Category: Things

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Food and Drink kitchen Things tools

What are the Kitchen Essentials?

What do you absolutely need to have in a kitchen? What are the cooking tools you use daily?

My girlfriend is a very good cook who enjoys cooking. So she cooks great dinners every night, I’m very fortunate. I still cook during the day but the dishes are mundane. Between what I use for cooking and what I see that she’s used as I’m cleaning up, I’ve come up with a list of what we commonly use in our kitchen. This is our personal tool box:

An 8″ chef’s knife. It’s made by Global and we’ve had it for 5 years. In a supporting  role is a steel for maintaining the knife’s edge. The steel is old and I don’t know the brand but I use it every couple of days to maintain the knife’s sharp edge. We also wash the knife after using it and store it in a slot between cabinets to protect it. This seems to work; we’ve never sharpened it and it’s still wickedly sharp. And this 8″ chef’s knife is really the only knife either one of us uses for cooking.

12″ and 8″ Teflon saute pans. These guys get used so much that they’re replaced every year or so. The brand doesn’t seem to matter, they still wear out.

A bamboo spatula. We’ve had it forever. It’s what we use in the pans and for most stirring and severing too.

10″ Tongs. They’re as useful and used as often as the spatula. Ours has a built-in locking mechanism to keep them closed when they’re in the drawer.

Lemon squeezer. Very common in Mexico and it gets used a lot by us, mostly for limes which seem to get used in many dishes.

Large and medium size Pyrex mixing bowls. We use them for…mixing, and sometimes serving too.

14″ and  8″ cutting boards. For the last three years we’ve used boards by Epicurean. They’re thin manmade wood based cutting boards that are eco-friendly as well as knife edge friendly, you don’t want too hard a cutting board.

Scissors. Medium duty and sharp, they’re probably why we get along so well with just one knife.

Wine opener. A double hinged waiter’s friend type. No reason to use any other type, having been a waiter for many years I’ve used these to open hundreds of wine bottles, ‘nuf said.

Pepper grinder. Fresh ground pepper is good and we use it in almost every dish. We’re happy with an 8″ model by Peugeot that sports an all steel grinder, if you flip it, it’s like looking at the scary beak you see after you turn an octopus upside down.

Food storage. This system works really well. There are three different heights of plastic storage containers, they can nest into one another when they’re not being used and (that’s not all!) they all use the same size screw-on top. Very tidy, convenient, and easy. We turn away any other storage vessels approaching our shoreline, that’s how beloved the system is. Freedom from Tupperware chaos.

Appliances we use all the time are: a gas stove, microwave, blender, Cuisinart food processor, and once a week, every week, I use a Toddy cold drip coffee maker to make coffee for the week. We’re starting to use a Crockpot more and more.

The dishwasher is about 5’9″ and tips the scales at 70 kilos (about 155 lbs) and runs on meat and vegetables.

Categories
Ideas Things

Nook Hot Rod

I’ve been using a Kindle reader for a few months now and I love it. It’s light, small, and easy to use with great battery life too. Another e-reader, the Nook, has a color display. Don’t forget the iPad, another good e-reader platform people love; but it’s more than twice the price and weight of dedicated e-readers.

People do love the iPad as a tablet computer; but they prefer the price and size of a dedicated e-reader. So some folks are hacking e-readers, especially the Nook, turning them into cheaper and smaller tablet computers. And, they’re cheaper to use too, contract-wise . Pretty cool. A Nook hot rod.

There’s probably a fair number of hackers doing this modification. I say this because I’m not that into computers; so by the time I know about something like this it’s probably being done by lots of aficionados. Here’s a video on doing it in case you’re an aficionado who somehow missed the boat.

This is innovation from the ground up. A recent story about this on NPR became a most e-mailed. So there’s an interest out there. I think it’s fascinating to see change occurring on the street level where you can’t predict what will happen when tinkerers start tinkering, and then to see how it percolates up to production companies. It won’t be long before you see lighter, cheaper tablet computer for sale in a store.

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Ideas Things

The History of the Future

I’ve run across a couple of videos that I really like and I thought you might too. Everyone I’ve shown the videos to also liked them, at least that’s what they told me. Each one is less than two minutes long. When you watch the videos, use the whole screen view to really appreciate them.

Here’ the first one, Air Penguins. It’s from a German company, Festo. The company has developed a robotic arm technology that they’ve used in different applications to demo the technology. The video that I like is with the air penguins, but there’s also an air jelly video and an air ray video. Festo’s robotic arm technology is used in the graceful noses of the penguins to steer them.

Here’s the next one, Metropolis. It’s from an artist, Chris Burden. He’s created a huge kinetic sculpture using about 1200 toy cars zooming around a toy highway system. The installation is meant to represent a distilled version of a real highway system.  The noise generated by the whole thing in action, all rolling at the same time is impressive too. The piece is slated to be installed in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art soon.

