andiesenji

I have some of the "composition" or plastic cutting boards but I usually use wood. I have been cutting all kinds of things on wood chopping blocks for many, many years - I used to do a lot of butchering, wild game as well as home-grown beef and etc. I scrape, scrub and clean the block with a .5% bleach solution and since my kitchen was certified for several years, I had L.A. county health department inspections where they take scrapings from the counters, butcher block, sick, fridge, etc. I never got less than 100% and had my big blue "A" to display if I wished. One simple way to test if there is any residual blood or tissue on your butcher block or wood cutting board is to drip some hydrogen peroxide on it. If it foams, you have it, if not, you don't. I keep a bottle in the kitchen because I like to test my knife handles occasionally, which is where a lot of kitchens slip up.

My housekeeper just breezed through and said I should mention that she loves the onion chopper and ordered one to send to her Mama in Hungary - she has arthritic hands also.

French bean slicer?

I looked at the Twist-N-Chop also, there are several makers, some quite fancy - I simply couldn't understand how they could be "ergonomically" designed (in my opinion most engineers aren't all that brilliant about designing things that fit women's hands - I have lots to say on this subject, not now). I have arthritis in my hands, especially at the base of my right thumb and can't grip or pinch. This thing would be torture to use. I did get one of the onion choppers - chopper/box combination and it works great. It is larger and heavier than I expected it to be, considering the price, it is quite well made. There was some discussion about it on another thread and I am very happy I got it.

I have one of those Tupperware egg lifters. I also have the "pickle" server container with the built-in pickle lifter. I hosted a lot of Tupperware parties for a couple of friends. I had a huge kitchen and family room with lots of seating, plus big coffee and tea servers. They gave me a lot of stuff that were premiums never offered for sale. Some useful, some not so.

Actually, some people have said the same thing about me! If you look closely at the "wavy" edge of the knife, you can see that this was not stamped. Each knife edge was shaped by hand on grinding wheels, using a template. No two were alike. My mom had one and if you put them side by side the curves didn't match up. The one thing about it, it holds an edge very well - it just looks awful.

Rather than bump up an old topic, I am starting this new one after reading and posting in the topic started by gfron1. We had some fun in a thread last year about odd gadgets (and I have more than a few) with photos posted and folks guessing what specific task the gadget was designed to do. Here's one that no one who has seen it has ever guessed the purpose. After demonstration, they usually say, Dang! I will post it in use later today.

Me too! Me too! and then some!!! I made bean and corn fritters for breakfast!

Consider this "Frozen-food knife" which I have owned for 40 years. It rusts if one breathes on it, corrodes about five minutes after it is cleaned and polished. My knife man refuses to even touch it since an unfortunate incident ten or twelve years ago. He accused it of twisting and "biting" him while he was running it over the polishing wheel.

It takes a long time and a lot of effort pounding nut butters with a motar and pestle. I certainly don't have the energy today. The nut butter with the bacon and etc., is presently, spread on a toasted English muffin along with a small spoonful of chutney. There have been certain occasions when it was spread on two pieces of toast and sliced bananas carefully arranged between... I know it sounds odd but to me it tastes good. I also stuff it in celery and in the small pickled sweet red peppers known as peppadews. The nut butter with tapenade goes well on crisp toasted pita bread and also on rosemary/garlic rustic bread, sliced, buttered and toasted in the oven, rather like a crouton.

I feel I must confess that not all of my nut butter creations fall into the "health food" realm. In fact, one little jar that was prepared a couple of days ago combines cashews, toasted sesame seeds, toasted pepitas, dried black figs, a little very sharp cheddar with bacon drippings and just a bit of crisp bacon. I have also been known to combine hazelnuts with olive tapenade and cheese. Chestnut puree and dried apples with a bit of bacon. When I was a child I learned to make nut butters by "hand." Our cook would make "stewed" peanuts and crush them to paste in a mortar. I don't remember how she did the other nut butters. I didn't see a jar of store-bought peanut butter until I was twelve or so.

