Freezer Failure

The goal for this past week was to live off my freezer and resist all temptation to go to the grocery store. I was part successful – I made it through the week without going to the grocery store, but I didn’t make much of a dent on the freezer stock.

A refresher on the rules: eat only food I already have, and buy only dairy and salad supplies at the grocery store. Take out and restaurant meals were strictly forbidden.

Breakfast was the easiest – yogurt and an English muffin (my local grocery store had a buy one/get one sale on Thomas’s English muffins a few weeks back and I had a package in the freezer).

For the most part, lunch worked out well too. I ate mostly salads that I brought from home and leftover chicken parmesan from last Saturday. I did have one cheat on lunch, but it was totally out of my control and I cannot be held accountable. My boss asked me to have lunch with her on Friday, and I really can’t be expected to tell my boss that I can’t go out to lunch with her because I gave up restaurant meals for the week. Seriously.

Dinner is where things got a little fuzzy. Okay, they got bad. I blew it. Below is my daily recap on how non-foodie like this experiment ended up being.

• Sunday:  I had salad for dinner, a plain old garden salad. It was within the rules, but kind of lame.
  
• Monday:  After having to deal with a particularly bad situation at work, my dinner consisted of a couple Jamesons and Ginger Ale and a bowl of popcorn . Technically, these are all ingredients I had on hand, even though I chose to buy the drinks at a bar instead of coming home and mixing them up myself. But the popcorn was all me.
  
• Tuesday:  I had some lamb kebabs in the freezer, so I decided to make lamb burgers. I chopped the meat up in the food processor, added some lemon juice, oregano, garlic, salt and pepper and formed them into patties. For fun, I threw in a Laughing Cow cheese wedge. Feta would have been better, but I don’t typically have that on hand and even though it wouldn’t have been against the rules for me to buy it since it falls into the dairy group, I was too tired and hungry to go to the store. The burgers sound a lot better than they were. If I had a legitimate grill, they may have been okay. But I only had a cast iron grill pan which needs to be really hot, and it cooked up the outside way faster than the inside. I do prefer my red meat rare, but I finally understood what all the Top Chef judges complain about when the cheftestants undercook the lamb.
  
• Wednesday:  I found veal cutlets in the freezer, and made some veal parmesan with leftover pizza sauce and the extra parmesan cheese from the chicken parm. It was a passable recipe – not great, not bad. The classic “fine.” I learned that this is a dish that best be made right – the chicken parm recipe will be used in the future.
  
• Thursday:  Time for my weekly drinks with Sofia, so dinner consisted of a glass of sauvignon blanc and a bowl of popcorn when I got home. I’m starting to think that popcorn is the food of the Gods.
  
• Friday:  Friday was my big cheat night. I’m not even going to try to hide it – rules were broken left and right. No freezer, no pantry, but instead a fantastic dinner at Grill 23 (both the food and the company). The details of which are not going to be shared at this time. Sorry, folks. I’m keeping this to myself for now.    :)
  
• Saturday:  Penny and I went to Denise’s daughter’s first birthday party, so breakfast consisted of a Fiber One bar in the car on my way to Needham, and lunch consisted of cheese and crackers. I broke down and ordered a pizza for dinner. I was starving, and too damn tired to do anything else about it. If it’s any consolation, the pizza wasn’t very good.

So, while I saved significant money on groceries, I certainly didn’t do much to clean out my freezer or eat a well balanced diet this past week. Oh, well, I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.

I’m heading to New York for work next week, and while I’m
there the plan is to hit Tom Colicchio’s Craft and
Charlie Palmer’s Aureole. I’m not any disappointments,
but if I do encounter any, I’ll be sure to share them with you.

An Ode to "Good Eats"

I remember the first time I ever watched Good Eats. It was during the writer’s strike a few years back, and there was nothing on TV I hadn’t seen a hundred times already. I stumbled upon an episode focused on vanilla, and learned about its origins and uses, while being thoroughly entertained. From that episode, I learned how to split a vanilla bean without slicing my finger. Learning how to cut anything without slicing a finger is time well spent for me.

Since that fateful night, I’ve watched many episodes of Good Eats, and I learn something new every time. I can’t say I always put those learnings to use, but learn I do. This year marks the tenth anniversary of Good Eats, and in honor of that, I’ve assembled a list of ten things that I have learned from the brilliant Alton Brown (AB to his friends). Truth be told, I have learned way more than ten things, but as is typical of me, I forget most of what I learn. So, this isn’t a list of the top ten things I’ve learned, it’s just a list that includes ten things.

