The Cooking Dish

The 50+ Best Kitchen Gifts for the Cook In Your Life

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Once again the Winter holidays are right around the corner, and my kitchen begs for some holiday food and cheer. I swear last winter just ended. With one blink I’ve aged an entire year, and my belt is one notch tighter. Too bad there’s no reversal for that whole age thing.

As the temperature drops and my kids start to bundle up in their cute little coats, I find myself drawn to the kitchen more than usual. It could be that I enjoy the warmth of the oven, or that the chilly months are filled to the brim with nostalgia. Only now do I fully understand and appreciate the time my mom spent in her kitchen canning cider, baking pies, frosting cookies, and heating chocolate for our frosted and red kid noses. I think I will have succeeded if my kids can remember their childhood the way I remember mine.

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Question: How Do I Hard Boil an Egg?

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Before we jump in head first, here’s what you can expect out of this post: how to perfectly hard boil an egg every time, how to quickly boil an egg, how to peel a boiled egg, random egg facts, and some good old fashioned tom foolery. Fellow pinners, feel free to share any of these pictures, but I have created a Pinterest-friendly egg infographic-esque image that you might find handy. You can find that just below. Now on to the main eggvent!
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10 Rules for a Happier Kitchen

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After a few years of observing the kitchen habits of myself and others, I’ve decided to put together a little list that I think a lot of us could benefit from. This list briefly details 10 things that I believe will help make cooking less stressful and more enjoyable.
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The Best Halloween Candy — No, Seriously.

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I’ve gotta’ say, Halloween is a dangerous holiday. It’s too easy to buy candy long before October 31st; it’s even easier to justify buying it early when you say to yourself, “Oh, I’ll stick it in the top cupboard and save it until then…”

Yeah right.

I don’t know of anybody who has ever successfully done that. Before too long, it just starts gnawing away at you because you know it’s there… eat me, eat me, eat me… *sigh* … Two years ago I bought my Halloween candy on October 31st, Halloween Day. I went to the store to find nearly empty shelves and ended up coming back with the stuff nobody wants: stale pumpkin peeps, Sunmaid raisins, and a mini-size candybar mix. Mini size. Really? Halloween is about packing in the goodies, not skimping on treats that you don’t even have to chew before swallowing.

So this year I decided to–yep, you guessed it–buy my goodies early. I bought them two weeks ago during a “weak moment” on aisle 5. Needless to say, I’m going to have to buy more. Dangit. At least there is one huge benefit to buying your Halloween candy early; besides having to buy and eat twice the amount of candy for Halloween, you get the best of the best. No stale pumpkin peeps for me this year.

So this year I’ve rounded up a list of the 10 best Halloween candies (I cheated and added more than one candy to some numbers), that if I had to buy twice this month, I wouldn’t complain.

In no particular order, behold the list…
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Does Food Packaging Make You Overeat?

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I came across an article today on Psychology Today that was pretty interesting. It’s basically a quick summary of a study done by Adriana Madzharov and Lauren Block in the October, 2010 issue of the Journal of Consumer Psychology.

Here’s a snippet of the article.

Many snack foods show a picture of what the product looks like. A box of chocolate chip cookies will show sample cookies on the front. A bag of pretzels will show pictures of the pretzels. A box of crackers will show the crackers.

The studies in this paper make three main points…

First, the number of items on the front of the package affects people’s judgments of how much food is inside the package…

Second, when given the chance to actually eat, people ate more food from packages with many items pictured on it than from packages with few items pictured on it.

Third, this effect was strongest…

Visit That Package Made Me Overeat to read more.

15 Melon Head Fruit Carvings

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It’s sad to think summer is finally coming to an end. It’s also sad that the best watermelons I’ve had all summer long were among the last I’ll have this year. At least I’m ending on a high note, right?

Over the summer, I’ve been experimenting with different ways to cut watermelon. I’ve had a blast as I’ve chopped them away, bit by bit. In hindsight, I probably should have taken a few pictures to share with you. Oh well, maybe next time. As I cut up my latest watermelon for the kids and smoothies, I ended up playing around and cutting faces into the slices, and that’s when it hit me–there had to be somebody out there who has carved a melon head.

So today, I bring you a collection of 15+ melon heads, carved by random people in random places. I’ve tried to credit original sources (as far as I can tell), but the nature of the internet is that it’s nearly impossible to track picture sources down. I’d love to keep adding to this list, so if you know of any others, let me know!
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10 Ways to Make Cooking Enjoyable for Kids

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For those of you who have been reading my blog for a while now, you know that I enjoy cooking with my family in the kitchen, especially with my daughter, Maggie. The best part about it is that Maggie enjoys cooking with me. This is a tradition I plan to continue for as long as Maggie wants to hang out with me. From what I hear, once they get into those teenager years, “dads” become nerdy. What kids don’t understand is that some of us have always been nerdy–but we can talk about that at a later time.

Today, I want to share with you some ideas to get your youngsters involved in the kitchen.

If you’re lucky, your kids will want to know what you’re doing in the kitchen and they’ll take an interest in it and even pitch in voluntarily. Maybe you’re not so lucky and your kids think the kitchen pretty much sucks and is just another way for you to torture them. Who knows, maybe they’re right–but it doesn’t have to be that way.
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Jamie Oliver’s TED Speech: Fight Obesity

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This is a must watch. You don’t want to miss this.

Jamie makes some excellent points and is rather persuasive on this topic. I agree with all of his points with the exception of government being the solution to controlling fast food. If change is going to happen, it needs to come from the bottom up; change by parents; change by communities; change by mom and pop restaurants. Change that inspires and promotes a better lifestyle. If consumers demand healthier food from restaurants and schools, and step up and lead with their convictions, change will happen.
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An Awesome Gift + Where I’ve Been

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Hey folks, I can’t believe it’s been over a month since my last post. Wow! In blogging terms, 1 month or longer between posts is equivalent to shooting myself in the foot.

But before we get into that, and above all else, I wanted to send a grateful shout out to Maren, my friend from Seevetal, Germany (near Hamburg). Over Christmas Maren sent me a really really awesome Christmas package full of German delight!
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Video: How to Make No-Knead Bread

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It’s snowing like crazy right now, which for some reason instantly put me in the mood to bake some great fresh bread. I love the aroma of fresh bread and biting through a crispy crust when it’s fresh out of the oven. Mmmmm. But alas, I’m still working on access to my old pictures (…click here if you must know…), and I’m at work on lunch break. So instead, I’ve been searching for an excellent bread-making video to post on The Cooking Dish (and to break this non-recipe dry spell). I came across this YouTube video posted by the New York Times featuring the Sullivan Street Bakery’s head baker, Jim Lahey, who apparently can make a mean loaf of bread. I’d love to spend a day in his bakery learning to bake.

Jim uses 5 basic ingredients to whip up a simple loaf of bread with amazing taste. He says, “[It’s] a truly minimalist breadmaking technique that allows people to make excellent bread at home with very little effort. The method is surprisingly simple — I think a 4-year-old could master it — and the results are fantastic.”
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