As most people know, I like old things. Not too long ago, the wife’s mother passed down her old electric waffle iron that she got from her grandmother (the wife’s great-grandmother). It’s a Manning-Bowman model from 1941, which means it was manufactured just before all US industry shifted to the war effort following the attack on Pearl Harbor. We recently cleaned it and let it heat outside for about an hour to burn off all the old grease. This past weekend, we finally decided to try it out.
An instant-read thermometer is indispensable in the kitchen and at the grill. Unfortunately, they’re often wrong. I discovered that recently when I slightly overcooked a small rack of lamb. Something had knocked my thermometer out of alignment, causing it be be off by a whopping 12 degrees. Luckily, it only takes a minute to recalibrate.
One of the reasons my no-knead bread recipe is so successful is the pot it’s baked in. The heavy cast iron traps heat and moisture like an old-world brick oven, causing the bread to develop great texture and a hard crust. To create the perfect baking environment, the pot must be preheated in a 425-475° oven for about a half hour. For whatever reason (fashion, I presume), all the manufacturers of dutch ovens seem to be mimicking Le Ceuset
If you’re one of those people who cares more about form than function, you can pony up an additional $14 to Le Creuset for a stainless steel replacement knob that “can withstand any oven temperature.”
You’re not going to believe this. This dish towel has the power to magically transform your nice, white bathroom towels into cheap, greenish-yellow shop towels. It’s like magic!
If there are any alchemists out there, I can personally attest to this cloth’s transmutative powers. If you toss it in the wash with a bar of *lead, you might open it later and find a bar of gold. I’ll sell it to the highest bidder.
As apart of our Labor Day “staycation,” we cleaned the house. While my wife worked to organize her sewing supplies, I was cleaning the workshop in the garage and fixing a few things around the house. I’ve been looking for something to do with the wood that I have leftover from the kitchen remodel, so we came up with a short list of things to do:
It just doesn’t feel like a weekend unless I paint something white.
I wanted to make a rolling island to match the pot rack I hung on the kitchen wall last month. Last weekend, I finally got up the courage (and the cash) to give it another try. This was the design:
This might look like an easy build, but the finish work and attention to detail made it quite difficult.
I’m such an idiot. After we remodeled our kitchen, we had no use for our old sink (pictured here). It was a white, porcelain coated, cast iron, double-well sink. I’m sure it was pretty expensive, but we had no use for it anymore. You could say I’m the opposite of a pack rat; I hate holding onto anything that has no use or hasn’t been used in a couple of years. So I put our sink on the sidewalk in front of our house and it was gone in a couple of hours. A few days ago, I ran across this article and it hit me that I could have made a drink station like this out of the old sink:
Seriously, how cool would something like this look on your back porch?
As any avid cook knows, there’s no good place to store your herbs and spices. It seems like we’re limited to fumbling through a lazy susan or wasting good cabinet space on bottles that are only three inches high. I’ve always kept my spices on a shelf above the stove, but steam makes some of them clump. After we remodeled our kitchen, we tried to come up with a better way to organize and store our essential flavorings. Since this is where we do the cooking, we thought this should be where we keep the herbs and spices:
A kitchen isn’t complete without a wall clock. We finally got to rehang our Kit-Cat Klock:
You’d be surprised at people’s reaction to this thing. It’s like taking a shot of nostalgia for most people.
My wife and I have managed to live in places over the years that have few, if any, drawers. We’ve had a knife magnet since we lived in DC, and it’s always been very useful. It keeps our cutlery uncluttered and out of the way. After we remodeled the kitchen, we couldn’t decide what to put above the range. Neither of us wanted to put up anything too decorative that would date the room, and we had to consider that whatever was there would receive a steam bath whenever we boiled noodles.
The space between the upper cabinets is about 30 inches. Since our knife magnet is only 18 inches long, we ordered another 12 inch magnet from Magnagrip and got to work.
