Edible/Usable

My New Bon Ami Forever (BAF)

One thing that I find particularly 'usable' or user friendly, is when a single product has multiple uses.  It saves not only space (store one thing to do multiple things) but money and effort as well.  It's especially great when you discover a new use for a product that you've been using for only one thing for awhile. 

My recent new multi-use discovery is Bon Ami cleanser.  Pretty much since I started buying my own cleaning supplies, I've always used Bon Ami.  It doesn't have bleach and has been marketed as 'earth friendly' for as long as I can remember.  I've always used it as a normal cleanser for kitchen sink and bathroom cleaning.  But I'd never used it on my pots and pans.

I have a 4 quart stainless steel pot that I use frequently.  It had gotten a kind of baked on rim in the middle of the inside that I just couldn't scrub off.  There was also a faint white tinge to the bottom of the inside as well.  Kind of on a whim, I dumped some Bon Ami in there, scrubbed away just using my normal scrub sponge, viola!  sparkling clean - almost like new!  It was so amazing I used it to clean my Le Creuset pot and some other pots I have.  It was a strangely cathartic experience.

Perhaps this is a cleaning fact that most people know - one that my mother just never passed on to me.  But it made me appreciate Bon Ami even more than I did before.

The Bon Ami website is a great example of an older offline brand translated very well online.  There are a few funny games, a vintage ad gallery, some desktop calendars and an interesting history of the company. Being able to go to the web site and read about the creation and meaning of the tag line "hasn't scratched yet" and the marketing campaign that was used to revive the product in the early '80's ("Never Underestimate the Cleaning Power of a 94 Year-Old Chick With a French Name,") all make me even more loyal to a brand that I hadn't really thought about before.

So if you have some spare time this evening, don the rubber gloves, get out the Bon Ami, and start polishing your pots and pans!

Rhubarb Mustard

Obviously, this spring I've been obsessed with rhubarb.  I've also been spending a lot of time reading, subscribing and following food blogs, websites and twitter feeds.   I'm on the fence about the realization of this idea, because I think it's unclear, but I love the idea!  I've re-discovered Gourmet Magazine, and last week, they had a recipe for rhubarb something, which had a link to 'other recipes with rhubarb' - a super important function on all recipe and food websites.   One of the linked recipes was for Rhubarb mustard.  I love rhubarb, and I love mustard, and I hadn't ever heard or read about fruit mustards, (or mostarda di frutta), so I thought I'd try it out.

Rhubarb Mustard (from Gourmet Magazine)

3/4 cup yellow mustard seeds
1/2 cup brown mustard seeds
1/2 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
3 cups rhubarb cut into 1/2-inch pieces
1/2 cup sugar
Just under 1 3/4 cup vinegar (cider vinegar, mostly likely)
1/2 teaspoon salt

Grind the mustard and fenugreek seeds into a fine powder, leaving some portion of the yellow mustard seeds whole. Put everything in a wide pot and cook over medium heat until the rhubarb is helplessly soft. Add a splash of sweet wine at the end if you want to; run it though the coarse disc of a food mill if you like things smooth rather than chunky. Process 15 minutes in a boiling water bath if you want to keep it on the shelf.

The thing was, I couldn't find whole mustard seeds anywhere in my Brooklyn neighborhood (I know immediately where to find them in Manhattan, and I probably could have gotten them at any of these places as well).  I had about a half cup of them from chutney I made last summer, but that was it.  I was able to find already ground powdered mustard (organic), and I was a little unsure of the proportions, but I thought I'd give it a try.  

I wasn't super happy with the results at first, but I had some last night as a condiment with fish, and it was actually really good! I think though, if I made it again, I would make sure to have whole mustard seeds, and I would do what they recommend later in the recipe - cook the fruit first, then when the fruit is soft, add the vinegar and mustard and cook for another 5 minutes before putting it in jars, rather than cooking all of the ingredients at the same time.  Because mustard loses some of it's flavor when you cook it, it would hopefully be much more 'mustardy' tasting if you add it at the end.  I would probably also use another vinegar besides cider vinegar because I don't particularly like the smell of cider vinegar vs. something like rice vinegar or wine vinegar.

