Author Archives: kathy

Pasta Machines: Cooks Illustrated vs Amazon vs Good Housekeeping

Last week I was struck with an overwhelming desire for fresh, homemade egg pasta because…

… basil.

Question: Is pasta bad for you? Answer: Hell, no!

Is it made fresh, with love, from four of the most basic kitchen staples and make you happy you’re alive?

Does it inspire you to consume armfulls of verdant summer herbs at their height of greenliness and a glass of a good Italian red?

Is it easy, cheap, delicious, and fun to make?

Well. There you go, then.

Even our Italian-made pasta machine knows that eaten in moderation, fresh pasta brings wellness into your life.

This is why it’s confusing to us that, to date, neither Cook’s Illustrated nor Consumer Reports has reviewed the humble manual pasta machine. (We’ll keep an eye out and let you know if either one ever weighs in with their “highly recommended” or “best buy.”)

When we wanted to buy one a couple of years ago, we were left to our own sleuthing and landed on the Amazon favorite, the Marcato Atlas Wellness 150 pasta maker.

Simple, safe, and satisfying to use, the Marcato pasta roller and cutter brings one thing to the game that a rolling pin and knife combo never will: consistency.

To qualify as comfort food, the noodles must be of a consistent thickness and width, bite after bite. There’s something about the hypnotic bliss of excellent pasta that demands an unvarying mouthfeel.

It’s why great restaurants care about evenly diced ingredients. Turns out, size really does matter.

Marcato Atlas Wellness 150 Pasta Maker

And for the home kitchen chef in search of consistency, sometimes machines are just better. In the case of manual pasta makers, almost 1000 Amazon reviewers rated the Marcato Atlas a whopping 4.7 stars of approval.

Kitchenaid Pasta Roller Attachment
Fits Stand Mixers

If you’re more into the motorized kind of fun and have a KitchenAid stand mixer (and as a foodie’s kitchen “must have,” you should!), there are pasta attachments that fit the power hub on your machine. The crew at Amazon love theirs: another 4.7 star recipient here across more than 800 purchasers.

By the way, just because a Good Housekeeping article on cool retro-styled kitchen appliances includes a pasta machine, in this case the Roma Express Electric Pasta Machine , that doesn’t mean it’s actually cool.

Weston Roma Express Electric Pasta Machine

Cute, red, and vaguely reminiscent of Rosie, the maid on the Jetsons? You betcha!

But for our money and kitchen, we go with brains and performance before beauty. At a measly 3.4 star-rating on Amazon, the Weston just doesn’t measure up. Any product that scores a 1-star rating for 27% of the reviewers definitely falls into the category of “proceed with caution.”

(On the other hand, this darling ceramic tea kettle Good Housekeeping also lists in the same article… Oooh, baby!)

Philips Pasta Maker

Finally, for those among us who prefer homemade fresh pasta only if it’s coupled with almost zero engagement, experience, or kitchen mess, Williams-Sonoma has high praise for the electric pasta machine by Philips, their all-in-one pasta whiz, and guess what? 4.7 stars on Amazon too.

You put the weighed ingredients in the top, push the button, and… presto! Like magic, the machine kneads, rests, and starts extruding pot-ready perfect pasta.

While Rick and I can see that this approach has its appeal for many of our friends, we like to play with our food. And besides, we already have a no-mess pasta mixing and kneading machine to go along with our wellness maker:

… our Cuisinart food processor.

Whether you go with hand cut, manual roller and cutter, or all new-fangled electric, if you’ve got one of these babies in your kitchen, you are just moments away from fresh egg pasta dough.

Watch how easy it is to make and cook pasta.

Lidia Bastianich, Queen of All Italian Cooking, lays out a helpful fresh pasta dough recipe on a per person basis: one egg per person, combined with between 1/2 and 2/3 cup flour (start with 1/2), 1/8 tsp. salt and 1/4 tsp. olive oil.

That means for Rick and me, we start with 2 eggs, 1/4 tsp. salt and 1/2 tsp oil. (If you’ve only got refrigerator temp eggs when you start, pop them into a bowl of warm tap water while you’re getting things set up to bring them closer to room temperature, but no biggie if they’re a bit on the cooler side.)

In a Pyrex 2-cup measuring cup, combine the eggs, salt, and oil, whipping them until they’re foamy.

Put the flour in the Cuisinart with the metal blade, turn it on, then drizzle the egg/salt/oil mixture into the top.

