Silver bells, silver bells… As the shoppers rush home with their treasures…
Listening to that Christmas song yesterday as we decorated our tree, I found myself reflecting on the lyrics: What made those parcels—tucked under our arms, then wrapped in sparkling paper and placed under the tree to twinkle in the reflection of the lights—so special?
Anticipation.
It’s the delicious anticipation of delighting someone you love.
As Rick and I talked about earliest memories, we unearthed a few sweet insights around Christmas gifts.As kids, neither of us remember spending much time developing our consumer muscles. We didn’t regularly hang out in the toy section of department stores, and children back then simply weren’t marketed to nearly as aggressively as they are these days.
So when the Sears Wish Book appeared a month or so before Christmas, it was the one time of the year we had exposure to the wondrous possibilities of toys and games that could be ours.
We spent hours on our bellies in the living room, considering our options, eliminating the non-contenders, then zeroing in on and communicating our favorites with inked circles of desire.
Come Christmas morning, we were sometimes surprised with choices we hadn’t even known were available, but once they were unwrapped and ours, filled our hearts and hours with amazed delight.
For Rick, the Elgo Skyline Construction Kit was a standout.
He remembers being about six or seven years old, well before he knew that plastic interlocking building blocks even existed, or that it would appeal to the designer/builder/puzzle doer in him.
But Santa knew.
For me, my earliest receiver memories are split between a Christmas morning pair of red leather ski boots—WITH BUCKLES!—and a gift I received after seeing them in the catalogue, but not getting until my birthday in mid-January: a pair of bona fide go-go boots.
The ski-boots were a hit because a) I hadn’t realized the buckle types were available but immediately recognized the totally cool factor inherent in them, and b) they were a huge vote of bright red leather confidence from my parents in my sporting abilities.
And I did go forth and rock the slopes.
The go-go boots, on the other hand… I would have given my Nancy Sinatra fan club membership card for those boots. And on the morning of my eighth (ninth?) birthday, there they were, all mine.
AND my sensible, pragmatic, and always responsible mother permitted me to wear them—unlined, with a slippery sole, in the middle of January, in the snow belt known as Ottawa, Ontario, Canada—to school the next day.
For reasons I’ll be happy to go into over a couple of martinis with you some day, my inner artist really needed those boots at that point in my life.
For now, I hope you’ll lean on the truth of this: “Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.” (Prov. 13:12)
The gears shifted for both of us at an early age when we realized we could get as much and more pleasure from giving gifts—both wrapped and not—to our dear ones.
Telling those we love by way of gifts that they are both seen and loved is one of the greatest presents that Christmas gives to us all.
We don’t get the Sears catalog anymore. I’m sure they’re out there, but I haven’t bought anything from Sears for years, and certainly not by their catalog, so we’re off the list.
But that’s okay.
Times change, and now the Sears catalog of our youth is called Amazon Holiday Central. For my inner holiday kid looking to replicate the first Saturday morning after the catalog arrives, belly down on the carpet, it’s one of the best gift stores online.
Google the words “face cream” and you’ll net a mind-boggling 150 million search results.
Add to your research “moisturizer” (20.5 million results), “lotion” (69.9 million), “ointment” (24 million), and “face serum” (50.7 million), and you now have well over THREE HUNDRED MILLION opinions to consider.
At that startling moment in a woman’s life where deciding on the best anti-aging cream for her particular face has suddenly become an earnest goal, that is definitely TMI.
Online shopping doesn’t reduce the complexity any either. An amazon.com search for “face cream” in all departments returns ~119,000 actual product listings, and that’s not even counting all the viscosity options mentioned above. Even a physical saunter through the stultifying number of face creams in my local London Drugs can cause me to break out in facial hives, which is precisely not the point.
In addition to the overwhelming number of options, I’m accosted by relentless marketing propaganda suggesting I search my mirror for signs of red blotches, visible pores, dark bags, fine lines, and reflections hinting at anything crepey, sagging, shriveled, or likely to turn into a pothole by next spring.
Factor in quasi-medical articles warning me of chemical ingredients likely to mutate my lymph nodes, and I confess to rapidly losing sight of my inner beauty.
Credible recommendations and reviews of the best anti-aging face cream and anti-wrinkle lotions are as illusive as the Fountain of Youth itself. Can’t someone trustworthy just point me to the magic cream, please?
Turns out there are, at least in my world, a number of sources I do trust, starting with Lulu of Lulu’s Chinese Health Center in Parksville on Vancouver Island.
The Magic Cream (above), which Rick went to pick up for me, was intended as a break from my regular OTC cortisone for a chronic patch of dermatitis on my leg. After getting squared away on the cream, Lulu made Rick stick out his tongue.
