cooking

What does a working kitchen need?

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thA blog post over at Get Rich Slowly asks readers which cooking  utensils/equipment they couldn’t live without. “In the kitchen: When less is more” posits that plenty of the things marketed as necessities end up as just so much culinary clutter.

“How much do you need to have a working kitchen?” asks writer Lisa Aberle.

Good question.

My comment on the post became pretty lengthy – so lengthy, in fact, that I realized I feel pretty strongly about the subject. While I understand that foodies and gadgeteers love their avocado slicers and their cheese straighteners*, I’d like to point out that:

  • More isn’t necessarily better, and
  • Specialization is the last refuge of marketers.

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Top 10 uses for all those chopsticks.

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th-1When cleaning out a jammed-full junk drawer recently, my new roommate found several dozen pairs of chopsticks. His immediate thought wasn’t stir-fry, but rather “kindling.”

This evening’s fire was started with newspaper and plain wood eating implements. They worked quite well, and got me to thinking about their disposable nature. If you think plastic forks and spoons are awful, take a look at these chopstick stats, courtesy of The New York Times.

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Lactobacillus love: Is it wrong?

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I never cared much for yogurt. It generally seemed too sour to me, unless it was turned into tzatziki sauce on a gyro sandwich.

Apparently I just never had the right kind of yogurt.

I’d heard that the homemade version was better than the commercial kind. I’d also read about people making yogurt in a slow cooker. After looking online for instructions I settled on a slight variation of the process described at A Year of Slow Cooking.

And then I improved on it.

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