Maybe later this summer, I'll try it again with another sort of fruit. 

Kitchen Tools - Old and New

I've been thinking a lot lately about kitchen tools.  Partly because I've been working at an office that's practically next door to Sur La Table, and sometimes after work or on the way back to the office during lunch, I'll pop in and take a look around.  Kitchen stores for me are like a proverbial candy store for a kid.  My eyes go wide, my palms go sweaty and I think about what I can cook that will justify buying some fancy new tool.  And Sur La Table is full of the best and fanciest kitchen tools.  But like most people in New York, I have relatively little storage space, so I really do try to keep my kitchen tool buying to a minimum (the tools that I don't use as often have already migrated out of my kitchen cabinets and into the wall unit in my living room).

The other reason I've been thinking about kitchen tools is because I've gone out to flea markets in Pennsylvania for a few weekends already this spring.  Flea markets are always full of old kitchen tools.  Some treated reverently as artifacts of a former age, others treated like old pieces of junk, all piled together in a cardboard box with a magic marker scrawl "Anything in this box: $1.00."  I have actually started a small collection of vintage kitchen tools, but like any collecting urge, it's a slippery slope.  Before you know it, my kitchen wall will look like this:

 

What I've found especially interesting is how much kitchen tools have NOT changed over time.  Except for electric mixers superseding hand egg beaters, and the more recent use of silicone as a material that many kitchen tools are now made of, a potato masher now still looks like a potato masher did 60 years ago.  Same with a whisk, a rolling pin, a pastry mixer.   And functionally, they are still the same. 

In 1990 (I'm totally freaking out right now because I just realized 1990 was almost 20 years ago...) a company called OXO debuted a line of kitchen products that were designed using the principals of universal design - the principle that objects should be designed to be useful to the greatest number of people - with a focus on making kitchen tools that were easy and pleasant to use.  They have a great line of products, and I think definitely influenced how cooks and designers thought about kitchen tools.  (Three OXO items, the paring knife, the vegetable peeler and the jar opener, are in MOMA's Architecture and Design collection.)  But functionally, these tools are not that different than some of the tools that have existed for decades. 

(Three vegetable peelers that I have vs. the OXO Good Grips peeler:  a basic cheapo peeler that was probably the first peeler I ever bought, a peeler with a handmade wooden handle that I got at a fleamarket, a newer peeler that I bought recently.  The OXO vegetable peeler)

For me, this just goes to show that incremental usability improvements, especially ones that are based on user testing and evaluation of specific user needs are just as or more important as giant re-designs that change a product significantly. 

Why do I have three vegetable peelers?  That is another question entirely.  Possibly because the first cheapo one wasn't sharp enough anymore, so I bought the red one.  The wooden one I bought because it looks and feels nice.  But in general, my new goal is to not buy new kitchen equipment and make do with what I have.   Here are some good tips on the essential tools for any small kitchen, and ideas on how to put your kitchen on a diet.  This is obviously how many of those kitchen tools ended up at a flea market.

Ode to Mason Jars

November 30, 1858 is a date that most people don't realize changed food and home cooking dramatically - especially for rural homemakers.  It's the patent date for John Mason's machine that could cut threads into glass jars, thus making it possible to use screw-on reusable lids.  Before this, farm families and city dwellers alike relied on root cellars, smoking, salting and other forms of cold storage to keep food.  John Mason's patent made it possible for rural families to easily can and preserve fruits, vegetables and even meat for later use.

I use Mason (or Ball, or Kerr) jars in my kitchen all the time, not only for preserving (or canning, or 'putting-up') foods that are abundant in the summer, but for general storage.  For me, they are much better to use than plastic for several reasons:

1.  They don't keep the smell of whatever food you put in them, and they don't stain
2.  You can use them for dry storage in your cupboard, cold storage in the fridge or use them to freeze food as well
3.  They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but only use 2 different sizes of lids - wide mouth and regular, with two ring sizes.  No more searching through the plastics bin for the lid that almost fits.  Replacement lids are easy to find (most hardware stores, even here in Brooklyn carry them).