#1 You don’t have to wait for pumpkin season to roast pumpkin seeds. The seeds from any winter squash – many of which are available all year round – can be roasted with similar results. I haven’t done it yet, but there is an acorn squash on my counter that is dying for this experiment.

#2 Everything in your kitchen should be a multi-tasker. The only uni-tasker should be your fire extinguisher. Sadly, I have many uni-taskers (tomato knife, anyone?) and no fire extinguisher in my kitchen. Clearly I need to go back to school on this one.

#3 You can make popcorn in your microwave with a paper bag. Don’t ask me how, I just know that you can. (I checked the website, the recipe isn’t there. Sorry.)

#4 How to make a great BBQ dry rub. AB used it on ribs that he promised would cook in the oven as if they were grilled. My attempt didn’t quite work out, but I’ve used the rub on chicken, pork and steak to much success. (I had every intention of sharing this recipe with you, but I cannot find it. I’m beyond upset about this, since it’s no longer online and I really do like this recipe.)

#5 Amerigo Vespucci, the man for whom our country is named, began his career as a pickle merchant. Not relevant to anything I need to know, but I technically did learn this by watching Good Eats. (And while I forget all the important things I learn, I have an uncanny knack for holding on to useless information.)

#6 Pizza dough is better when you let it rise in the fridge for 18-24 hours vs. letting it rise in a warm environment for several hours. It’s a pain in the butt, and requires pre-planning, but I can say from experience that the dough I have let rise in the refrigerator comes out a lot better than the dough I let rise on a sunny windowsill. Also, a pizza stone is an absolute must. I resisted for a long time, and once I finally gave in, homemade pizza became a regular event at my house.

#7 When you deep fry food, and you do so properly, it really doesn’t absorb a lot of the oil so it’s not as bad for you or fattening as you may think. I swear Alton proved this on one episode by measuring the oil before and after frying French fries. Truthfully, I don’t believe it, but I use it as a convenient excuse when necessary. (Like when I must have French fries, which is quite often.)

#8 A cast iron skillet is a cook’s very good friend. I have two – the standard kind that Lori gave me for Christmas last year, and a grill pan which is the best damn grill pan I’ve ever owned. And I’ve owned quite a few. I can finally cook steak. These skillets are awesome.

#9 Had I followed through on my best intentions to surprise my mother with homemade scones and clotted cream one Mother’s Day, I would have learned how to make scones and clotted cream. (There’s always next year.)

#10 I learned not to be overly intimidated by coq au vin. It’s delicious, and not nearly as hard as I had thought it would be. Once you accept the fact that you probably won’t find an old hen and will have to settle on a grocery store chicken, it’s a great thing to try yourself. If you haven’t already…

Speaking of if you haven’t already… If you haven’t already, check out Good Eats on the Food Network. It’s on most weeknights at 8 p.m. Set your DVR, watch, learn and most importantly, enjoy.

Miscellaneous Notes of Thanks
Thanks to my Facebook fan/friend Kathie who suggested I check out The Pioneer Woman Cooks(www.thepioneerwoman.com/cooking). I found the most delicious chicken parmesan recipe, and the many photographs were a great help. Check it out, and definitely try the chicken parmesan. It was really easy, and really good! She posts frequently and her food looks both delicious and gorgeous – and her writing is very entertaining.

Thank you Hailey for upgrading my pizza cutter to a sturdy KitchenAid one that matches my kitchen! I can’t wait to make my next pizza, and I promise to have you over again for another pizza-salad-beer night. (We’ll pass on the high school grade stalking next time!)

Coming Attractions
This is the week where I am living off my freezer and pantry. Tune in next week to see how it went. The only items I was allowed to purchase at the grocery store yesterday were dairy (yogurt and half & half) and salad supplies (lettuce, tomatoes, onion and cucumber). And the two pieces of bread I stole from my parents so I could make a sandwich with the leftover chicken parmesan are totally legal.

Disaster

Tomorrow is the clambake tailgate. I’m going to the Patriot’s game with my sister Lindsay and her new husband Padraig, and apparently the first 4:00 home game of the season marks the annual clambake tailgate. Even though Lindsay and I had unwittingly planned a Mexican feast for this tailgate – well, a fiesta really – I am totally on board with the clambake. You will never see me turn my nose up at lobster. Never. It’s just not done.