Run the Cuisinart until the dough forms into a rough ball, about 30-40 seconds. If the dough remains pebbly and refuses to collect into a ball, add just a dribble (seriously) of warm water, giving the processor a good chance to thoroughly incorporate the moisture before deciding it needs an additional dose.

If the dough is sticking to the work bowl, add more flour, 1 tbsp. at a time, until the dough looks something like ours above.

Don’t worry too much about over-processing the dough while you decide if the texture is right. It’s not that precious.

When you think you’re close, take the dough out of the processor and give it several good kneads with the heel of your hand, flipping and folding it on itself between pushes until you have a warm ball of silken wellness.

See why we prefer a little manual interaction with our pasta? Why should a machine have all the fun?!

Give the gluten a time out to calm itself by fully encasing the dough with plastic wrap and letting it sit on the counter for an hour or so. (This will keep you from fighting in the rolling/cutting stage with what Lidia calls “nervous dough.”) It can also sit in a fridge for a day, but be sure to let it warm to room temp before proceeding to the next step.

Cut and hand roll the dough into two smaller balls per egg used. In our case, we ended up making two separate batches, four eggs in total, so we had eight smaller balls waiting to be processed.

You’ll be working with one ball at a time, so keep the rest covered on a floured baking sheet while they wait their turn.

Flatten the ball into an oval patty, set the thickness regulator to three, and crank it through.

Fold it in half lengthwise and send ‘er through again.

Sprinkle both sides evenly with a little flour between rollings to keep the dough from sticking,

Change the setting to six, and roll again, or even a couple of times to get a consistent thickness across the whole sheet of dough.

We’ve tried settings of five, six, and seven, and for the flat noodle, six seems to work best. For spaghetti, you might want to go a little thicker and use a setting of five on the regulator.

Attach the cutter device by sliding it into the brackets on the machine. Move the crank to the appropriate hole on the attachment, and feed in the rolled dough.

For ease of laying out the noodles to dry, it can be helpful (and fun!) to have a buddy on hand to neatly catch and hold flat the noodles as they emerge. Even if you’re on your own, you can switch cranking hands and catch them yourself, or simply let them fall into a nest and dry them that way. They will separate just fine either way as they cook.

We laid the flat noodles we were planning to eat in a few hours on a floured baking sheet in a (mostly) single layer to dry.

For the spaghetti we were planning on eating later in the week, we took each batch as it emerged directly into the utility room and hung it on our freshly wiped laundry rack so it would dry completely before we stored it in ziplock bags.

If you’re into making more than one batch at a time, you might want to invest in a nifty foldable drying rack, but so far, we haven’t felt like pasta for dinner on laundry day, so we’re good.

Bring a good-sized pot of water to a boil, add a pinch of salt and a dash of olive oil, drop your noodles in, and cook uncovered, stirring gently a couple or three times.

For thinner, finer noodles, start testing (fish out a noodle and bite it) at 90-seconds. It’s okay if the pasta is still just a teensy bit firm as it will continue to absorb moisture and soften from the sauce.

For thicker noodles, cook two minutes and begin testing until you like the feel of it between your teeth.

Drain the noodles, reserving a few tablespoons of the water to add to the sauce to bring a beautiful gloss to the whole gig. Don’t rinse the noodles as it will prevent the sauce from adhering to them.

Return the hot noodles to the pot and gently fold in enough of your sauce to amply coat them.

Using tongs, lift the noodles and twist them into a nest as you drop it into place to build a little height into the presentation.

Top with a generous extra dollop of sauce and sprinkle with a little parmesan cheese if you’re so inclined.

Grab the camera and shoot like crazy while it’s still steaming, because it’s dinner time, and…

… basil.

Lidia’s Italian-American Kitchen

Our copy looks better than this. There are smears of egg-flour-and-water paste permanently lodged on Lidia’s beautiful Italian left cheekbone and chin, exactly as they would be in real life.

Sous Vide Machines: Cooks Illustrated vs Amazon vs Good Housekeeping

One of Rick’s more profound theories of life is this: “Things lead to things.”

The fact that we now own the Cook’s Illustrated “highly recommended” sous vide machine, the Anova Precision Cooker, is a perfect example of Rick’s Theory of Thingage in action.

Here’s how it went down, this time:

We had recently moved near a Costco, started buying mozzarella cheese and fresh salmon in bulk, and found ourselves shelling out for a kitchen vacuum sealer.

In addition to learning about the best and worst of vacuum sealers, our research also revealed that vacuum bagged foods were “perfect for sous vide cooking.”