 

(Photo 1: from left to rigtht - pesto frozen in 4oz jar; tomato chutney in 1/2 pint jar; peach jam in 1/2 pint jar; empty quart jar; frozen chicken stock in a 2 quart jar.  Photo 2:  the two sizes (only!) of lids and rings.)

4.  They look nicer - I'm happy to display a pint sized Mason jar of dried beans on an open shelf in my kitchen.  I would never do that with something plastic.
5.  You can also argue that they are multi-purpose as well because they can be used for serving food and drinks.  I actually don't like drinking from them, but apparently it's a trend.

Obviously, one drawback vs. plastic is that they break much more easily.  Don't drop them!

I do think that anyone who likes cooking and doing things in the kitchen should learn basic canning techniques.  Acidic vegetables (tomatoes) and pickles and chutneys are very safe to can at home with simple hot water bath canning techniques.  Fruit jams and jellies are easy as well.  My grandma Dot used to spend days in the hottest part of a Georgia summer, canning everything that came from their garden: tomatoes, corn, green beans and pickles, so I learned a lot from her.  But one of my favorite resources on home canning is a little book called "The Busy Person's Guide to Preserving Food."  Organized by food type, it gives multiple ways (drying, canning or freezing) to preserve all sorts of food, gives recipes, and highlights the best method for each type of food.

And really, it's one of the best things, sometime in the middle of February, to go to your cupboard and to pull out and open a jar of home canned tomatoes.  It smells just like summer.

A List Post: Recipe Websites

As a kind of experiment, I signed up for Pro Blogger's  "31 Day's to Building A Better Blog".   At first I assumed it was going to be a bunch of nonsense advice about linking to other sites, sticking ads all over your blog and basic SEO pointers.  But, I've actually found that it has inspired me to write more posts than I had been previously, and I feel like the author, Darren Rowse has some really good advice about promoting yourself and your blog.  He sends out an email each day with a task, some of them to write posts, and some of them to guide you towards defining your blog further.  It might not be for everyone, but I've found it helpful.  Day 2 (I'm a little bit behind...) was the task of creating a "List Post," so here is mine:

Online Recipe Sites:

I use the internet a lot when I'm looking for recipes - either for alternate versions of recipes I have in cookbooks, or to find recipes that I don't have.  My general search pattern is to do a Google search from my Firefox browser search bar and see what comes up.  If I don't find anything (generally on the first page of results), I'll go to specific recipe sites and do individual searches.  Between Google results and my own 'favorite' sites, here's a list of the sites that I visit frequently, along with some new sites I've just discovered, and a basic summary of each.  I intend to do more detailed reviews of some of these sites in the near future - hopefully another regularly occurring feature.  I'll bet you can't wait.

1. Sites that come from magazines:
Epicurious
Epicurious is the online conglomeration of different Conde Nast food titles including Gourmet, Bon Appetit, Cookie, Self, Parade and Nutrition data.  This site has a lot of useful functionality: Good search; community functionality; active forums; great editorial content from the partner magazines; multiple blogs; great photos and videos; good recipes also from the partner titles.   Because content comes from multiple sources, each with a different market or demographic, the type and focus of recipes on the site is varied, which I think is a good thing.  All of the partner sites also each have their own sites, some with recipes, some without. I'm on the fence about that, but more on that later.
Martha Stewart *
The virtual world of Martha Stewart is as vast and information filled as I'm sure her real world is.  The site not only has recipes and editorial content about food, but content about the whole Martha Stewart lifestyle (Entertaining! Crafts! Holidays!).   I find the site very difficult to browse - there is so much content - photos, video, editorial - that I often get lost.  There are lots of links to "Best X Recipes"  (where X=chicken or summer or quiche) but when you click on the link, you get photos or slide shows (rather than a list of recipes) and have to click multiple times to get to the recipes.  I do find it inspiring, but I don't use it often.


