EASY & DELISH | Over the holidays, I had the good fortune to enjoy handcrafted confections from our top local candy makers—Thomas Haas, Chocolate Arts and Beta 5 included—and while all of this candy was a pleasure for my buds, none of it was remotely as memorable or addictive as the sweet bacon treats made by my dear friend Teresa Syrnyk. Read more
SHOP WISE | My family and I have been in a horribly abusive relationship with our All-Clad Master Chef pots and pans (pictured below) every day for the past 15 years. Poor things! We cook on an open burner gas range and routinely scorch their bottoms; we’ve also allowed them to cook dry and blacken more times than we’d care to mention (gotta love built-in smoke detectors). Read more
WASTE NOT | My favourite way to enjoy extra overripe fruit happens to be the most fun and easy: a quick whirr in the blender, and I’ve got the makings for nutritious fruit popsicles. All-fruit popsicles look (they’re typically textured) and taste nothing like the coloured sugar-water popsicles most of us are familiar with, and they are certainly healthier. You can buy expensive all-fruit popsicles at the grocery store, but why would you want to when they are so simple to make from scratch? Read more
WASTE NOT | When my four-year-old European dishwasher crashed a while back, I called in a repairman who made an eye-opening comment about my dishwashing detergent. “You use that stuff?” he asked, pointing at the Electrasol Dishwasher Detergent with Powerball Tabs I’d bought in a convenient 100-tab tub at Costco.
“Yes, and I love it. It’s so easy,” I chirped, citing a no-mess no-fuss defense and explaining how my dishes looked at least as sparkly clean as they had with other detergents I’d employed. Read more
FREE & EASY | Last January, after 13 years, Mark Bittman, The New York Times food columnist who is now formerly known as The Minimalist, stepped away from the weekly production of his immensely popular how-to-cook column and instructional videos. And though he says he may put on his Minimalist apron from time to time in the future (he left this gig to join the NYT’s opinion pages and Sunday magazine), the 200-plus easy-cook videos he made during his Minimalist period (none more than five minutes long) are screen gems for Frugalbits readers looking for quick, doable, interesting things to cook. Read more
CULT PRODUCT ALERT | Don’t you just love it when you discover a product that is beautiful, useful—and inexpensive? If you haven’t already replaced the fancy cotton or terrycloth tea towels in your kitchen with ones made of flour sack material, here a few good reasons to make the switch. Read more
MONEY WELL SPENT | With so many kitchen gizmos out there, you’d have thought that someone, somewhere would have long ago designed an attractive receptacle for ripening market-hard fruit on a windowsill. You can find clear plastic fruit ripening bowls, of course, dome-lidded containers that sweeten up a pile of fruits simultaneously (doubly quick when you add a banana to the mix), but I find these products cumbersome counter hogs. What I want is something that will tuck up out of the way on my windowsill and ripen just a few fruits—pears, tomatoes, avocados, the occasional cantaloupe or pineapple—in natural sunlight; something that looks attractive empty. Read more
SIMPLE TO MAKE | This past week, my favourite francophile foodie/writer Dorie Greenspan reported on her entertaining blog that while the cupcake craze is alive and well in Paris, “the cupcake’s American cousin, the whoopie pie, is squeezing in on its territory.” What she didn’t mention is that in North America, the whoopie pie is also squeezing in on the territory currently occupied by its French cousin, the chi-chi macaroon. Read more
BACK TO BASICS | My searing romance began a few summers ago after an unexpected breakdown. The collapse occurred on that first sunny weekend in May that signals the beginning of barbecue season. My husband, who claims zero finesse when it comes to cooking indoors, turns into K-Paul the instant he slips on an chef’s apron and grill mitts. On this particular Sunday, he was suited up and ready to go when he ran into problems with the barbie.
(Instructions on how to WIN YOUR OWN COPY of the book at the bottom.) Read more