He complied and came away with some intriguing goodies to restore the yin to his yang, but that’s a story for a different day. My point here is that when he told me of her somewhat startling request, I was aware that my confidence in the leg cream immediately went way up. Apparently, for my money, if you’re in the business of recommending curatives for one of the biggest organs of the body—a person’s skin—it’s a huge credibility builder if you also know a thing or two about reading tongues.
This isn’t as silly as it sounds.
The FDA regards face goop as a “cosmetic,” and as such, devoid of medicinal value or worthy of the more rigorous testing applied to drugs. Any statement they make approving a cream is focused exclusively on safety, not effectiveness. Cosmetic companies, however, are experienced and crafty in the art of blurring the perception lines between “medically proven to FDA drug-level standards” and “tested in a lab with a dermatologist somewhere in the building.”
So when someone—anyone, apparently—with a whiff of actual healing insight comments on a face cream, I pay attention.
Thus, the other actual person that I trust to recommend the best anti-wrinkle cream for me is my dermatologist, a woman of respectable age with skin that glows with a radiance that starts at least a half an inch below the surface of her face.
Her advice came prefaced by saying the best anti-wrinkle cream is a sunscreen with an SPF factor of at least 30 that I should have been using since birth. Once the wrinkles, blotches and spots actually arrive, the best you can hope for with potions and lotions is to prevent further damage and maybe to modestly plump up the saggy bits with a nicely scented unguent that makes your skin feel good.
“Best face cream? CeraVe. Use the one with sunscreen on your face, neck and back of your hands. For the rest of you that you can reach, slather on either the lotion if it’s hot and humid, or the creme if it’s winter and dry. It absorbs well, and smells good.”
Apparently there are a lot of dermatologists (or best friends) giving the same advice: the modestly priced 12-oz. CeraVe lotion ranks on Amazon as the #1 Best Seller in Facial Moisturizing Lotions with a 4.7 star rating by over 1200 reviewers.
While my busy dermatologist didn’t have time to unpack the rationale for her medically-informed opinion on CeraVe, the Mayo Clinic weighs in on the topic by suggesting that while there is no known “face lift in a bottle” available for the weary and wrinkled consumers, products containing retinol (vitamin A), vitamin C, hydroxy acid, coenzyme Q10, tea extracts, grape seed extracts and niacinimide “may” result in “slight to modest improvement, mostly due to their ability to exfoliate, prevent water loss, or counteract inflammation.
They go on to say that when sifting through the merits of, say, 120,000 or so available options on Amazon, you should consider the following variables:
Cost: there’s no discernible correlation between more money and fewer wrinkles
Concentration of effective ingredients: all non-prescription options contain lower doses than their prescribed counterparts, resulting in more limited and short-lived miracles
Individual differences: Everyone’s skin is different. Just because wearing a 1/2- inch thick coat of mayonnaise to bed every night works for Cate Blanchett doesn’t mean it will work for you. (I just made up this example, but mayonnaise and olive oil do feature highly in the list of homemade wrinkle cream ingredients.)
Layering on of ingredients: there’s no proof that using two or more of the above use ingredients works any better than one by itself.
Frequency of use: there’s no overnight drama in the face cream world, unless you count a nasty reaction that leaves your face bright red and flaky. You need to use products for many weeks before even the “modest” effects kick in, and they’ll disappear if/when you quit
Side effects: see “nasty” above
So what DO they recommend to retain whatever youthful dewy glow remains?
Quit smoking: It wrecks your facial collagen and elastin, causing skin to sag and wrinkle prematurely. The up side of this is if you’re 45 but your face and neck look 75, people might conclude you have great legs for your age!
Use moisturizers, and choose one with a built-in sunscreen of at least 15. Though moisturizers can’t prevent wrinkles, they can plump up dry skin and temporarily mask tiny lines and creases. The best wrinkle cream yet may be a wide-brimmed hat and limited sun exposure.
Consult a dermatologist if you’re interested in a personalized skin care assessment and recommendation for what OTC products might work best for you, and when to call in the big guns of prescription creams, Botox, or sand-blasting.
One final go-to source that we often find helps cut through the mental fogging of choice-overload is Consumer Reports. In this 2011 wrinkle cream review, (latest review available), they report having rigorously tested a swath of anti-aging face creams across 69 women and 12 men for a period of 12 weeks.
And while I’m tempted to hoot that you can’t make up product names like the Lancome winner above, apparently, you can.