Well, that’s just dandy! And here we thought we were just buying a vacuum sealer to portion and preserve 25-lb bags of coffee beans and raw almonds into household-of-two portions.

Um… remind me again what “sous vide” cooking is?

Sous vide—French for “under vacuum”—is a simple, fuss-free and time-tested way to slow cook food sealed in airtight plastic bags. It uses longer and lower temperatures than normal in a precisely temperature-controlled water bath that’s heated to the food’s desired final temperature.

Sous vide cooking gently locks in essential juices and amplifies flavor (and exquisite textures) while preserving vital water-soluble nutrients and improving food safety (no guessing!).

The method is used in everything from poached eggs (reportedly producing amazing yolk textures unattainable by any other means) to delicate fish to custards to chicken to vegetables and even tricky “easy to overcook/dry out” cuts of inexpensive meat such as flank steak.

Better food with less fuss? Sign us up.

We wanted a sous vide machine that, a) didn’t break the bank and, b) we could find room to store in our kitchen.

Both requirements were met by passing on the bulky and more expensive “water ovens” that have been the only options, until recently.

Instead, the answer lay in the more affordable, flexible, and storage-friendly stick “immersion circulator” styles, a conclusion that both Cook’s Illustrated and Good Housekeeping came to in their reviews and recommendations.

Anova Culinary Precision Cooker

(Technically speaking, the December 2014 Cook’s Illustrated “highly recommended” winner was the “Anova One,” but good luck finding one! Per Anova.com., the Anova One has been discontinued and has been replaced by the Anova Precision Cooker. Cook’s has committed to testing this new Anova soon. Stay tuned: we’ll update as soon as their results are in. Meanwhile, we’re loving the new model.)

At a current 4.5 star rating with over 300 reviews, the Amazon community thinks highly of this option. And at a (relatively) modest price tag of ~$180 USD, the Anova Precision Immersion Circulator—and sous vide cooking in general—is now within reach of us mere mortals, as opposed to being the quiet little secret of high-end restaurant chefs.

Even-tempered, quiet, gentle, a quick clean, and low maintenance… the Anova would make a terrific roommate.

Good Housekeeping reviewed two different sous vide machines, the Sansaire and the Nomiku.

Sansaire Sous Vide Immersion Circulator

Good Housekeeping gave them both an enthusiastic thumbs up without expressing a preference between the two. Great! But, not that helpful if you just want to know what the best sous vide machine is.

Once again, the Cook’s review shed some light on things. They ranked the Sansaire as their second-placed “recommended” option, and here’s why:

It’s about the outport, the vent where the water is circulated back into the pot after a trip around the heating element. The Sansaire has a fixed outport, meaning you can’t adjust where the flow of water is aimed in the container. The Anova, on the other hand, has a rotatable outport, meaning if the water churn is too vigorous for delicate items, you can rotate it to deflect against the wall of the pot instead of directly into the water. This is, apparently, important if you don’t want your eggs to jostle audibly (and one presumes, in a manner threatening breakage) against the wall of the cooking container.

Albeit with roughly one third the number of reviewers, the review crew at Amazon rank the slightly more expensive Sansaire with a shade higher rating (4.6 stars) than the Anova. Why a higher ranking? This is not known at this time.

What is known is that no one reviewing the Sansaire complained about noisy eggs.

Nomiku Sous Vide Immersion Circulator

Cook’s Illustrated placed the Nomiku in their “recommended with reservations” spot, citing the squint-inducing “postage-stamp sized” display and narrower (and this is an important factor) water maximum-to-minimum range that meant more frequent monitoring and refills during a multi-day cooking task.

Amazonians were only so-so about the Nomiku, giving it 3.7 stars over ~180 reviews. Meh.

Enough about the machinery. Here’s how our first foray into Sous Vide Land went.

We decided to try our new Anova out on the inexpensive $8 eye-of-round roast that Rick cut into 2-inch thick steaks.

A healthy dose of salt and pepper on both sides—with our aromatic-of-choice, a sprig of fresh rosemary—as seasoning…

… a quick pit stop at our FoodSaver V3840 to seal in all the lean yet juicy loveliness, and into the tub they went for their 131° 24-hour water spa treatment. (More on time and temperature below.)

BTW, the Anova was super easy to use:

Clamp to stock pot or other suitable container
Fill with lukewarm-to-warmish (below the desired cooking temperature) water to somewhere between the “maximum” and “minimum” lines, depending on how big your bagged goodie is
Plug it in
For our North American buddies: hold down the “play” button for three seconds to switch between Celsius and Fahrenheit, or vice versa for the flipside
Dial the front wheely thing to the desired temperature
Hit “play”
Go away for anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 days, depending on what you’re cooking

(In a complete aside: dontcha love the chef poster Rick painted?)