I don't think I have ever bothered to measure. I buy a lot of raw nuts in bulk - especially almonds when they are harvested near my home, then freeze them. If I am making nut butter for a recipe, I make enough and then some for the recipe. I try to make fairly small amounts because it will turn rancid much quicker than store-bought. I buy the half-pint canning jars - a case is very inexpensive and store in those. You want to have the containers as full as possible, tighten lid as much as possible and store upside down (on a tray, in case they leak) in the fridge.

It is two pounds for a dollar, not two dollars a pound. And the strawberries are 99 cents for a ONE- POUND clamshell. This is pretty good because at the produce market a flat of 8, 8 ounce baskets - 4 pounds, is 8.50.

Many nuts as well as seeds can be made into butter. Check Here for some advice and instructions. I make combinations with nuts and seeds, flax meal and oil, coconut oil (which is solid at room temp). Toasting the nuts and seeds prior to grinding gives different flavors as well as adding herbs and spices. You can use a blender but you have to do small amounts and make sure there is not too much load on the motor. One of the mini food processors, relatively inexpensive, would be a good investment. I also have one of these which works quite well. I had an older Sumeet machine that had problems and I returned it for credit and I had considered getting one of the newer (and larger) Sumeet machines a while back but after I placed an order, I kept getting notices that it was back-ordered so finally I cancelled the order and got this instead. Since this does the job adequately I doubt I will get anything else.

Just to tempt you. The flyer from Vallarta was in today's mail. Photos not wonderful, flash a bit bright but this should give you some idea of prices: How much do you pay for lemons? These are 2 pounds for a dollar, the golden mangos are 3 for a dollar and they are good sized.

I can't remember ever NOT liking beans. They were a staple when I was a child and for me they are comfort food. I love the big, fat butter beans, made from scratch or canned, with ham or bacon or ??. "Shelly" beans - a mixture of snap beans and mature but not dried beans cooked together. Baked beans, all varieties, kidney beans, red or white, the various "exotics" or heirloom varieties. Black beans with rice, with orzo, with mushrooms, with lentils, with dal. And I like pickled yellow wax beans with onions and peppers. I love the combination of beans and corn - black beans, snap beans and pozole. and of course, navy or great northern bean soup with cornbread - now that is a "comfort" food. But you have to have the correct type of cornbread I could go on, but you get the idea. I like to cook two or three varieties of beans separately, then combine them, perhaps with other vegetables, with baby red potatoes, roasted with garlic. Braised celery and spring onions combined with stewed scarlet runner beans.

Note that I wrote the above in July '05. I neglected to mention that I have been using rice cookers since I saw a Toshiba in the May Company back in the '70s. I used it constantly until it gave out, then proceeded through various Sunbeam, Panasonic, Sanyo, Salton, Rival, Hitachi, Westinghouse and finally the Zos, first the regular one, then the fuzzy logic. I didn't wear them all out, but they all got a fair amount of usage. I did get some as gifts that I didn't use and passed on to other people and as far as I know, they all worked fine too. I can safely say that I never used one that didn't cook rice just fine. Sometimes I had to do a bit of juggling, to get other things cooked correctly, but never a problem with rice. Perhaps I have been lucky. During my catering days, I got one of the big Panasonics which can handle a lot of rice and keeps it perfectly for hours. I think they are incredibly handy and like the fact that I don't have to worry about the rice or the pan. I have in the past, created rice "stepping stones" because I forgot about the pan on the back of the stove and got involved in a book, in the garden or even, on one occasion, went shopping, only to return to a kitchen that smelled like I was vulcanizing something. When I chiseled it out of the copper pan, the tin lining came with it. That prompted me to get my first automatic cooker. I like the Zo "Neuro fuzzy" very much, there are now other brands on the market that are less expensive and that are said to work just as well. (Same thing happened with bread machines). However, being an inveterate appliance/gadget collector, I have just sprung for the new induction rice cooker, also by Zo. After I have given it a test drive, I will report back.