2. Sites from TV networks  (specifically the Food Network):
Food Network
I don't have cable TV, so I am admitedly unfamiliar with many of the personalities and shows that are featured on this site. I think that if I knew who some of the personalities were, it would definitely influence my experience of this site.  Obviously, I do know some of them (I think Rachel Ray is annoying and relies too much on prepared food, Bobby Flay sold out and Emeril is just annoying) but I'm not a fan of this site.  Because it's TV, it relies too much on video which I think only works well for instructional type content.
Food 2
Another Food Network site that exists only as a website and is targeted towards a younger demographic who are interested in food and cooking.  It uses Facebook as a way for users to connect (via Facebook Connect) and features lots of video content as well as recipes and editorial content (blogs, newsletters).  I commend Food Network for taking this step of creating an online only content channel.
Recipezaar
Recipezaar is similar to All Recipes, but with a little more focus on the community, with very limited editorial content.  The forums and discussions in the community section seem to be very active.  This site is also part of the Food Network, but seems to be aimed at an older and/or more suburban demographic.

         (Martha Stewart could be included in this group as well...)

3. Established online recipe sites:
Cooks.com
A soul-less link farm of recipes that often comes up at the top of Google results.  The site is made up of user submitted recipes, and after searching for info about the site, it seems like the real purpose of the site is to allow users to use the site as a way to "never lose your favorite recipes." This is a noble cause, but there is no sense of a user community, no functionality that allows  user comments/reviews and no images, so the site is nothing but text.  I find it totally uninspiring and I don't think I've ever used a recipe from this site.
All Recipes
It used to be that this site came up frequently in Google searches, but less so frequently.  To me, All Recipes is the penultimate recipe site:  it has all of the functionality that a product manager or site user could possibly dream up: accurate and functional search; ability to save recipes; recipe collections (groups of recipes in a common theme/ingredient); an active community that regularly rates and reviews recipes and uploads content (recipes and photos); great browsing features like "recipes like this," recently viewed recipes and top searches; decent editorial content.  But I never use this site unless a recipe comes up in a search.  I'm not sure why.
4. Newer online recipe and community sites:
Foodista
Foodista is a wiki for food that is trying to be "the world's largest, highest quality cooking encyclopedia."  Besides recipes, there is content about techniques and tools, blog content and photos from Flickr that supplement food, tool and technique articles.  Like most wikis, content is edited by anyone who has an account on the site.  The site also has tools that bloggers can add to their sites to increase traffic.  Foodista was created by ex-Amazon people and Amazon is a major investor in the site.
Foodbuzz
Foodbuzz is the realization (by someone else) of an idea that I had in the past week or so.  I've been doing a lot of food blog reading, many of which post good or great recipes, photos and instructions.  But these posts don't always come up in Google searches.  Foodbuzz has created a network of food bloggers (and other people interested in food) and aggregates them all in one place (they claim to have content from over 10,000 food blogs).  Users can search for, comment on and "buzz up" content on the site, vote and see profiles of other users who 'buzzed' the content.  Since all of the content is user generated, there is limited editorial and most of the content featured is by popularity or according to a given ingredient or topic.  Also includes a restaurant guide.

I know there are many more recipe sites, but these are the ones I'm most familiar with and that I use most frequently.  Any suggestions on other sites to use or look at?

Of all of these sites, Food Network, Cooks.com and Recipezaar get the most traffic (according to Compete.com).

*Disclaimer:  I've done work for both Conde Nast (Nutrtion Data) and for Martha Stewart

A Tale of Two Delis

Last Tuesday I had lunch at Delicatessen on Prince and Lafayette with some co- workers. The idea was to talk about the UX stuff we were doing at work, and to get out of the office.  We talked about work, our work histories as well as our families and other more personal stuff.  But through the whole lunch, we all talked about the mediocre experience we were having.

