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Information about kitchen gadgets, design trends, cookware, gift ideas, bakeware, appliances, and gourmet food products.
Fake Petits Fours for the Little Ones
If you’re looking to outfit a play kitchen, there are several ways you can go. There are your nontoxic wooden hipster sets for teaching the little ones to slice sushi, your dubiously safe plastic play food, and brand-name food sets that will gift your children with an inexplicable later-in-life love of fast food.
If you’re looking for a balance between homely wood and scary plastic, there’s the Biofino Petit Fours set by German toy company Haba. The nine petits fours are finely constructed of fabric, beads, and ribbon roses, and look delicious enough to eat. They feel good in the hand, too: soft and cushy instead of scratchy and cheap. Don’t even bother having a pretend tea party without them on your teeny tiny plate.
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Tagged with: children, kids, pick, products, haba, biofino petit fours, fake food, toys
Taco Truck Prints to Brighten Up a Kitchen Wall
It’s possible, but unlikely, that we don’t spend enough time thinking about taco trucks. When we’re not considering whether they’re being persecuted or cloned for high-end dining or adapted for Korean food, then we’re eating from them. And eating from them and eating from them.
But where’s the integration into our lives, our homes, our walls? An artist on Etsy has the solution: framed photos. Chowhound Katya tipped us off to these great prints of taco trucks, which would look lovely in our kitchen. If only they delivered.
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Tagged with: taco truck prints, etsy, 33stewartavenue, art, products, taco trucks
My Name Is Kid Rock Beer
The AP reports that Kid Rock is teaming up with the Michigan Brewing Company in Webberville, Michigan to create a branded beer. The new brew will send over $700,000 in tax credits the company’s way, and NPR says Kid Rock hopes it will help to create about 400 new jobs for the ailing community.
This is not Kid Rock’s first attempt at creating his own beer. There was chatter last fall about a deal he signed with Drinks Americas, maker of other celebrity boozes such as Dr. Dre Cognac and Trump Vodka, but we haven’t seen any sign of that beer actually coming to market. No bother, now he can appear altruistic and still get paid.
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Tagged with: kid rock beer, npr, michigan brewing company, products, wine and drinks
A Round-Up of the Best Vegan Cookbooks
I’ve been cooking a lot of vegan food recently, and have been excited about three cookbooks:
You Won’t Believe It’s Vegan!. This is from the “Won’t Believe It’s …” series, which also includes “You Won’t Believe It’s Gluten Free.” It has incredibly easy and accessible recipes. Nothing takes very long, and it’s good for basics. Some of my go-to favorites: vegan pancakes, vegan tofu cheese (for putting on pizzas or in lasagne), and a dish called the “love bowl”: marinated tempeh layered with brown rice, black beans, kale, and peanut sauce.
Veganomicon. These recipes from Isa Chandra Moskowitz are a little more complex—good for making on Sundays when you have more time. The recipes in here are really, really good, and will impress non-vegan dinner guests. Recently I’ve enjoyed the vegan moussaka (the best I’ve ever tasted, vegan or non), and a kind of Brazilian-esque stew with tomatoes, plantains, pinto beans, and cilantro. The desserts are all awesome too, particularly the jelly doughnut muffins.
Vegan Fusion. This book is from The Blossoming Lotus, a now-closed vegan restaurant on the island of Kauai. It’s really good for flavorful, Asian-style sauces to put over steamed vegetables and grains. The coconut sauce, with raw almond butter, is sublime.
Chowhounds are discussing their favorites as well.
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Tagged with: vegan, pick, cookbooks, vegan fusion, you won't believe it's vegan, veganomicon, products
Vintage Wall-Mounted Salt Box
Recently, I was checking out wall-mounted salt boxes at a local vintage cookware store. I had never seen them before but quickly decided I needed one. From what I’ve learned since, they are all basically the same thing: a smallish box (glass, ceramic, wood, metal) with a lid (most likely wooden); the whole thing screws into the wall to hold salt. I didn’t want to spend $30 to $50, so I looked on eBay and ended up scoring one for $7.99. The box I bought was made by Ditmar-Urbach in Czechoslovakia sometime between 1919 and 1938.
There’s not a lot of information out there about salt boxes, other than the fact that they were commonplace in homes before salt was sold in shakers. I’m going to put this one up next to my stove so I can grab the amount of salt I want by feel while cooking; it’s also going to be nice to be able to stick a measuring spoon right into it.
Look for them on eBay, vintage stores, and flea markets; prices vary, but hold out for a deal.
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Tagged with: products, salt, saltbox, ditmar urbach
Wave Goodbye to Handi-Snacks Pudding Cups
Fond of Handi-Snacks Puddings or Kool-Aid Gels? Too bad. In a matter of months you won’t be able to find them on U.S. grocery story shelves. As the Associated Press reports, manufacturers like Campbell’s, Kraft, Sara Lee, and Heinz are pulling under-performing products from grocery store shelves and selling off lines.
Heinz, for instance, plans to dump 15–20 percent of its SKUs (stock keeping units, the unique identifier that every product has) over the next three years, while Procter & Gamble sold its Folgers coffee, Jif peanut butter, and Crisco oils and shortening brands to the J.M. Smucker Company.
The retrenching comes at the end of a decade-long grocery store “bubble” that saw thousands of new products introduced. The Associated Press writes that grocery store shelves are “straining with about 50 percent more products than 10 years ago, including new formulas, flavors, and sizes of existing lines.”
So if you’re a fan of blue ketchup, you’d better buy it while you can.
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Tagged with: products, food and cooking, media, recession
