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Post by rikita on Oct 24, 2018 0:14:54 GMT
today in my newspaper there was an article about "kitchen items you only use once", different writers wrote about various things they bought or got as presents only to find them quite useless. at least two of them (pizza cutter and curved chopping knife) are items i use regularly and am quite happy about ...
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 24, 2018 3:59:15 GMT
I always called em French Canning jars.... And I just knew them as canning jars. I have no idea if there is anything French about them.
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Post by questa on Oct 24, 2018 5:04:55 GMT
I do fruit preserving using straight sided glass jars in various sizes called Vacola jars. Put prepared fruit in jar, seat rubber ring around the mouth, fill with water, seat stainless steel lid and clip holds it in place. Put jars into an electric boiler and bring to just under a boil, taking an hour.Remove jars to cool. Check vacuum a day later. remove clips.
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Oct 24, 2018 15:58:27 GMT
THAT is what those jars are called?! I am thrilled to know this. I have a bunch of them & recently bought two more. I never knew if they even had a proper name. "Those glass jars that close with a wire thingy like the top of a Grolsch bottle" was the best I could do. Thank you for this valuable piece of information!
They're terribly fashionable apparently Bixa... I chucked about 30 away recently, my sister Pat (deceased) had them in her pantry full of pickles, chutney and jams. For about 10 seconds I contemplated cleaning them out and reusing them..but most were over 15 years old and probably lethal, right at the back of the pantry covered in dust and cobwebs. The seals had rotten away on many and altho I've got plenty of spare seals there was no way of disposing the contents at the time.
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Post by bixaorellana on Oct 24, 2018 17:22:25 GMT
I love it when I become accidentally trendy. Good for you about having the strength to throw those jars out. I'd probably have opened every one to see if the seal was reusable or not, even though I have no earthly use for that many jars. (I compulsively save all jars "just in case". )
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Post by questa on Oct 25, 2018 10:50:29 GMT
Talking of blenders...in my cafe in Bali we had 2 blenders which were standard local ones...cost about USD 10. they came with a stick and a spatula and they had a cap in the lid you could remove to poke down the contents. Best of all was an attachment with smaller very strong blades for grinding coffee, nuts. coconut meat and ice. These blenders were in use all day and evening making fruit drinks and Bali cocktails.
When I returned to Oz I tried to get a blender like these but none had the grinder. On my next trip to Indonesia I bought a Phillips one with a grinder. Perfect! except in Oz I have to use a power adapter to run it as here uses a 3 pin power point and the blender has the Indonesian 2 long pin plug.
Just for the hell of it, here is the recipe for our famous Avocado Juice. Into the blender...half an avocado, about a third of a cup of ice, heaped teaspoon of powdered milk, third of a cup cold water, 2 teaspoons palm sugar (ordinary is OK) Blend until smooth and a bit fluffy. Pour into glass and with chocolate syrup run a circle of chocolate around the top of the drink beside the glass. Taking a drinking straw push the chocolate down the glass to make a zig-zag pattern.Top with a few curls of grated chocolate, serve.
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Post by kerouac2 on Oct 25, 2018 11:01:53 GMT
In Vietnam they use the shortcut of sweetened condensed milk so no need for extra water or palm sugar.
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Post by casimira on Jun 28, 2020 13:03:50 GMT
Those air fryers are mentioned so much in recipes that I run across in the NYT Food section. They seem to be all the rage these days. Now after reading Tod's post(s) I can better understand why. They seem quite efficient and I loathe frying because of the clean up afterwards. We don't eat a lot of fried foods. I do like to fry fresh seafood when it is in season. Soft shell crabs in particular, with a meuniere sauce over them is a particular favorite. And, I would always come away with some type of fresh fish and of course shrimp. Since the pandemic the Farmer's Market here hasn't re-opened and it makes me wonder what these poor people are doing with no customer base available to them. They were always one of the most popular vendors there and such a lovely family. I have heard some recent chatter of them setting back up again with the same system that they were using at the beginning of all "this". It seemed quite efficient (allowing x number of people to go into the space allotted and using wooden tokens purchased at a table when entering, sanitizer available at each vendor's table etc.). I don't know why they stopped it. All those small farmers and food preppers, bakers, fishmongers, plantsmen, etc. Another aspect of this whole mess...
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Post by casimira on Jun 28, 2020 18:12:59 GMT
For the size of our house, the kitchen is tiny. I have hardly any counter space or storage space to accommodate any more gadgets or appliances as it is. I just don't think I would use it that often.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 28, 2020 19:07:17 GMT
I keep my food processor on the floor even though I use it regularly. If I were to buy another kitchen appliance, it would have to sit on the floor too when not in use.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 29, 2020 16:53:02 GMT
I am now going to announce my gadget purchase. It's not a kitchen gadget, but it operates in the kitchen as well as in the rest of the house.
