me make food

We are carnivores and pretty much have beef, chicken, or pork in most meals. Usually we will split a single serving though. So when we pick up some chicken breasts from the store I will sucky bag the ones we do not use right away. Chicken is so expensive in those smaller servings. We figured it was time to hit up sams and stock up. We got 14 good sized chicken breasts for $17 and some thick pork chops for a good price as well. Ended up finishing off a roll of the new sucky bags and we have had no problems with them at all.

I use a lot of cheese cloth. Clarifying butter, draining yogurt, filtering out stocks before separating out the fat, and other things. The $3 little packs from the grocery store are so lame because you get so little of it. I usually have 2 packs on hand. I figured I could find a big roll online and checked amazon. $18 plus shipping for 10 yards. Checked ebay and found the same person selling it for $3 more with no shipping. I have a ton of it now.

I wonder if joanne fabrics sells it?

The aerogarden has 4 types of basil going right now. Figure we should be able to pick some fresh next week. Theresa is loving our new 6 quart kitchenaid mixer.

I wanted a stick mixer and Theresa picked up a kitchenaid one. Made some hummus, and plan on using it for soups.

Some new bowls and plates

And an electric kettle to ease the making of French press coffee

Our wire whip on the kitchenaid mixer was destroyed in an attempt to repair it (pic below) so we turned to the trusty ricer for our mashed taters and although I have replaced the wire whip we will sticked to riced potatoes. The texture is nice and you can fold in the milk and butter easily. Best part is you avoid making glue by over whipping them.

Been using the heck out of this thing.

I really like my kitchen knives and have been geeking out on them for a while. Headed to amazon to check out some of the really fancy knives and saw many references to the Victorinox 8-Inch Chef’s Knife in reviews of very expensive knives. Victorinox, who makes those swiss army knives sells a decent priced knife with a plastic handle. They usually run $30, but Amazon has them on sale for $13 and has for a few weeks. If you have been thinking of getting a nice chefs knife this is a perfect one for so cheap.

The blade is a high carbon stainless and is polished to a mirror finish. the spine is rounded and the handle is molded for a perfect pinch grip that will not cause discomfort during lots of cutting. When I compare it to my Kitchenaid knife, the Victorinox seems stronger and is a bit wider. I picked up two of them and they got a bunch of use over the weekend.

I have been looking for a sauté pan after watching chef Todd and found this sucka at BB&B for $39. My saucepan is a Cuisinart and I love it, so I knew the 10 inch pan would be great. Made some fish and shrimp with it for its christening.

So on the suggestion of Chef Todd and his knife sharpening video I picked up a $13 eight inch dual sided sharpening stone from the hardware store. I headed home and checked out some other youtube vids on how to use a sharpening stone.

I used water to lube it up and it sucked up a bunch of water into the stone. Started with the dull steak knives in my Kitchenaid set which is pretty decent. I got those very sharp and kept working on my technique up to my precious chefs knife. I even used the brown side of my reversible belt to strop the sharpened and honed knives. The difference is amazing. I cut up some chicken today and it was spooky how sharp my knife was. I will keep working on getting the angle and technique down and can skip the places I have taken my knives to get sharpened which have had mixed results. Still pretty bummed that my santoku knife was hacked to loose its curve and render it pretty much useless. I doubt my stone can shape it enough since they are high carbon stainless.

Very pleased with my first attempts results.

We use our toaster oven pert near 90% over the regular oven. It is so convenient, fast, and keeps the whole house from heating up. Our old one was a cheap toastmaster with the dumbest controls I have ever seen on an appliance, but it worked good. The convection fan gave out a month or so ago and then the bottom heaty thingers stoped working and it was done. Soggy totinos pizza is not very good.

We decided to not mess around when finding a replacement. First stop was target and BB&B websites. Found a few that could of worked, but after reading reviews we kept looking. Theresa headed to BB&B for some stuff and took pics of each toaster oven and their info cards. I started doing more research online of the ones she found. We had 3 things that were absolutely necessary.

1. broil function. To make the best garlic bread I find this necessary. I have a system and it works well. Also often you just want to get a bit of extra browing on something and broil is where it is at.
2. convection / fan bake. It really makes a difference and we loved that feature on the dead one.
3. good reviews. Yeah I know it is not actually a feature, but I want to hear normal folk lay it out there.

The cuisinart TOB-195 is a higher range toaster oven with some nice functionality and stellar reviews online. The amazon reviews rated it as being uber awesome. The only negative reviews were because it gets hot on the outside and because some of the outsidey parts are not actually stainless steel.

I did some extensive testing using probe thermometers and found it to have a really good accuracy. It fluctuates by 25 degrees, which is noted in the manual, but stayed close to the set temp most of the time. There is a probe built into the inside top wall that monitors the temp. This has actually thrown off my usual methods because it does not fluctuate wildly like the old one. I burned a pizza and have had to learn how to do my garlic bread all over again. The peppercorn steaks took much longer because the oven was actually at 250 and not something higher. We never really toasted bread in the old one because it would take too long. This thing heats up so fast and makes toast in 2.5 minutes and it comes out perfect.

It is quite a well built little thing. It is light and does feel a little flimsy on the sides and back because of the metal and plastic. the crumb tray is pretty lame which was a bummer. It slides out the back and is pretty thin metal. The broiling pan and its bottom are made of very rigid metal. It is very well made. it does heat up on the outsides quite a bit, but nothing to worry about. The touch pad is easily to use and wipe down.

We very much likey and think the price is fair for such a quality piece of kitchen equip that we will use the heck out of.