Small Bites: Phone app tells you what to eat and fighting global poverty is in the bag

A new phone app that doesn’t just review restaurants, but rates individual menu items, is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post. And recycled shopping bags now on sale at Whole Foods support microlending programs in developing countries.

When it comes to technology, I’m a late adopter. I keep resisting smart phones. But apps like this one keep coming along, making me rethink my Luddite tendencies. When you want to eat out, choosing where to go is usually pretty easy. Friends, the media, websites like Yelp and even street buzz can keep all but the most clueless of us up on the hottest new tables, the classic standbys and the best neighborhood joints. Choosing the best dishes from an unfamiliar menu can be a bigger challenge. Continue reading “Small Bites: Phone app tells you what to eat and fighting global poverty is in the bag” →

Lodge Cast Iron: What’s old is new again

Lodge Cast Iron cookware—hefty, oldfangled and enjoying a resurgence—is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post.

Whenever I’m shopping for a new skillet or sauté pan, the first thing I do is lift it. Usually, the cheaper the pan, the lighter it feels. Meaning there’ll be very little metal between the flame and whatever it is you’re cooking. You want a pan with a satisfying heft to it—otherwise, you’re going to be scorching stuff on the bottom before the rest of the food even has a chance to get warm.

Cookware doesn’t come much heftier than cast iron. That solid, lift-with-your-knees weight assures even heating, great heat retention and generation-spanning durability. This sturdy, no nonsense cookware is enjoying renewed popularity these days among a whole new generation of cooks. Continue reading “Lodge Cast Iron: What’s old is new again” →

BODUM’s colorful new knife holder is no chip off the old knife block

The unboring, unblocky BODUM Bistro Universal Knife Block is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post.

One of the biggest problems in most kitchens is storage. More precisely, the lack of enough of it. For many home cooks, storing knives is one of the toughest challenges. You need them readily available when you’re cooking, but you also need them some place safe—both for you and the blades.

For years, wooden knife blocks have been the answer. The chunky, counter space-gobbling answer. And if you’ve built your knife collection one carefully chosen knife at a time (the best way to do it, by the way), chances are the knife block’s pre-cut slots won’t perfectly accommodate your collection. Enter BODUM’s Bistro Universal Knife Block. Continue reading “BODUM’s colorful new knife holder is no chip off the old knife block” →

Rocking the dinner party: Brooklyn Slate Company cheese boards

Fine china is refined and elegant. Thrift store trays are retro fun. But for sheer tabletop coolness, Brooklyn Slate Company’s slate cheese boards are hard to beat.

Quarried in upstate New York and hand finished in a small studio in Brooklyn, they’re durable, sustainable and ruggedly handsome. You can write on them with the provided soapstone chalk, so your guests can tell the Abondance from the Wensleydale. And unlike your Royal Limoges, you can toss this cheese board in the dishwasher after the party. Continue reading “Rocking the dinner party: Brooklyn Slate Company cheese boards” →

Small Bites: Cooking it old school, growing your own mushrooms and tracking down your next meal on your iPhone

Two new USA Character Approved Blog posts and a brand new iPhone app that lets you track food trucks in real time.

We’re always on the lookout for the next cool kitchen tool—for our own kitchen and to report here. So it was a refreshing change to stumble upon Jacob Bromwell, the oldest housewares company in America. How old? When they opened their doors in Cincinnati in 1819, our nation’s constitution was a mere 30 years old. Strategically situated on the Ohio River, many of the tools for they made for kitchens, fireplaces and campfires headed west or down the Mississippi. Continue reading “Small Bites: Cooking it old school, growing your own mushrooms and tracking down your next meal on your iPhone” →

Six cool new things for the kitchen from the International Home + Housewares Show 2011

Okay, I’ll admit it. The first cool thing about attending the world’s biggest marketplace of home and housewares stuff is getting to wander around it with an Internet Media pass slung around your neck. This was the third year Marion and I have done it and it was just as exciting as the first year.

Some 60,000 people attend the show at Chicago’s McCormick Place every year. Many are buyers, running the gamut from boutique owners to lead buyers for major chains. And while some of them are talking price points and delivery times, some, like us, are looking for what’s cool and new. Here are six things that caught our eye this year. Continue reading “Six cool new things for the kitchen from the International Home + Housewares Show 2011” →

Small bites: Drinking greener and finding umami in a tube

Recycling your wine corks and capturing that elusive fifth taste are the subjects of a pair of recent USA Character Approved Blog posts.

We recycle as much as possible. We dutifully save aluminum and tin cans, plastic milk jugs, all manner of paper and more wine bottles than I’m comfortable admitting to and haul them all off to a recycling center. But one thing we’d been routinely tossing until Marion figured out they would compost was wine corks. Now it turns out they’re also recyclable. And if that sounds a little trivial, consider this—every year, around 13 billion of them are produced. Continue reading “Small bites: Drinking greener and finding umami in a tube” →

Small Bites: Bring-your-own-pan lasagna in Brooklyn and some tasty Chicago food events

In my latest USA Character Approved Blog post, Brooklyn restaurant Brucie offers BYOP lasagna service. And in Chicago, a Valentine’s weekend pastry market, frank talk about the birds and the bees and Provenance turns five.

In New York, even restaurant chefs have tiny kitchens at home. A recent New York Times article reported as much. Still, even with minuscule kitchens and more than 20,000 restaurants to choose from, New Yorkers don’t want to eat out every night. If you live in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood, now you can have the best of both worlds—home cooked lasagna without cooking at home.

Brucie, a friendly Italian-American restaurant and market, offers bring-your-own-pan Lasagna Service. Drop off a lasagna pan and pick it up filled with one of three lasagnas. Continue reading “Small Bites: Bring-your-own-pan lasagna in Brooklyn and some tasty Chicago food events” →

Holiday shopping for foodie friends made easy

Okay, show of hands. Has anyone out there not heard of Etsy? Etsy calls itself “your place to buy and sell all things handmade or vintage and supplies.” From clothing to candles, toys, soaps, pottery, crochet, jewelry, quilts, woodworking and “everything else,” if someone makes it by hand, you’ll find it here.

Now, a pair of twentysomethings has taken this idea and focused it on food. Foodzie is kind of an Etsy for gourmets. Continue reading “Holiday shopping for foodie friends made easy” →

Want healthier meat and dairy? You’ll find it at “Home on the Range”

Pasture raising the animals we count on for meat and dairy products is healthier for everyone. A website that helps you find grass-fed food locally is the subject of my latest post on the USA Character Approved Blog.

The picture above, of cattle grazing in an open pasture, used to be how all farming was done. Livestock fed in pastures—or in the case of ranches, out on the range. No feedlots, no penning animals in and fattening them with corn. It’s not that farmers and ranchers were more humane back then. They just had a lot of common sense. Cattle (and goats and sheep) ate readily available grasses and supplied the, um, fertilizer that helped more grasses grow. There was no need for chemical fertilizers or the fossil fuel to make them and spread them. And there were no truckloads of manure to be gotten rid of.

Jo Robinson thinks we need to be doing more farming that way again. To help consumers find farmers who are raising grass-fed animals, she writes a website called Eatwild. The name comes from studies Continue reading “Want healthier meat and dairy? You’ll find it at “Home on the Range”” →