To make sure the bagged meat stayed totally submerged during the process, we clamped the bags in place, per a random online recommendation (probably from a Sansaire user). In hindsight, the circulation feature wasn’t torrential enough to make that 100% necessary, but hey… safety first.

On that note, be sure to read the Anova manual before starting use, which clearly states, and I quoth directly from the Anova Precision Cooker user manual:

Whoops! Luckily, we caught it in the first hour of operation. We whipped our immersion circulation-enhanced stock pot off our brand-new Cambria quartz countertop and on to our trusty, indestructible butcher block. No harm, no foul.

Right around the same time that we discovered the kitchen safety info, we also stumbled on a food safety recommendation, which said that the minimal temperature necessary to safely heat meat for the length of time we had planned is 131°F.

Rightio. Two clicks forward of the handy temp wheel, and there we were at 131°F for the next 23.5 hours.

About 14 hours into the process, we noticed that the water level had diminished slightly due to evaporation, so we topped it up a little and loosely tented a piece of aluminum foil at the top of our stock pot, but other than that, it was a completely hands-off gig.

A full 24-hours later and this is what we removed from the bag: an inexpensive cut of beef cooked to a perfect medium.

However, as is the case for all sous vide meats, the external presentation needed a little touch up via a quick sear (think hot grill, hot pan, deep fry, etc.) to add that crispy, flavorful layer that every carnivore craves.

Fancy Schmancy Kitchen Torch Attachment

Apparently, there’s a fancy schmancy kitchen torch attachment that you clamp on to a standard propane cylinder torch that will make the searing even more ~~exciting~~ ~~official~~ effective, but we don’t have the fancy schmancy gizmo —yet—so Rick seared them briefly on both sides in a lightly-oiled saute pan.
I meant to take a photo of the meat getting its quick sear, but somehow I got distracted and lost the moment.

Oh well.

I now have this exquisite photo of one of my favorite things: an upturned sleeve snugged firmly against the very cherished forearm of a lovely man cooking me a delicious dinner.

Ahh….

It was moist, flavorful, tender and perfect all the way through.

From Michael Pollan in “Food Rules” to gurus in Psychology Today, those in the know are saying that it’s a good idea to leave a little food on your plate at the end of a meal.

I don’t think this is what they meant, but I did force myself not to eat it anyway, just for the sake of personal discipline.

I gave it to Winston instead.

Helpful Sous Vide Resources

Sous Vide Cookbooks

Under Pressure: Cooking Sous Vide

This is a well-rated and gorgeously produced volume by Thomas Keller, chef and author of The French Laundry Cookbook and Bouchon among others. According to the official Amazon.com review by Arthur Boehm:

The book makes no bones about being addressed to professionals. Typical recipes, like Marinated Toy Box Tomatoes with Compressed Cucumber-Red Onion Relish, Toasted Brioche, and Diane St. Claire Butter, involve multiple preparations and dernier cri ingredients, and thus resist home duplication.

Given we have no idea what “dernier cri” ingredients might be—”behind the scream”?—we don’t want ’em and are more interested in the simple, fuss-free aspects of sous vide cooking, so we’re leaving this one on the shelf at Amazon.

However, if you’ve got a coffee table book-loving, trend-conscious foodie on your Christmas list, go for it!

Modernist Cooking Made Easy: Sous Vide

Published in 2014 (aka, newer) and available in paperback for around $20 (Kindle for $10), this more modest tome by passionate home cook, Jason Logsdon, gets high marks from reviewers looking for a solid primer with easy recipes.

Sous Vide Cooking Timing Chart

One of the first things we noticed about our new Anova Precision Cooker was, well, its precision. The temperature is calibrated to 0.1°, which instantly appealed to the geek in both of us as we imagined the prospect of producing perfect, predictable results with any food we cook.

But, as is the case for the rest of life, it’s always a bit more complicated than that.

Yes, the Anova Precision Cooker will keep a water bath at a precise temperature for a specific time period, but good luck finding a time/temperature chart that’s equally exact!