If these videos really are the history of the future I hope the first one wins.

Categories
Drink Food and Drink Things Time Savers

Cold Drip Coffee

Have you heard of “cold drip coffee” before? If you like drinking coffee, here’s a way to make great tasting coffee that has a few advantages over the regular way of making coffee.

I use a Toddy cold drip coffee maker. It consists of only three parts. There’s the soaking container, a filter that fits in the bottom of that container, and a glass carafe to drain the coffee into. The plastic soaking container is about the size of a large popcorn bucket from the multiplex. The bottom of the soaker has a bottleneck for the felt filter that’s about the size of a large cookie. This bottleneck on the soaker’s bottom also fits the mouth of the glass carafe for draining the coffee when it’s time.

I’ve been making cold drip coffee for years, it’s really simple. First, after inserting a filter in the bottom of the soaking container, add about two liters (quarts) of room temperature water. Next, put in a pound of coarse (not fine) ground coffee on top of the water; but don’t stir in the coffee grounds, let the ground coffee soak into the water. That’s it, now allow the mix to soak for between 12 and 24 hours. Then pull the small plug on the bottom of the soaking container and let gravity drain it into the carafe. You’ll get about a liter and a half of delicious coffee concentrate that can last three weeks in the fridge.

Put the concentrate into the fridge and spread the grounds on your garden (or in the trash). Take out the filer and give it a though rinsing under the tap before putting it into the fridge for the next time. If you rinse the filter well and refrigerate it in water, you’ll be able to use it for months.

The cold drip coffee is also about 60% less acidic than brewed coffee because no heat is used to make the coffee. The flavor profile will be richer and less bitter-tasting than brewed coffee. There even a bit less caffeine too. The system was developed in 1964 by a chemical engineer at Cornell University.

There are all kinds of uses for the coffee concentrate. You can dilute it or not (I don’t) to the strength you like,  then ice it or heat it (stove top or microwave), or use it in recipes calling for coffee.

There are hundreds of coffee houses and cafes using cold drip coffee for their iced coffee. I even sell Thai style iced cold drip coffee here in Mexico at the fledgling farmers’ market on Saturday mornings in our little town.

Iced coffee is what we make most often at home. I usually premix the coffee with milk and Half and Half in a two liter bottle. Drinking coffee doesn’t get any more tasty and convenient than that.

Categories
Living Abroad Mexico Things

The Kindle Has Landed

The Kindle has landed in Mexico! Mine has at least. It’s a late Christmas present from my girlfriend. She probably got tired of me talking about planning to get one. Some recent visitors from the States brought it down; a nice surprise. And it works really well here. I thought I should cover this now that I’m using it and before we get too far from Christmas.

Now I can read any book that’s available in a Kindle version as soon as I’d like to. Before my Kindle showed up, acquiring a new book was a slow process, depending on friends and luck. I had three choices. I might, by luck, stumble across something I was interested in that someone else was finished with, ask a visitor to bring it down, or look for a book myself in the States when I happened to go up there. But a fourth and best option arrived just after Christmas. I can connect to any wireless network here in Mexico and buy a book in about a minute.

There’s another feature that’s useful too. I can read the first couple of chapters for free from any book that’s available to a Kindle. This saves time and money for me. Currently, I’m reading two books that I bought after previewing five book’s first chapters. This is a nice feature to have when there isn’t a bookstore anywhere in my area.

I know you can read books on iPads and computers, but I think the Kindle has a couple of advantages. One is the size, the Kindle is small and very light making it easier to deal with (easier than a printed book too). The other advantage of the kindle is sort of counterintuitive and that is that the Kindle is only a reader. So when you’re using a Kindle you don’t have the distraction option of email and web surfing. Sort of less is more.

Speaking of less, I don’t like to have lots of stuff. So I generally give books away after I’ve read them. With the Kindle there’s a reduction in the number of books laying around and those books I want to keep are in one tidy package. On the next trip I take, I’ll be able to take all of my books with me too.

And that’s not all. I also received a cover that protects the Kindle. Plus the cover comes equipped with a cool little retractable LED light, built-in, so I can give my headlamp a rest.

Categories
Books Heros Ideas Sites Story tools

The PaperNet

With the new year I started thinking about influences on my life. Here’s one of them.

B.F. Skinner once said “education is what remains after what you’ve learned has been forgotten.” This is an homage to the “The Whole Earth Catalog” (WEC) because exploring the world of ideas both big and small in the WEC was a huge part of my education.

