've discovered most of my friends are way ahead of me. I've been repeatedly patted on the head and told, yeah, those are great - I've had one for several years.

Last night I made Kung Pao Chicken and used it to squeeze fresh orange juice for the sauce. The result: best Kung Pao, ever. Of course I had the quarter the oranges to fit them in my lime juicer - Hurry, Amazon, hurry! - and it took longer than I would have liked to generate one half-cup of OJ. But, damn! It was worth it.

Still not convinced? Here's a list of five other things you will use it for:
1. Mojito
2. Mai Tai and the lesser known but more potent 'Tai Bull (Mai Tai cocktailed with Red Bull - takes you to the Dark Side quicker than the negative thoughts you have about the economy)
3. Guacamole
4. Caesar Salad Dressing
5. Aioli for artichokes

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How to Pinch

Thanks – so much – to all who visited, subscribed, emailed and left comments this past week. My favorite part of this effort is the conversation. It’s been such a pleasure to be a part of.

I’d like to take a moment to address the top three questions that came up via email this past week.

Comments: There have been several questions about how to leave a comment. The bottom of each post (in the main column) looks like this:

POSTED BY KATIE FAIRBANK AT 3:30 PM 2 COMMENTS
LABELS: THIS, THAT

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What the heck is a food mill? This was a popular question. A food mill is a hand-powered kitchen tool used to make purées. It removes seeds and unnecessary fibers via perforated discs and a hand crank. I use mine weekly, almost exclusively on tomatoes. I buy whole peeled tomatoes, or those fantastic fire-roasted ones, and purée them in the food mill before cooking. You can spend $20 or upwards of $100 on a fully stainless steel mill. I really couldn't do without one (and I've got the $20 version).

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