When searching the web for guidance on how long to cook our first dish (the 2″ thick eye of round steaks above) and at what temperature, we noticed right away that different “authoritative” sources don’t seem to agree on much of anything except how to cook root vegetables (183°F or so for 1-4 hours-ish):

	Anova		Codlo		ChefSteps
	°F	Hours	°F	Hours	°F	Hours
Beef Roast (Med Rare)	134°	1-4	131°	4:30-6:30	140°	6-14
Beef Brisket (Med Rare)	134°	8-30	131°	24-36	149°	16-24
Pork Roast	160-176°	12-30	167°	8-12	144°	3-4
Baby Back Ribs	165°	4-36	–	–	–	–
Leg of Lamb (Med Rare)	134°	10-48	131°	8-24	–	–
Chicken Breast	146°	1-4	143.5°	1-3	149°	1-2
Chicken (Dark Meat)	160°	4-8	149°	1.5-3	149°	1.5-4.5
Fish	126°	0:20-0:30	122°	0:30	122°	0:40-1:00
Egg (Creamy Yolk)	–	–	143°	1	–	–
Egg (Thick Yolk)	147°	1	148°	1	–	–
Egg (Hard Yolk)	160°	1	–	–	–	–
Root Vegetables	183°	1-4	183°	1-4	185°	1-3
Fruit (Apple)	134°	1-4	183°	0:45-1:30	154°	1:45-2:30

Sources: Anova, Codlo, ChefSteps

Interestingly, we also noted that most of the temperature recommendations we found were well below the thresholds considered safe by the USDA:

Safe Minimum Internal Temperatures

Food	°F	°C
Beef / Pork / Veal / Lamb	145°	62.8°
Poultry	165°	73.9°
Eggs	160°	71.1°
Fish / Shellfish	145°	62.8°

Source: USDA

How could the range be so wide, especially when sous vide enthusiasts tout the added safety benefits of the method? Not to mention our own experience, which is that we wouldn’t have wanted the steak any more well done than it was, and that was accomplished at a max temp of 131°F?

We discovered the explanation to the temperature/food safety riddle in this chart that shows the “Danger Zone” for harmful bacteria (salmonella and E. coli).

According to the chart, bacteria is killed instantly at 145°F. Given that the USDA is responsible for providing recommendations to everyone in the U.S. cooking everything by every method, this is logically where they must weigh in for meat.

However, the nasty bacteria will also be killed off eventually at temperatures above 130°F, given adequate sustained cooking time. It’s the combination of time and temperature that yields food that’s safe, for sure, to eat.

Sweet.

But what about the wide range of target sous vide cooking times and temperatures recommended by different sous vide authorities?

Our conclusion is that sous vide cooking is part art, part science, part personal preference in food “doneness,” and part learning how to partner effectively and safely with a new machine in your kitchen.

Bottom line: we’re just going to have to enjoy spending a bunch more time hanging out in our kitchen together as we figure out what works best, for us.

Good Housekeeping review: What the Heck Is Sous Vide?

Cook’s Illustrated: Sous Vide Machines Review

Got My Eyes On You

We’ve landed in a very friendly community where all the neighbors watch out for each other.

Or in some cases, they just watch each other, which is not at all the same thing.

He and Winston have been scoping each other out for months, chittering and whining and generally taunting each other from a harmless distance.

And I am quite sure this squirrel is a “he,” don’t you agree?

Think we’re going to call him “Willy.”

Nikon D5100 DSLR

Love our Nikon D-5100 camera…

Nikon 55-300mm Nikkor Zoom Lens

…and Nikon 55-300mm autofocus zoom lens!

It’s all about the little details.

And the tall ones.

Poor Winston. He’s been trying to extend his optical range by peering over fences since the beginning.

However, he remains somewhat limited in his wildlife viewing options, given his lack of wings, climbing gear, or the opposable thumbs necessary to hold our fabulous Vortex Diamondback binoculars or cherished Nikon body and lens.

Vortex Diamondback 10 X 42 binoculars

Of course, in the circle of life around here, there’s always someone watching the watchers.

Fanny Bay Oysters

“A loaf of bread,” the Walrus said,
“Is what we chiefly need:
Pepper and vinegar besides are very good indeed —
Now if you’re ready, Oysters, dear,
We can begin to feed!”

-Lewis Carroll

We knew we were buying ocean-front property.

We had no idea we were also buying a farm-front estate.

See those turquoise rectangular plots out there awaiting sun exposure in the outgoing tide?

That’s a bona fide farm, aquaculture-style.

Oysters, baby… oysters.

Acres and acres of some of the best in the world reveal themselves twice a day in that amazing zone known as “our back yard.”

That’s me, gently tiptoe-ing through the two-lips (aka, bivalves.)
Hahaha… get it? Bivalves… two-lips…
Sorry. I’m just in this for the shuckles.