After much mulling, I got myself a robot vacuum cleaner. This was motivated by two things: a) my enormous laziness when it comes to housekeeping; and b) the fact that all the reviews raved about how efficient the thing is with dog hair. (Okay, and probably c) bored with quarantine and wanting something to play with.)
My house is two stories, tiled throughout, and stays open all day long, both for ventilation and so the three dogs can come in and out at will. Just walking from the living room to the kitchen always made me grab the broom to gather up drifts of hair and dust which would regenerate on my trip back to put up the broom.
Well, I have now used robo on both stories and am quite pleased. It needs to run a few more times to fix an internal map, but it did what I wanted on those trial runs. For the downstairs I did move all the furniture I could to make more open space for the first time. After the vacuum finished I went to sweep around the legs of a little iron Victorian piece where the vacuum couldn't reach. Even though that was the only spot I saw, I decided to sweep the entire downstairs as a way of determining how good a job robo did. Pretty amazing! Really, there was barely enough, including the Victorian leavings, to bother getting out the dust pan. Then I mopped with a brand new white string mop. Afterward, the mop was still clean looking. What really gets me is how clean the floor has stayed. I usually sweep rather than vacuum because my vacuum cleaner is so horrible -- a loud clunky shop vac with crummy attachments. Sweeping probably leaves behind all kinds of things which hide and then come out with the first waft of air. Robo got all the fine dust and hidden fluff.
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Post by tod2 on Jun 30, 2020 15:49:37 GMT
O)h my may - do I need that vacuum cleaner. That is the one thing I miss while not having a maid. My floors need mopping (soap and water) more that once in a while and the only carpet we constantly use is our bedroom carpet. In bad bad shape!
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jun 30, 2020 16:42:34 GMT
Ooh an object of desire. I do love my cordless Dyson tho....and Django would probably try to bite a robo one.
Does it cope with rugs!?
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Post by cheerypeabrain on Jun 30, 2020 16:46:03 GMT
I need a new mop for the wooden floors. The steamer is such a faff...
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 30, 2020 16:48:49 GMT
Tod, thanks for that explanation of how the air fryer works. Of course the various advertising bits sort of explain it, but it can only be believed from a real person.
And I have to tell you that my floors now look as though I have a maid! I hardly mind mopping now that I don't have to do all the preliminary floor cleaning. Once robo has run, I'm actually eager to mop & achieve perfection.
I don't have have carpet, only rugs here and there, and none downstairs. Probably vacuuming your carpet once with a regular strong vacuum would allow robo to keep it from getting in bad shape again. If you decide to investigate further, I'll send you the information on the model I bought, which is way cheaper than the well-known roomba.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 30, 2020 17:06:10 GMT
Sorry, Cheery ~ didn't see your posts. My dogs were out on the porch when I turned robo on and they did not react in the least. Vacuums here are problematic in terms of choice and availability. When I look at a given vac on Amazon Mexico and then go compare the price of the exact same item on Amazon US, the price difference can be really hard to swallow. As far as rugs, downstairs I have a couple of those small oval braided rugs tucked under furniture because the dogs like them. Upstairs I have a round straw mat and a large Teotitlan rug which has annoying string fringe on the ends. I was worried about the vacuum sucking up the string ends and bogging down, but that didn't happen. And it went right over the other little rugs with no problem. Somehow it knows how to climb when it reaches the kind of elevation presented by carpet. Apparently, the one thing none of the robo vacs will do is to go on black carpet, because they perceive it as a drop -- the same thing that prevents them from falling off stairs.
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Post by kerouac2 on Jun 30, 2020 17:25:53 GMT
Who has a black carpet?
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 30, 2020 17:29:10 GMT
I don't know. Goths, maybe? It is fun on the vacuum videos to watch the robo vac stop in horror at the black rug. And yes, watching review videos is pathetic, but harmless in the grand scheme of things.