Twelve weeks in, the sensory panelists judged that in a field of burst bubbles, the Garnier product came out slightly ahead of the contenders, judging by blind-controlled photos that it reduced wrinkles “somewhat” on a little more than half of the test subjects who had tried the product. And even at that, fewer than half said they’d buy it, citing an aroma containing a hint of floral and “sweet plastic,” the need for some serious elbow grease to rub it in, and a slight residue. The rest of the products barely moved the needle at all on fewer than 20% of the testers who used them.
Ironically, without even knowing the brand or specific product, the highest number of votes by test subjects said they’d buy the control product with NO anti-wrinkle ingredients, the Neutrogena moisturizer. (Note: the report didn’t specify which exact Neutrogena moisturizer was used. I just picked one with an SPF rating of 30. This one also has an SPF rating of 30 and a slightly higher reviewer rating, but I put it in second place for using a word I don’t understand–“Helioplex”–in the product name.)
Bottom Line
In the search for the best face cream for you, pick one that’s easy on your wallet, has a decent sunscreen, and smells and feels nice.
For now, I’m trying a little dab of the Magic Cream on my face with my CeraVe (I can’t help myself), but just in the morning. While it feels great, it smells vaguely like Pad Thai with sesame oil. And even though Rick tells me frequently I’m quite a dish, I don’t want to go to bed smelling like one.
Pesto is the magical synthesis of the Flavor of Green, the Curative Clean of Garlic, the Warmth of Nut, the Peace of Parmesan, and the Umami of Olive Oil.
Heaven.
A classic basil pesto recipe (per Cook’s Illustrated) involves pulsing until smooth the following ingredients in a food processor, and then stirring in 1/4 cup parmesan cheese:
1/4 cup pine nuts, walnuts, or almonds, previously toasted in a heavy skillet until golden and fragrant, 4-5 min
3 blanched medium garlic cloves (45 seconds in boiling water, rinse in cold, peel and mince)
2 cups packed fresh basil leaves (“bruised” before use by pounding in a sealable plastic bag with a rolling pin)
2 tablespoons packed flat-leaf parsley leaves (optional for color)
7 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp. salt
According to Cook’s Illustrated, blanching “tamed” the garlic while bludgeoning the basil boosted its herbaliciousness. Our version is way less precious, easier, and absolutely delicious, but then again, we like our garlic on the feisty side. Rick and Kathy’s Easy Basil Pesto Recipe
Add 1/2 c. high quality olive oil and 1/3 c. raw walnuts, 1/2 tsp. salt and fresh ground pepper. Pulse until mostly smooth.
Add 1/2 c. parmesan cheese and pulse until blended. Adjust salt if necessary.
Oh, my.
Store in the fridge (up to 5 days, but it won’t last that long) with some plastic wrap pressed down so it makes contact with the surface to prevent excessive darkening.
As my basil was waning, I harvested it all this week and made several batches.
I took what I wanted to freeze and divided it into ice cube trays and covered tightly with plastic wrap before freezing for a couple of hours. I then took the frozen pesto cubes and used a vacuum sealer (our review here) to preserve as much color and flavor as possible, and popped them back into the freezer.
Vacuum-sealed fresh basil in February, baby. Oh yeah.
Try it in its classic incarnation as a pasta sauce, adding 1/4 c. of reserved hot pasta water to the pesto to loosen it up a bit and soften and blend the flavors before coating the drained pasta.
But it’s safe get out on the ledge a bit here, too.
Try it on everything from crackers to omelets—sublime when tucked in with spinach, parm cheese, and avocado—to salmon as a delicious crusty coating, layered on like icing before baking/broiling.
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.
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.
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.
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.”
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:
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.)
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…
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.
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.
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.
(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.
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.
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.
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.
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 excitingofficial 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.
This is a well-rated and gorgeously produced volume by Thomas Keller, chef and author of The French Laundry CookbookandBouchon 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!
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):
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.
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.
“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…
… 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.
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.
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.
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.
*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.
Listening to that Christmas song yesterday as we decorated our tree, I found myself reflecting on the lyrics: What made those parcels—tucked under our arms, then wrapped in sparkling paper and placed under the tree to twinkle in the reflection of the lights—so special?
As kids, neither of us remember spending much time developing our consumer muscles. We didn’t regularly hang out in the toy section of department stores, and children back then simply weren’t marketed to nearly as aggressively as they are these days.
He remembers being about six or seven years old, well before he knew that plastic interlocking building blocks even existed, or that it would appeal to the designer/builder/puzzle doer in him.
The ski-boots were a hit because a) I hadn’t realized the buckle types were available but immediately recognized the totally cool factor inherent in them, and b) they were a huge vote of bright red leather confidence from my parents in my sporting abilities.
We don’t get the Sears catalog anymore. I’m sure they’re out there, but I haven’t bought anything from Sears for years, and certainly not by their catalog, so we’re off the list.