So instead of fajitas and margaritas and flan (oh my), I revised my plan to include New England Clam Chowder, corn on the cob, garden salad (because let’s face it, most tailgates lack vegetables) and cupcakes. I know, cupcakes don’t have much to do with a clambake but I figured it was an all-American dessert and that was appropriate enough.

Here it is Saturday, the day before the big game. The cooking is done. And let me tell you, it’s not good.
I am thisclose to throwing my America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks right out the window.

I got my recipes for the chowder and cupcakes from the ATK’s family and baking cookbooks, respectively. Neither recipe worked.

I’ll start with the chowder. It’s fine really, probably passable. Well, it is if you were looking for a milk based clam soup. The bacon never crisped (and the recipe called for way too much in my opinion), and the cream didn’t thicken – perhaps because there was only 1 cup of cream to 5 cups of clam broth. I even tried adding some Wondra and mashing up some of the potatoes hoping the extra starch would do the trick. Nope, uh uh.

Not being able to deal with the chowder for now, I turned my attention to the cupcakes.

I’ve never made a cake from scratch before (other than carrot and cheese cake), so I really didn’t know what to expect. The batter looked absolutely nothing like the box mix does. I had no idea if this was okay or not, so my only acceptable course of action was to bake it and see what happened. The recipe made 24 cupcakes, and instead of cooking one pan (12 cupcakes) at a time, it called for cooking both at once and rotating them halfway through baking. While it’s a miracle that I haven’t cut a finger off with my new knives, it’s no surprise that I managed to burn one while attempting to rotate the cupcake pans. (Those oven gloves are too cumbersome and the pot holder not protective enough.)

The cupcakes took a few minutes longer to cook (probably because I doubled up in my crappy oven instead of cooking them in separate batches), and they didn’t have much rise to them. They did manage to brown – although not evenly, but enough to look right. I patiently waited for them to cool so I could try one. If these cupcakes are great, then my chowder might be acceptable (“fine” will be okay as long as my cupcakes are “fantastic”).

So, how were the cupcakes, you ask? Hmm. Not really sure. They baked perfectly (with the exception of that lack of rise), but they don’t have much taste. They aren’t very sweet and they have a slight cornmeal taste. (I swear, there is no cornmeal in the batter.)

Now I’m pissed. I followed the recipe to a tee. I even weighed the flour and sugar instead of measuring it – just like the experts advise (and by expert, I mean Alton Brown). And I have a bowlful of homemade chocolate frosting ready and waiting.

There is no way I can show up at this tailgate with crappy chowder and bland cupcakes. It’s just not okay. And don’t even try to tell me that I still have the corn and salad. Shucking corn and tearing lettuce are not culinary skills that impress. Trust me. If they were, my parents would have sent me to culinary school instead of a business college.

Now I’m panicking. It’s 9:00 on Saturday night – too late to start over and too late to order the chowder from Legal Seafood like Hailey suggested. (I literally scoffed at her when she said I should buy it instead of make it. Like I would ever buy chowder instead of make it! Damnit me and my need to make my own mistakes instead of learning from others!) I can get away with the cupcakes, but I can’t serve the chowder.

And showing up without chowder is not an option.

I finally swallow my pride and get in my car – to the grocery store I go. I buy 6 pounds of frozen chowder and channel my inner Sandra Lee instead of my inner Top Chef. Semi-homemade it will have to be.
The homemade chowder is down the drain (literally, garbage disposal whirring as I type), and the frozen stuff is defrosting on the stove top and being doctored with fresh herbs and extra clams (that I fished out of the homemade chowder before I sent it down the disposal).

And don’t worry. I won’t try to pass it off as my own. I couldn’t even if I wanted to – Lindsay reads this, and so does my friend Eric who works with Padraig. They’d rat me out before I even had the chance to lie about the origins of the delicious store bought clam chowder.

I’m hoping the frosting saves the cupcakes. If not, I might claim I bought those too…

Have New Knives, Will Chop Stuff

From the moment I clicked on “complete order,” I couldn’t wait for my new Wusthof Gourmet knives to arrive. As luck would have it, they were waiting on my doorstep when I arrived home from work late on Friday evening.