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Post by bixaorellana on Nov 9, 2020 21:15:54 GMT
Oooooo ~ that beauty seems like the perfect item for the kind of cooking you do, Tod. Having read about all your lovely dinners, it would seem that the Phillips is not quite big enough. Is that a conventional size hot pad beneath it? If so, that means that it is smaller than I was envisioning it. Can't wait to hear about the inauguration of the Midea. You asked about my robot vacuum. I have to say that I am delighted with it. So you know, my house is on two levels. The docking station for the vac is upstairs and it will run itself back there when through with its job upstairs. It cannot fall down stairs. Downstairs it just goes back to the corner where I start it when it is done. It makes itself a little internal map after @3 outings, so you just let it do its thing. The one thing I have to watch out for is not letting the dust bin get too full. This is because I have three dogs and my house stays open all day long. I ward off the problem of the too-full dust bin during the prep before running the robot. It's also easy enough to pause cleaning if I feel I want to empty the bin. By prep I mean sweeping or dust-busting all the places the robot can't reach. I also do a cursory sweep in the dogs' room, as I know there is always a dramatic amount of hair under their bed. I get some pieces of furniture & the like out of the way before running the robot. I have two Barcelona chairs & they posed a challenge for Robby. The way the legs swoop down to the floor confused him and he kept trying to climb them and would get stuck. I deal with that by putting one of the chairs up on the sofa & sticking sardine cans under the legs of the other one. I've only used the mop feature once, since it's really the equivalent of damp-mopping in terms of what it cleans up. You're not supposed to leave the vac completely unattended when it's in mop mode, but I don't know what that's about. If I ran the robot every single day I might be tempted to let the mop feature work every other day. The bottom line on the function of this thing is that it really, really works. I swear, the floor seems to stay cleaner longer, I guess because it picks up more fine dirt and dust than other methods. I have no carpets downstairs except for three mats the dogs like to lounge on in the dining room. Upstairs, my bedroom has a large woven rug. It's the kind with strings on the end, which I keep tucked under the rug because I don't like the look of them. Robby rolls merrily over all the mats and rugs with no problem. In the upstairs bathroom there is a runner which is bright red with very strong colors in the design. Since the bathroom is skinny and I walk in there with my shoes on, plus brush my very sheddy hair, the rug can look grim. No problem -- I let Robby loose in there and when he's finished the rug doesn't just look vacuumed, it looks as though it has been shampooed it's so clean. Here is the model I have. I'm giving you the Amazon US site so you can read the reviews. www.amazon.com/Roborock-Cleaner-Sweeping-Cleaning-Planning/dp/B07F8ZQDSZ/ref=sr_1_4I wound up buying the one I have because it was offered through Amazon Mexico at a good price. Before I buy stuff from Amazon Mexico I usually go over to Amazon US to look at the reviews because there are so many more of them. I also looked at youtube reviews. Here is one: And another one, probably the one that convinced me. Plus, you have to love a site dedicated entirely to vacuum cleaner reviews.
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Post by mickthecactus on Nov 9, 2020 21:43:32 GMT
We don’t need one but that is very interesting.
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Post by kerouac2 on Nov 21, 2020 17:15:55 GMT
Social distancing is causing many of us to turn our affections to uncontaminated devices.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 8, 2020 16:51:10 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Dec 8, 2020 16:54:05 GMT
Hint: when searching Google Images, note that the size of the image is included in the lower left corner of the featured picture.
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Post by fumobici on Dec 9, 2020 5:46:42 GMT
I would never use such a device, I revel in liberally applied oils/fats even if I only ever use either olive oil or butter. I am considering getting a small rotary drum parmesean grater of which I have one in Italy already. It's just easier than a regular grater, and you can use it at the table to grate just what you need fresh.
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Post by bjd on Dec 9, 2020 7:33:38 GMT
I used to have one of those small rotary grater (a manual one) but it didn't last very long -- I guess it was cheap plastic and the handle broke.
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Post by kerouac2 on Dec 9, 2020 8:00:55 GMT
I have one and still use it from time to time, mostly for grating peanuts onto Thai dishes.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 17, 2021 20:56:52 GMT
Oooo, look what I have ~
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Post by casimira on Jun 17, 2021 21:08:04 GMT
Jeez Bixa, you really seem to be going "new school" on kitchen gadgetry. Totally unexpected. At the same time, I cannot criticize. T has gone "all out" on using the dishwasher where we are living right now. SHOCK!!
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Post by bixaorellana on Jun 17, 2021 21:25:40 GMT
I fought with myself over the egg cooker, but a) my dogs adore hardboiled eggs; b) this little thing takes up no space; c) it's very inexpensive; and d) isn't it cute?
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Post by mich64 on Jun 17, 2021 23:27:13 GMT
Now this I have to find. I make eggs almost every morning. I like all the different ways you can use it. (I got an email this morning that my coffee maker has finally been shipped and I should receive it early next week - it took 5 months! Explanation was that Cuisinart was having a difficult time accessing parts)
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