When I was a young teen I stumbled across the WEC and it became my portal to a parallel universe. I grew up in a somewhat restrictive environment in the deep South. If you accepted and followed the status quo things were easy, if not, there weren’t alternatives that were presented or encouraged. At that time the WEC presented so many different ideas and access to those ideas that for me it was incredible. It was a paper version of the internet.

The WEC was a very large format paperback printed on coarse, unbleached paper which added to the experience of immersion into a big world of possibilities. There were tools, resources for independent study, and things that weren’t already common knowledge. If something was inexpensive, or high quality, and was readily available by mail, then there was a good chance it would show up in the WEC. It really was an immersive experience for me. You could follow threads of related information all over the catalog, for example hopping  from house design to info on owner built houses to the best tools to use and why they were preferred. Also accompanying each item were excerpts from submitters, staff reviewers and if it was a book, quotes. Plus the WEC was a book about other people doing other things.

From the first edition in 1968 to last incarnation of the Whole Earth Quarterly in 1998 updated editions came out every couple of years with more ideas and information. Now with the instant availability of info and links on the internet it’s hard to recall what a breath of fresh air the WEC was. Just looking through it you were sure to be waylaid by something new to investigate.

Of course with the internet there’s no real place for the WEC anymore. It almost seems quaint now up against the internet, the way a Farmer’s Almanac compares to the weather report on TV. But before there was an internet the WEC was where I was educated.

Categories
Ideas Things

Christmas Focus

Here’s an idea for a last-minute stocking stuffer. A headlamp. I use a headlamp probably once a day. Sometimes more often.

A headlamp saved my life in Yosemite once when I had to rappel through the night from a climb that went past sundown. Other climbers in camp the next day said they could see the faint lights from the headlamps as my partner and I were slowly descending through the night.

Now since I’m in rural Mexico, if I get up at night I’ll use it to make sure I don’t step on a scorpion. Last night there were a couple of short power outages that were rendered to almost fun because I had a headlamp.

I know it sounds odd to talk about a headlamp. It’s a thing that would be hard for me to do without. For example, reading in bed is really easy using a headlamp since the focused light doesn’t disturb my sleeping girlfriend. Plus, I don’t have to get up to turn out the lights.

One of these days I’ll break down and buy a Kindle (I’ve borrowed one and really liked it). It works well because the screen isn’t backlit but that means at night you need a light to read by, I’m ready with my headlamp.

Talking about the Kindle struck me as funny since I don’t own one. Then I read a post Jason Kottke wrote about how popular a gift the Kindle will probably be this Christmas. He too likes Kindles, and like me has tried one, but doesn’t yet own one either. So I guess it’s not that unusual to give a recommendation for something you don’t own.

There’re some fancy headlamps out there, but I prefer the simple ones. The one I use has two LEDs and two brightness settings. I use rechargeable batteries (3 AAA). And that’s about it. Not much can go wrong. Plenty of light, super simple, and the batteries last for weeks. The one I use is a Petzl Tikkina 2. They’re expensive, I think, about $28, but they last a long time. Over the two decades that I’ve been using them, I’ve only had three headlamps.

When I first used one is lost to me, but it was a long time ago. I was hooked after the first time. Hands free and plenty of light – change a tire, help during a storm, ready for power outages, on and on.

There is of course, the dork factor, it’s very high, probably 11 on a scale from 1 to 10. But luckily you can’t see yourself, only the bemused looks on the faces of others (while you’re helping them).

Categories
Health Things

Falling Coconuts

There’s a concept you’ll hear about in the tropics. It’s that more people are killed each year by falling coconuts than are killed by sharks. The concept is probably unverifiable since reporting and record keeping is not always practiced in places with lots of coconut palms. I’ve also heard that it’s just an urban myth that has made its way to the beach.

The number of deaths attributed to falling coconuts that I’ve heard most often is 150. If it is a common cause of death, I think that number is low. The latitude range where coconuts grow is large and more people live in warmer climates. So if people are being hit by coconuts, it seems to me that there’d be more than 150.

A few days ago I was on the street in front of our house giving the car its semi-annual washing. While in the middle of the washing, I was startled by a loud but dull thud. I looked around and on the sidewalk across the street a large coconut was slowly rocking back and forth as its milk oozed onto the pavement. No harm no foul.

I didn’t see it fall but I didn’t need to in order say that it probably could kill you; certainly a kid or dog would’ve been killed by a direct hit. The coconut fell from the palm in the photo above. Later in the day when I tracked down our camera and went across the street to shoot the fallen coconut; it was gone. But you can imagine from the palm photo what a potentially deadly projectile a coconut from a tall palm could be.

Mexico has been getting some bad press over the last couple of years. We don’t have any problems here with any of the stuff you hear about in the news. But I’m keeping my eye out for coconut palms.