Even though I was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to go straight to bed, I busted right into that box. I was excited, and wanted to get my hands on each knife as fast as possible, but I made sure to very slowly and carefully unpack each one and find it a home in the knife block. The emphasis was on “carefully” – I do have a history of badly cutting various fingers and I am trying very hard to prove to my friends and family that I can do this wannabe foodie thing.

With that being said, all I could do on Friday night was admire the beauty of my new purchase. I was way too tired to actually use them. I can’t even imagine the horror of the ensuing bloodshed if I dared.

A new day arrives on Saturday, and I’m rested and excited to get chopping. Because I wanted the knives to have my full attention, and didn’t want to be distracted by actual cooking, I decided my first effort would be to make homemade tomato salsa. Normally, I would make this in the food processor in the interest of time. But this was all about the knives, so hand chopping was a must. After all, have new knives, will chop stuff.

My salsa recipe is very simple, but good and fresh tasting. I finely and happily chopped three large tomatoes, one half of a medium sized yellow onion, one green pepper (I prefer Italian peppers to bell peppers for this recipe), about 2-3 tablespoons of chopped cilantro and the juice of one lime. Add kosher salt, fresh ground pepper and Tabasco (or your favorite red pepper) sauce to taste – you can make this as salty and spicy as you like. For the knives, I used a tomato knife (a knife I had never heard of until I ordered this set) and the 8” cook’s knife. The knives felt great in my hand, and were really easy to use. I was particularly impressed with how the cook’s knife handled the cilantro. In my prior experience, fresh herbs would wilt and get soggy when chopped, but the cilantro remained dry and leafy.

As much as I love the 8” cook’s knife, I do have to say that I don’t know how I ever lived without a tomato knife. I am not sure what I expected from a knife made specifically for slicing tomatoes, but I have learned over the years not to expect much when it comes to knives and tomatoes. I feel like no matter how sharp my knife was, I couldn’t get more than a couple decent slices before the knife would need to be sharpened again. Not even my mandolin could manage this job easily. I have to employ the sliding back and forth tactic, and quite frankly that’s a recipe for disaster with my track record. Whatever it is that makes tomato skin so resistant to sharp knives, I wish my skin had it.

But this new tomato knife managed to slice three large, very ripe and soft tomatoes without needing to be re-honed once. The knife easily slid through the skin without wrinkling or tearing it, resulting in perfect tomato slices. These perfect slices were eventually chopped up into smaller pieces so presentation didn’t really matter after all, but still…

I haven’t tasted the salsa yet. It remains in my fridge for now – I’m saving it to enjoy while watching the Boston Red Sox hopefully beat the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, California, USA, the World (but I digress – foodie is also a sports fan) to stay alive to play another game. But, this post isn’t about how the food tastes, it’s about how great the knives are. And they are great.

Now that the knives are here, and my foodie wish list is empty, it’s time to think about what I want next. So far, I’m leaning towards crème brulee equipment. I promised my sister I wouldn’t buy a pressure cooker (in addition to cutting my fingers a lot, I did one time make a Pyrex baking dish explode to pieces), but she didn’t say anything about flame throwers!

Miscellaneous Notes
Thanks to all my new Facebook fans! Welcome to Confessions of a Wannabe Foodie, and please spread the word. :)

Daisy the Wonder Cat is recovering from her surgery very nicely. She’s allowed to jump again, and she begins her new fancy diet of duck and green pea based food today. Yes, that’s right, the wannabe foodie now has a foodie cat. How appropriate.

I’m loving Top Chef Las Vegas so far. My prediction for the final four is Jennifer, Kevin and the brothers Voltaggio. Not a bold prediction, I know – they have cooked themselves to the top of many a viewer’s top four list. I can’t wait for Mike Isabella to pack his knives and go, but I worry that he's going to be one of those guys who gets to the end by riding the coat tails of better chefs, or just by not being the worst chef each week (much like Lisa did in season 4, Chicago). 

Check Back Often for These Future Posts
The Tailgate Meets Clambake. I’m crashing my brother-in-law’s annual tailgate clambake at next Sunday’s New England Patriot’s game, and my contribution will be homemade clam chowder (New England style, of course).

The No Grocery Shopping for One Week Challenge. I’m going to force myself to live off my pantry and freezer for one week. The only items I will be allowed to buy are dairy and produce for salad (I can’t use frozen lettuce, and canned tomatoes in a garden salad are just plain wrong). Let’s see how well I can survive on frozen veggies, things in cans, pasta and mystery meat.
 