And the oysters. We’re in it for the oysters, too.

Why, many of you will ask, do apparently rational people willingly slurp back completely recognizable, unadorned and unaltered (except for having been chilled and treated to a spare drop of lemon juice to tone down the salt hit), raw, living critters?

Rowan Jacobsen’s amazingly engaging*, informative, and delightful little tome, A Geography of Oysters, lays out at least two compelling reasons:

1. In a way unique among all edibles, raw oysters taste like the sea.

Landlocked in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and pining for the briny ozone air of your favorite coastal town and the sound of eagles and waves breaking on the beach? Hit a local oyster bar, knock back half a dozen of these puppies, and save yourself several hundred dollars in air fare, ’cause you’re there.

2. More than any other food, the flavor of particular oysters, like the terroir of wine, is derived from the unique intersection of the bottom composition, river inlets, salinity, and the thousand other variables that make one place different from another.

This is why oysters are named for the place they come from, rather than for their species. Their “somewhereness” links palate to place.

Raw Fanny Bay oysters (of the species Crassostrea gigas, or Pacific oysters) have a smooth, clean, light cucumber, medium salt Fanny Bay-ness to them that is now permanently bolted to our definition of “home.”

They’re “beach cultured” oysters, meaning that once the little tray-nurseried gems reach the age of oyster-majority, they’re hardened off for market on our beautiful rocky shale beach.

Think of them as yogi vegetarians who live on filtered algae and plankton, using the daily tides to strengthen their core muscles by clamping resolutely shut during low tides to preserve their sweet life juices and to guard themselves against beach predators.

Between that and the regular intense natural tanning sessions, they grow stout, shucker-friendly shells that also extend their shelf life.

While the gustatory appeal is self-evident to us, the details of the whole oyster-farming process still remain a bit of a mystery.

This much we know: the practice involves tides, oyster growth cycles, sex (theirs), and winter survival.

Things involving boats, winches, and large quantities of oysters happen during high tide.

At low tide, the stuff (in this case, the nursery trays) that was dropped off at high tide begins to emerge…

…as do these good oyster farmers of Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Canada, who now show up to engage in intensely manual labor.

Next time you enjoy a Fanny Bay oyster, give a “cheers!” to the backs that brought you that joy.

The relationship of–and duration between–the dropping off…

… and the picking up of oyster-related bits is still unclear to us, as yet, but give us a full year on the observation deck and we’ll get ‘er figured out.

Meanwhile, what’s not confusing in the least is how lovely Rick’s hands look while shucking an oyster…

Oyster Shucking Gloves

… and therefore how important a protective shucking glove is.

Of course, oysters don’t give it up easily, and a regular kitchen knife is too sharp and flexible to be of much use, so if you’ll need a dedicated oyster knife or two (or four).

Our original “pre-Fanny Bay residents” oyster knife—a Dexter-Russell 3″ shucker—has been a reliable workhorse. We bought it because it’s apparently used in a lot of commercial kitchens and was inexpensive. And it works just fine.

Dexter-Russell 3″ Boston-Style Oyster Knife

However, as we’re now into bigger league and more regular shucking, it was time to get serious. The Cook’s Illustrated top-rated oyster knife is the R Murphy “New Haven,” a style involving a slight bend at the end which makes a lot of difference when detaching the shell-attaching muscle thingy.

We bought one and love the well-crafted, light, and comfortable simplicity of it. Plus, the upturned tip makes finding your way into and through the hinge way easier.

R Murphy New Haven Oyster Knife

Oyster shucking is rarely a single participant sport around here, so we also decided to try the OXO Good Grips Oyster Knife. It’s also a “New Haven” style, a “recommended with reservations” option with Cooks, but an Amazon Best Seller with a 4.5 star rating based on over 120 reviews.

While at around $8, it’s about half the price of the R Murphy. However, they’re both under $20 and neither one will break the bank.

In the end, the best oyster knife is the one you like the most, and we both prefer the R Murphy, so whoever shows up second at the shucking table gets the OXO.

OXO Good Grips Oyster Knife

One note on the un-named wooden knife with the metal guard in the background of the photo above: forget about it. It’s too blunt to effectively wedge into the hinge so you can lever it open, and the guard only teases you into thinking it’s protecting you from a potential oyster edge poke, when in fact the best protection is a great knife that allows you to stay in control.

A Geography of Oysters:
The Connoisseur’s Guide to Oyster Eating in North America

*Okay, just how engaging can a book on the geography of oysters be?