I got a kick out of the first sentence in the article. I remember when coffee was 10 cents and refills were free.

I shop at Mexican markets all the time. Vallarta Supermercado are big stores, as large, if not larger than many regular markets. Their produce is excellent and the price differences are significant. Why should I pay 59 cents for ONE lemon at Vons/Pavillions when I can buy them for much less, (sometimes 3 pounds for a dollar) at Vallarta. Same with limes. They have "sweet" limes, which look and taste like Meyer lemons, for much less than Meyer lemons in regular markets, when you can find them. You can also find produce there that you can't find in regular markets. Their meats are excellent and you can find stuff there you can't find in regular markets. Goat, for instance, Guinea hens, different cuts of meats. Their ready-cooked foods are also very good and they have fresh made tortillas, several varieties, that are just wonderful.

These are the kind I have. I also have one that is a 5 - tier and holds charger-sized plates. I don't think it is still made. The rectangular one at the lower left is like the one I ordered from Sur La Table or Williams-Sonoma. I also like this one from Bed, Bath and Beyond. I also have one of these which we use for outside parties - it keeps bugs and kiddies fingers away from irresistable goodies.

You can give this design program a free test drive Smart Draw If you have a PC - not for Macs. One person I know used this service kitchen design on line Because they live in Tehachapi and wanted to avoid paying a lot for travel back and forth for someone to just come there and measure the space. They are quite happy with the results. They did have to compromise on some of the things they wanted, mainly because of their location, but all in all they felt they got a pretty good deal. They got some significant discounts on appliances and the cabinetry by going through Lowe's, after they contracted with this place. One thing they did that made a difference was to rent a storage place in Palmdale and have everything except the construction materials, delivered there until they had everything on hand, including appliances, sinks, lighting fixtures, boxes of floor tile, new windows, etc. Then when contruction was underway, Milt and his sons rented a big trailer, loaded everything in it and hauled it up to their home so the crew could pull stuff out of the trailer and into place. He didn't have to rent a truck because he has a big dualie but he could have. This was the same thing I did when I remodeled my kitchen back in '94. With everything on hand, there were no delays while "waiting" for something to arrive or because the wrong thing was shipped. I figured the cost of the storage place saved me a heck of a lot of tooth gnashing and foot-stomping. It took 3 1/2 weeks for the project, start to finish and it would have been 1 1/2 days less except they had to wait on an inspector.

The price seems reasonable to me. I paid more for a two-tier server half that size.

Cooking.com has a sale on Calphalon going on right now. Some items are already sold out. Roasters at Cooking.com I have several roasting pans and use the Calphalon non-stick, which, unlike most non-stick cookware, does allow the development of fond. at less than $65.00 it is a pretty good buy. I also use it for a lasagna pan as it is deep enough - It also does a bang-up tamale pie for a crowd. However, on page two there is a covered graniteware roaster which is an excellent buy and these are a good, all round roaster for cooking all kinds of things. Sometimes it is handy to have a covered roaster. I have a stainless All-Clad roaster, the smaller one, that I got at a deep discount at Linen's 'N things a couple of years ago, right after Christmas.

I am really enjoying the photos of the city, the markets and your place. I haven't spent a lot of time in San Francisco for many, many years, however I was stationed at the Presidio for almost two years back in the late 50s. My friends and I did a lot of walking and that is a city that one can get around on foot. (I was young, strong and thin.) Almost every Sundary morning we would walk up the bridge approach that ran behind our barracks (we were down on the street that was one row of buildings from Crissy Field), walk accros the GG bridge and back, then have breakfast at the Roundhouse Restaurant. They had the best waffles in the city. Great memories.

Is it glass, with wire mesh on the outside? Does it have the charger holder? Can you post a photo? There is a diagram on this page that shows the varioius parts and how they go together (or come apart). I usually order chargers from Bestwhip as they have a pretty good price. 24 for 8.95