Happy Anniversary, Good Eats. This year marks the tenth anniversary of one of my favorite food shows, Alton Brown’s Good Eats. Congratulations, Alton – you’re a true inspiration. I’ll be writing about the top ten things I learned by watching Good Eats.

In Closing...

I’ve received special requests to try some gluten free and vegetarian recipes. If there are any topics you’d like me to explore, please let me know. You can leave a comment on this site, become a fan and write on my wall at Facebook, or drop me an e-mail at confessionsofawannabefoodie@gmail.com.

Happy eating!

House-bound for the Weekeind

There are two things I tend to do when I’m bored – eat and shop. On their own, each of these vices can be trouble. Combined, they’re deadly.

It was a quiet weekend at home for me. My cat had surgery during the week, so I didn’t make any plans in order to keep an eye on her. (Post-surgical orders included “no jumping.” How do you stop a cat from jumping up on things? It’s not like she’ll listen to me…) After a week of no carbs, or more truthfully 4 out of 5 days of no carbs, I was looking forward to a feeling of boredom and seeing what was beckoning me from the kitchen. After all, since I had to stay close to the kitty, a trip to the mall for some boredom induced shopping was out of the question. One vice tucked away, another one waiting for some action! Let the weekend begin…

Friday
My long lost friend Hailey, who has been MIA for months, came over for a dinner of salad, pizza and beer. She brought the beer, I made the pizza and salad. The salad was your standard garden variety – lettuce, tomatoes, and red onion from the farmer’s market, accompanied by a colorful array of bell peppers left over from my carb free week. The pizza was where my wannabe foodie status shined through. I made two pies – a mushroom, onion and green pepper pizza, and a bacon and scallop pizza (I stole this idea from the British Beer Company – sounds gross, but it’s actually quite delicious).

The pizza dough was homemade, made with bread flour instead of all-purpose flour, as recommended by the fine chefs at America’s Test Kitchen, and resulting in a much chewier and bread-like crust. For the sauce, I bought a can of Pastene spaghetti sauce, which is really nothing more than canned tomatoes with a little seasoning thrown in (I honestly can’t taste the difference, but I’ll take their word for it). Instead of accepting it as is, I chose to dress it up a little. I sautéed some fresh garlic in olive oil, stirred in the tomatoes, added some kosher salt and let it simmer for about 15 minutes. I then pureed it with a hand blender to smooth out any remaining chunkiness (I prefer my pizza sauce smooth, unless I’m eating at Bertucci’s). After taking it off the heat, I stirred in some chopped fresh parsley, basil and oregano. I even grated some fresh mozzarella, but it was way too watery, and that tends to result in a very soggy pizza. Even though bad pizza is still pretty good, I wasn’t willing to settle for pretty good. Fortunately, I had an emergency bag of never fail shredded mozzarella on hand.

There is truly no better way to introduce carbs back into your life than with pizza and beer. These pizzas definitely hit the spot (as did the beer). And since there is plenty left over, I’ll be eating it all week long! I’m guessing I shouldn’t get used to my jeans fitting again.

Saturday
I love the fall because I love most things pumpkin – seeds, soup, coffee, beer and bread (oddly, I could take or leave pumpkin pie). Feeling the season while I was at the grocery store, I bought a little sugar pumpkin so that I could roast my first batch of seeds of the season. As I was scooping out the seeds, I decided to make some pumpkin bread as well. I have a whole pumpkin that’s otherwise going in the trash, and a whole night of nothing to do. Then I had an even better idea – I’ll make two batches of pumpkin bread, one with fresh pumpkin and one with canned, and see which tastes better.

I started with the fresh pumpkin. I peeled the pumpkin by cutting the skin off and miraculously sparing all of my fingers, and then cut it into chunks. I put half the chunks in the blender and pureed them. After that, I thought I should go online and make sure I was actually preparing fresh pumpkin correctly. Turns out, I’m supposed to cook the pumpkin before pureeing it. Who knew? Most of the techniques I found online suggested roasting the pumpkin, but that would take about an hour and I really wanted a short cut. So, after much searching, I found one website that said I could microwave the pumpkin. So, the second half of chunks got microwaved on medium in a dish covered with plastic wrap for five minutes. You know how they tell you to be careful when you remove plastic wrap from something you just cooked in the microwave? Yeah, they’re not kidding about that. I threw caution to the wind, and hastily removed the plastic wrap. After a few choice curse words, a cold water bath, and some triple antibiotic ointment (the steam literally melted a layer of skin off my thumb – just a small bit, right below the finger nail, but it hurt like another very choice curse word), the pumpkin was ready to be transferred to the blender. It was definitely a little easier to puree, but the two batches didn’t taste any different so my thumb was burned in vain. I combined both the pureed cooked and raw pumpkin in a saucepan to cook on the stove top, allowing some of the water to burn off. Now, I was finally ready to make pumpkin bread!!