Witness Rowan Jacobsen, from a random paragraph in the chapter entitled “How to Grow an Oyster”:

“As mammals, we have trouble with the concept of jettisoning useful tools as we develop. For us, it’s all progress from infancy to adulthood–language, walking, winking, sex. It’s hard to comprehend a creature that voluntarily ditches vision and locomotion. We place a premium on them, but evolution decided such trifles were useless to oysters, and made the cuts. It’s a bit like being a Hindu mystic. Your life path involves paring down to the bare essentials, making do with less. You find a nice spot, settle into the lotus posture, and do nothing but eat, breathe, and periodically blow off a third of your body mass in one titanic ejaculation.”

I read the whole thing cover to cover in two days, laughing out loud in several places. If you’ve got an oyster lover on a gift list, or if you want to invite conversation while sitting alone reading at a raw bar, or if you’re just a curious foodie and would enjoy a breezy romp through a new subject, this offering comes highly recommended. An IACP Cookbook Award finalist, and a James Beard Foundation Book Award winner, it’s currently at the top of my personal non-fiction hit parade.

Why Did Goldilocks Move?

Because she finally found a place to settle into that was just right.

After trying out a condo in Silicon Valley (too crowded), a renovated farmhouse in Teton Valley (too remote from any family), and a suburban home in Comox (too, um, suburban), she and her best friend, Rick, finally stumbled upon a humble beach house in a delightful oceanside community south of town, walked directly to the picture window overlooking a world-famous oyster farm, and sighed, “It’s Perfect.”

Oh sure… maybe it had some funky pink carpeting, higgledy-piggledy sized baseboards throughout, a shot septic system, leaking roofs, 40-year old doors, windows, kitchen cabinets and fixtures, an ancient hot-water heater, squishy basement flooring, poly-B plumbing, and Icky, the resident “sea kitty” in the attic, but all that was SO behind your field of vision when you looked out the windows!

Look at the view from the kitchen window!

And just LOOK at the view from the bedroom and back deck!!

We’ll take it, thank you.

Somehow, the papier-mâché dachshund we found in the hedge two days after we took possession sums up everything that needed to be said about the home itself.

It turns out that, despite the babbling-inducing vistas, “mid-70’s papier-mâché dachshund beach house funky” wasn’t going to be a perfect match for the rickandkathy chi.

So we did what we, apparently, always do.

The Royale Oui donned our construction glasses (safety first!), climbed on to the top rung of a step-stool (safety schmafety!), and started swinging our trusty sledge hammer at the offensive bits.

When sledge hammers weren’t quite brute force enough, we called in the Local Boys with their big toys.

I know! Let’s cut some holes in the exterior walls!

Excellent! In fact, that was SUCH a fun idea, let’s whack a hole bunch (yuk yuk) more on the INSIDE walls!

Ceilings? Bah! Off with their headers! Small windows? Make ’em bigger! Weirdly placed big windows? Make ’em smaller! And, ALONG THE WAY MAKE AS MUCH MESS AS YOU CAN!! BWA-HA-HA-HA!!!

Whew.

It was actually nice to be able to sit down now and again, even if it was to drive the midgy shovel-loader thingy. I sat on the driveway with a chilled adult beverage and cheered him on.

By this time, what with the demolition of his internal catwalks, the noise, Dave the Pest Guy, Rob the Tree Service Guy, and a few strategically placed industrial-strength rat bait traps, we were seriously disturbing the sea kitty, Icky.

Buh-bye, Mr. Icky Kitty…

In the past two months, we’ve done an entire house worth of two coats each of primer and top coat. Rick is a real artist with that roller.

And I’m not too shabby with the edgework.

Say, does this paint can make me look phat?

I love to watch Rick paint. Uh huh.

We’re not done yet on that front.

See the baseboard that wraps itself around every curve of every stair? Yup… it yells at me every time I go up and down those steps.

“Halloo!,” it hollers. “Remember me? You promised… You said!”

Shaddup, stairs. I’m busy.

In the middle of it all, we had to pack up and schlep all our stuff here from Comox Valley, Plan A.

Remember the PM dachshund from upstream here? In the same way, the image above pretty much sums up how much attention and energy we had leftover for organizing that lil’ shindig.

Needless to say, unpacking and sorting through the boxes and the “where does this go?” game on this end has been… interesting.

But we did it.

We’re in, the boxes are finally gone, and we manage to find the odd hour here and there to just sit and enjoy what drew us here in the first place.

I feel a real affinity for our new neighbors these days.

