The environmentally-friendly re-usable Wraps and Pouches also serve as a place mat providing a clean eating surface anywhere!

A lunch bag that doubles as a eating mat, is reusable and washable – very nice!

I call them green pins because of the green milk paint and because the maple is native and fairly local.

His furniture isn’t bad either!

Well, sort of. I did have one of her cast iron skillets – well seasoned from lots of use – but my fried chicken was horribly greasy. Yuck!! There was much to learn.

After reading a bit on frying and watching several cooking shows – Good Eats and America’s Test Kitchen – and reading a bit in I’m Just Here for the Food there’s a lot more going on than just hot oil.

For starters there’s the method – deep or pan frying. My initial attempt was pan frying like I’d seen grandma make it in an iron skillet but deep frying is another alternative. While you can get a dedicated deep fryer, a dutch oven is a better investment. America’s Test Kitchen recommends this one. At around $50 you can’t beat it and you’ll use it for soups, stews, braising, and even baking. Try that with a fryer. It’s even available at Walmart.

Regardless of the vessel used, the oil temperature within the container is critical. If it’s too low the food will be disgustingly greasy! The only way to tell if the oil is ready for frying is to measure it and that means getting a thermometer. Spend the money and get a digital candy probe thermometer. While a glass one is cheaper, I went through three of them before I gave up. They break sitting in drawers, shelves, when washed and especially when dropped.

Typically the oil should be at 375 degrees or so to begin frying. And since the food being fried is below 375, the oil temperature will drop when the food is added. Typically that means all the food can’t be added at once and hence multiple batches will be required in order to fry it all. The oil should stay above 300 for a good frying session – yes leave the thermometer in during cooking so you can see what’s going on. After removing a batch to drain, let the oil recover to 375 before adding the next batch.

That “fry-a-batch-and-recover” technique works with pan and deep fried foods. I’ve used it on chicken, sea food, vegetable and yes frozen french fries and onion rings. Which reminds me – get a splatter screen if you want to keep clean up to a minimum.

• suspended baking contraption for oven headed foods like onion rings, fish sticks, etc. Basically it allow the hot air under the food in addition to around the food. Saves having to “flip” items half way through.
• drizzling rack for frosting cakes, etc. It suspends the cake, pastery, etc and allows that gooey icing to be drizzled from above without having to worry about catching the overflow
• fried food drain board – line the pan with newspaper and then insert the rack up-side down. The drained oil never touches the food and never clings to the rack.
• a simple grilling rack for the oven – great for roasting meats as it catches the drippings and also elevates the food allowing cooking on both sides.

The more I cook, the more uses I find for this dynamic duo.

• Repeated washing will remove/fade the numbers and letters on a measuring device.  Embossed/engraved/stamped quantity sizes last longer than inked ones.
• Get extra 1/2 tsp measures. They can be used for a wide range of combinations, e.g. 1 tsp (x2), 1 tbsp (x6).
• 2 cup graduated liquid measuring cups serve as nice mixing bowls
• Large, dual purpose dry/liquid adjustable measuring cups are nice. The small ones, not so much.
• A simple digital kitchen scale is extremely useful, especially for weighing flour. Needs gm/oz and tare settings and not much else.