The music was loud enough that we all had to stress to hear each other. I always feel old when I ask people to repeat what they just said (what?!), and I feel even older if I have to ask someone to turn the music down.  Why does music need to be so loud, especially in a restaurant in the middle of the day? The worst thing though was that the service was really slow.  After each of our drinks came separately, and fairly quick appetizers, we waited about 30 minutes for our main courses, all of which were salads.  When the salads came, they were fine, but truthfully weren’t worth the wait.

Delicatessen was in the news frequently after it first opened, both for it’s bad food and the sceney, noisy atmosphere that pissed off the neighbors.  It still has a reputation as a see and be seen kind of place, but to me that doesn’t excuse poor service or mediocre food.  I would never go there again, and wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.

That same night, after work, I went to an industry event down on the Lower East Side.  Since it was nearby, I went to Katz's to get a hot dog before going home.  Katz’s is famous for many things: as being one of New York’s oldest and best delicatessens (open since 1888), for the “send a salami to your boy in the Army” WWII era slogan, and of course the famous scene in “When Harry Met Sally.” 

For me Katz's reminds me of a brief period if my life when I used to hang out on the Lower East Side - what to me was a quintessential period of LES history.   In the mid 90’s new music venues like Arlene’s Grocery, Tonic (closed in 2007) and Luna Lounge opened (closed in 2004), and the neighborhood was just safe enough to hang out in without constant fear of being mugged, but it still had an edge.   Drinks in the downstairs bar at Tonic in the old pickle vats, playing foosball at Luna Lounge waiting for my friend’s band to go on, and going to Katz’s at 2am to get a hot dog and a knish are all fond memories I have of the LES.

This was before rampant development gentrified the neighborhood so much that a lot of the music venues there were pushed out by rising rents (including Tonic and Luna Lounge just to name two) and the neighborhood became dominated by glassy apartment buildings and loud bridge & tunnel revelers.

  
AT Katz’s I felt like I had gone back in time: you still had to push through the turnstile to get in, and get your yellow ticket from the guy at the door (don’t lose it!).  There are still the loud guys cutting huge pieces of meat along the back wall behind the counter, the self-serve water fountain in the back with glasses stacked on the shelves above, the photos of famous people on the side wall.   And yes, some things have changed there: no more waiter service at the tables along the wall, rather than old Jewish guys serving you, it’s mainly younger Hispanic guys, a hot dog with sauerkraut is now $4.00 (they used to be $1.50!) and the huge glassy apartment building across the street on what used to be a parking lot.   But still, it’s Katz’s.

It got me thinking about how much tradition and our own personal histories have to do with how we rate our experience of restaurants and food.  From your local bar where you forgive the dingy décor and sticky bar because it’s your ‘local,’ to the diner on the corner that you only order one thing from, but you’d be very sad to see it go.   A good food experience isn’t always just about the food.

Spring = Rhubarb

I love rhubarb.  Rhubarb pie, rhubarb jam, a stalk of rhubarb plain or dipped in a little bit of sugar.  Rhubarb also means that spring is finally here and summer is on the way.  Growing up in Colorado, our neighbor up the road, Leona Nelson, had a huge patch of ‘wild’ rhubarb growing in her pasture.  Leona was mean.  She was my school bus driver (I swear that she is the model for the bus driver on South Park), the leader of my 4-H club, and the step-mother of our most frequent babysitter Marsha.   But even though I was terrified of her, I used to sneak into her pasture in the early summer and steal some of her rhubarb.

Now, luckily I can just get it from the farmers market in Fort Greene.  I bought some yesterday, but I didn’t have time to make a pie, so this morning I just whipped up some rhubarb compote:  rhubarb cooked with water, sugar and lemon.  It’s great with yoghurt & granola, spread on toast or pancakes, or with greek yoghurt and soft coconut macaroons as a simple dessert.    As soon as the sour cherries are out, I’ll definitely be making a rhubarb and sour cherry pie.  Can’t wait.