Yes, in part it’s the whole “stay calm on the surface and paddle like hell below” thing, but mostly it’s just because they look so at home on the water.

Marvels of the Humble Seam Ripper

Ranting about the evils of irresponsible industrial design in the form of vile itchy clothing labels is not new to us.

What is new is Rick’s discovery of a humble little tool that’s changed his life.

Ten minutes before we headed to the airport last week to drop me off for a business trip, Rick came into the kitchen muttering dark words and yanking at the back of his shirt collar.

“It doesn’t matter how much you pay for a [insert muttered dark words here] shirt, they sew itchy useless labels into them all. And why do I care if it’s ‘Modern Fit’ or ‘Island Crafted’ anyway?! I’ve already bought it, now I just want to wear it. And you can’t ever cut the damn things out without making a hole! Why do they DO that?!”

As the grinding of molars and huffing and puffing continued while he changed into an ancient t-shirt, I slipped into the garage to my sewing stuff tote and emerged with the inexpensive yet indispensable gadget that was to become Rick’s new best friend.

Ladies and gentlemen of the non-sewing persuasion, may I introduce to you… the seam ripper.

Pop quiz: Which is more pokey, the label or the seam ripper?

Answer: Yes.

After ensuring that the label wasn’t sewn into a seam that was holding the shirt together, I showed him how to remove the clothing label by carefully placing the pointy end under a loop of thread, slicing it with the small but extremely sharp blade that sits in the curve of the ripper.

Then we headed to the airport and I forgot all about shirt labels and seam rippers for a week.

Rick, however, did not.

Not only did he successfully (AKA didn’t make a hole) remove the prickly bits from the offending shirt but apparently whiled away the lonesome hours while I was gone by attacking the rest of his closet as well.

In fact, in his typical Rick-like “focus like hell and master whatever he puts his hand to” approach to life, he even tackled this beast: a beautiful, butter-soft European fine linen work of craftsmanship with a triple-layered label demon topped with a fourth offender sewn right into the collar seam.

Look, Ma! No labels, and no holes. (He needed the teeny scissors to carefully cut out the label that was sewn right into the collar seam.)

Rick has been so enthusiastic about his new little blue buddy that out of curiosity, I went to Amazon to see what other options there are in the seam-ripping department.

It turns out that for years, I’ve owned the #1 best selling seam ripper Amazon has to offer:

Dritz Deluxe seam ripper

The amazing thing is that this puppy has over 250 reviews and a 4.6 star rating. For a $5 tool whose primary purpose is to cut thread, that’s a LOT of enthusiasm, and not just from seamstresses. The key word that shows up time and again in the reviews is “multi-tasking.”

The curved blade design lends itself to all sorts of tasks that scissors and knives just don’t work as well for: removing nasty clothing labels (see above), slicing into plastic packaging, opening envelopes and cardboard boxes that are taped shut, opening Ramen seasoning packages, cutting hair out of vacuum brush rollers, unclogging soap dispensers… apparently the list goes on and on.

According to one reviewer, “The seam ripper may be one of the most underrated tools, ever.” Another states, somewhat ominously, “Just one of those everyday item you can never seem to have enough of, I like to keep them next to where ever I might be sitting, You never know.”

Anyway, it’s been a good week. I feel like I’ve discovered a precious gem that’s been hiding in plain sight all these years, Rick is no longer held hostage to malevolent clothing manufacturers, and we’ve been able to make the world a better place by sharing our newfound knowledge with you.

Meanwhile, I’m going to buy a handful more of these: one for my briefcase, one for the kitchen, one for the laundry-room and one for the coffee table, because, well… you never know.

Tell Them Why

Even though we post a LOT of photography of everything from bugs to bakeware to bunnies, we’re not immune to the lure of the birthday date photo.

Even though we don’t usually post them anywhere, they’re still cherished memory triggers of happy times.

On occasion, we’ll even take the oh-so-cliche photo of what we’re eating or drinking when dining in public so we will remember the glow of the moment in a decade or two.

Truth be told, I’m happy to comply with Rick’s frequent requests to take my photo when I a) am freshly showered and tidied up, b) am in low light and shot from above, and c) have time to strategically pose my hands where my neck is most comfortable.

“Hey! You look wonderful to me right now. Let me take your picture.”

It’s another way to say “I love you.”

But I especially love the photos, often shot without the other one knowing, that explain why.

Being specific and expressive about what, exactly, draws you to another has been scientifically proven to cause people to fall in love with one another.

Over, and over, and over again.

Do your relationship a favor today: take a photo that explains why.

rickandkathy.com

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