Deals!

Two great deals to share with you on some of my favorite things:

Sunset--part shelter mag, part travel mag, part food mag--was my way to keep Pacific Northwest homesickness at bay when I was living in California. The featured homes are gorgeous and the recipes are always spot on; a good number of the ones featured here come from Sunset's online recipe library. A one-year subscription is just $5 right now at Amazon!

Oxo--makers of well-designed household gadgets galore--has a new website and its celebrating with a sale. We have more Oxo gadgets in our kitchen than I'm probably willing to admit. But they are all well-used and appreciated, especially the mango splitter, strawberry huller, and food mill. And my itsy bitsy mini measuring cup, which measures liquids by the tablespoon. Use coupon code OXONEW through 9/26 for 15% off and free shipping on all orders. Can anyone say "stocking stuffers"?

Impulse purchase

I ask you, how could I pass up something this adorable? How?

I've already grated a wee bit of cheese for a lunchtime garnish. Too. Cute.

Useful things: strawberry huller

Looks like it's strawberry week here at the veggie blog!

Behold the Oxo Good Grips Strawberry Huller ($6, Amazon.com). I'm not usually a big fan of single-use kitchen gadgets, but I love this little sucker.

It does just what the name promises: hulls your strawberries. True, you can cut those little woody bits out with a knife. But I typically slice off most of the sweet top along with it, which seems like a waste. And the berries aren't the prettiest afterward.

This makes the whole process much more efficient:

Start by removing the leaves	Erm, this picture seems vaguely dirty
Twist and the hull comes neatly out...	...leaving just the sweet fruit.

My one complaint is that the marketing makes it seem like it will take off the leaves along with the hull. I've found that the tool often cuts through the leaves instead, leaving you with bits of green stuck on and in the berry. Now I just pluck off the leaves as I'm sorting through the berries before washing them, to avoid the problem.

If you want to try out the method without buying the gadget, I read that a star tip--the kind you use on a frosting bag--will also pull out the hulls.

Useful things: food storage labels

Having a freezer full of tasty produce isn't much good if you can't tell what's what!

Freezer tape is an old, economical standby. It isn't bothered by moisture, sticks to everything food-storage related, and peels off easily, making it great as a label. Use it to make a tight seal when wrapping with aluminum foil or freezer paper. You can find it for a few dollars a roll at most hardware stores or well-stocked big box stores; it's also available online.

Another classic: one-time use freezer labels. The self-adhesive labels come 100 to a dispenser box and peel right off your container when the season is over. Available for $5 a box at The Container Store or $6.65 at Amazon.com. The retro look of the box makes me feel domestic.

My personal favorites are the erasable food labels by LabelOnce. We use them everywhere in the kitchen: on bulk foods in the pantry, storage containers in the freezer and even recipe files. You write on the label with a fine-tipped Sharpie marker, then simply erase the writing and relabel when it's time to use the container for another purpose. I really like being able to change out the contents of my storage tubs--especially in the pantry--without worrying about putting beans in the container marked "flour" or other such madness. They've stayed stuck on for us through a year in the freezer and even trips through the dishwasher so far. I picked up ours at The Container Store; $10 for a starter kit that includes a Sharpie and eraser, $7 for sticker refills.

Useful things: food scale

For a long time, I pooh-poohed the idea of a kitchen scale. My cookbooks used volume measurements, not weight. I could eyeball things when cutting up meat or dividing dough. Who needed a scale?

But when I got into food preservation in earnest, I found myself wishing I had one all the time. Typically in the late hours of the night, as I stared down an enormous stockpot of cooked beans waiting to be frozen in 15-ounce can-sized portions. I now have the 11-pound Oxo Good Grips Food Scale  ($45, also available in a 5-pound version for $30).

Some things to keep in mind when picking out a food scale to use in food preservation:

• Beware of buying a lightweight. Pay attention to the weight limit--you'll likely want something that will weigh more than a few pounds, at the minimum.
• Make sure it has a broad, flat surface. Some have small removable bowls attached to the scale or tiny platforms. You'll want something that will hold your own large bowls, plates and other containers.
• A tare feature is also very helpful, so that you can measure and weigh items without needing to factor in the weight of the container.
• The pull-out display on the Oxo scale has also been really useful for me. With other scales I've owned, the buttons and displays were often obscured by whatever plate or bowl was on the scale. It's nice to be able to pull the buttons closer to me when I need to.
• Digital scales tend to be easier to use and take up less space than old-school mechanical scales, but they do use up batteries.

Useful things: pasta insert

A pasta insert, sometimes called a cooking colander, sits inside a saucepan or stockpot. It makes it easier to cook things in boiling water because you can just pull out the insert when its done and the water drains away back into the pot. It's perfect for blanching vegetables before freezing them; you can zip them quickly from hot water to an ice water bath to stop the cooking process. It also lets you reuse the cooking water for another batch. You can also use the inserts to steam food by boiling water just below the bottom and covering with a lid. They are typically steel (shown at left, IKEA 3 quart STABIL, $8), although there are also silicone ones which nicely collapse for storage (shown below, Oxo Good Grips silicone collapsible colander, $30).


It doesn't need to be expensive. This is a basic utility piece--it just needs to be the right size and get the job done. It should fit comfortably inside your pot and still allow you to use the pot's lid.  Resist the urge to buy a big one, too. I made that mistake last year, thinking that I'd be processing a lot of food. But it's better to blanch in small batches, to keep from accidentally cooking the veggies too long because they overwhelm the ice bath. Now I've got a nice 5 quart size that suits the job just right.