Categories
Opinion Things

Simple and Great

When you’re in Mexico you’ll see lots of people using the same model of cell phone. It turns out to be the Nokia 1100. It’s about the size of a Snickers bar and by skipping about 30 Snickers you could buy a Nokia 1100 cell phone with the money you saved.

Cheap, simple , and out of control. At last count, since the introduction in 2003, there are 250,000,000 Nokia 1100 phones floating around out there in the world. That’s 250 million! It’s the most successful consumer electronic device (not just phones) ever sold. I find that incredible.

I don’t remember why I first googled the Nokia 1100. But I remember visiting a Mexican friend just after I’d read about it and when I arrived at his house his ten-year old nephew was there too and guess what was in his hand? A Nokia 1100. Later, at the market another friend had one. They’re everywhere in Mexico. I shouldn’t be surprised considering how many have been sold.

This phone was designed to make a lot of people happy. It’s cheap, robust, and easy to use. It’s a cell phone for all markets, from third world to first world. It’s a simple phone for first worlders who don’t want or need a smart phone and an adequate, affordable cell phone for technologically rising countries.

I read an interesting post by Seth Godin the other day. The post was reflecting on the layers of features that are added by manufacturers trying to fill any unused space or open options. This cluttering ultimately desensitizes consumers to most of the added features.

The Nokia 1100 has avoided this trap and does a few things well, mostly just the things you only really need a cell phone to do like calls and texting. Plus it’s dust and slip resistant with a built-in flashlight (especially useful in countries without street lights). This phone can go as long as 16 days between charges!

In Mexico, I need a landline to get internet service in my house so I use the landline and Skype to take care of my phone needs. I don’t have a cell phone, but if and when I get one, the Nokia 1100 (or its descendant ) is probably the one I’ll buy.

Categories
Exercise Health Ideas Time Savers

EVERYTHING I KNOW I LEARNED IN PRISON

That’s what it said on a bumper sticker on the car in front of me. I’ve never been in prison and hope I can always say that. But it’s a funny sticker.

I’m sure there’re some clever people locked up, and they have lots of time to kill. And prisons seem like they have a “survival of the fittest” thing going, right?

If you were in a restricted space with no access to a gym, eventually the best exercise for those circumstances bubbles up to the surface. The knowledge would be passed along from prisoner to prisoner and refined along the way. So workouts would have been through many iterations of lots of different exercises to arrive at something that’s the most effective. I can’t be sure it’s true; but there’s an exercise that supposedly comes out of the prison experience.

The exercise is called a Burpee pushup. It’s an exercise I do and like. With Burpee pushups you’ll really get the most bang for your buck. It’s an especially effective exercise to do if (unlike a prisoner) you don’t have much time or (like a prisoner) have a limited space. Say you’re traveling, staying in a hotel room and don’t have much time before a meeting. Do some Burpee pushups in your room, take a shower, and scoot off to your meeting, all in a very short time. Of course, they’re great to do at home too.

Here’s how they’re done. Drop down into the starting position for a pushup. Do a pushup. At the top of the pushup when your arms are straightening, jump your feet forward so your knees are at your chest and you’re in a crouching position. Then leap up, reaching for the ceiling with you hands. As you land, bend over, put your hands on the floor and pop your feet back so you’re in the starting  position for a pushup again. That’s one rep.

If you’d like, you can find videos of Burpee pushups on YouTube. Here’s one I like.

How many to do? Well, this is what I’d recommend and how many I do. Usually twenty one. But not all at once. I do only one at first; then I wait one minute; and then I do two; wait one minute then do three … and follow this pattern. I usually stop after the sixth minute/sixth set, which would at this point, have me doing six Burpee pushups during the last set. Adding up all six sets we have: 1+2+3+4+5+6=21. Twenty one reps of a hard exercise in six minutes and I’m done!

The other nice thing about doing it this way is you get a warm-up in there too. Sure, you can do more than one, but start with just one and go through adding a rep to each set.

This pattern of the rep number equaling the set number is called a “ladder.”  You can scale it up or down to suit your situation; and you can use it for other exercises too.

I have a feel for the time now but I usually use a cool little interval timer called the Gym Boss. It’s cheap, $20, easy to use, and keeps you honest. Of course you can use a watch or maybe a kitchen timer. The GymBoss is just easy and you can set any interval time you wish to use. Plus, it counts the number of intervals for you too. Just do your workout and listen for the beeps (it has a vibrate mode too in case you’re stealthy or in a loud area). Side note: An interval timer is handy for other exercises too because you can work out for timed sets, which is a more effective method.

At first, start out doing a couple of minutes worth and work up to six (or more) minutes. Don’t over do it and you’ll keep it up. Burpee pushups are a really good, quick, and surprisingly effective exercise.