I made the fresh batch first, then followed with the canned batch. The fresh pumpkin required about 10 minutes longer to bake, and it did not rise as high as the canned. The canned had a more orange hue than the fresh. But the true test is the taste, and in my opinion, they tasted exactly the same. I was about to conclude that fresh pumpkin adds nothing, and is so not worth the extra work, when I realized that a sample size of one is not very valid. So I brought both versions to my parents house, where they and my sister blind tasted both and tried to guess which was fresh and which was canned. All three thought that the canned version was made with the fresh pumpkin, and both Mom and Dad thought the canned one tasted better (maybe because they thought it was fresh). My sister thought the fresh, which she thought was the canned, tasted better.

Given the broader sample size, it is now safe to conclude that fresh pumpkin adds nothing and is so not worth the extra effort.

Sunday
By Sunday, I was all cooked out. And I still didn’t want to leave the cat alone for too long, so the mall was still out of the question. Instead, the internet beckoned. I went online intending to learn more about the chefs competing on the Next Iron Chef that is premiering tonight, and then got distracted by the Food Network’s online store. I’ve had three things on my foodie wish list for a while – measuring cups, measuring spoons, and knives. I have sets of all of these, but I want better sets. Need? No, of course not. Want? You bet!

My wish list is empty, for now. I found a set of measuring cups by Oxo that included the standard measures (1/4, 1/3, 1/2, and 1 cups) plus a 2/3 cup, 3/4 cup and an egg separator. I know I can do the math, and measure these amounts using a combination of the standard cups (but surprisingly, a lot of the reviewers felt they couldn’t make recipes that called for 3/4 cup of flour until they bought this set), but it’s just easier to have these cups and it’s cool, too. (Yes, it is.) And, at $7.95 a set, how could I pass them up? Now, for the set of measuring spoons. The ones I have are fine. But they are awkward. They don’t fit into most spice jars and that alone makes them really annoying. I waste more dried herbs and spices because I have to try to pour them into a measuring spoon. While not the end of the world, it’s a pain I can live without. Cuisipro had a set of spoons that are long and skinny (claiming to fit into all spice jars), and had a pointed tip to help scrape up the last bits of an almost empty jar. These two have an array of sizes that are not in the standard mix of spoons – pinch, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 2/3, 1, 1 1/2, and 2 teaspoon sizes, plus the 1 tablespoon size. They were a little pricey for measuring spoons, $17.95, but not unreasonable (and to be honest, I have no idea what good measuring spoons cost).

The last item on my wish list, a new set of knives, was a harder decision. The Food Network Store was having a sale on Wusthof’s Gourmet line of knives, so a deal was to be had. In order for me to buy a new set, it needs to offer me more than what I currently have. I had my eye on the 18 piece set for $350 (marked down from $400, and compared to the suggested retail price of $548. The 18 piece set includes 9 legitimate knives, a sharpening steel, a pair of kitchen shears, 6 steak knives and a knife block. Before clicking on “buy,” I needed to do more homework. I learned that the Gourmet line is Wusthof’s economy line, but the reviews were all really strong (and not just from people who bought them, but from actual product testers) and they hold up to the higher end knives from Wusthof. I’m glad I did my research, because I was able to find another site (www.cutleryandmore.com) that was selling the exact same set for $280 – plus a bonus knife sharpener and a three piece cook’s set that includes a cutting board, a second pair of cooking shears and a fish spatula. I’ve always wanted a fish spatula! The extra $70 in savings and the added value from the bonus gifts sold me. My new knives should be here by the end of the week (free shipping!) and I PROMISE that I’ll take much better care of these ones than I do my Calphalon knives. (I can’t wait to use my new tomato knife!)


So, at the end of the weekend, I succumbed to both of my boredom induced vices – eating and shopping. After spending 4 straight days babysitting my cat, I deserved this!