How to clean stainless steel All Clad pots and pans?

I use Bon Ami to scrub my All Clad stainless steel pots and pans when they need it (a soapy dish brush is usually fine to get off most leftover food).

When I’m left with spots like these (see pics) after I’ve washed them well, I use a few tablespoons of white vinegar and rub that in vigorously and well, in every direction with a small piece of paper towel. Pour that vinegar in the next pan to remove spots, rinse the original pan and dry. All your spots will be gone in seconds.

BONUS POINTS:

DON’T DISCARD that vinegar. You can put it in a little dropper bottle (I use empty, cleaned out Aveda sample size shampoo containers) and use two or three drops of that vinegar on an especially intractable weed in your yard/garden! Don’t give in to that more is better “philosophy” and use too much. You don’t want to kill beneficial microbes in the soil or otherwise change your soil’s acidity. Cut the weed down to the dirt and apply literally (like literally “literally”) two to three drops of vinegar on the cut part (better if it’s down into a hollow stem).

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How do you know if your turmeric is safe?

Turmeric is often adulterated with cheap ingredients (one of which might be LEAD, for crying out loud!). I used to think I was up on what is toxic and what is not, but totally missed this one until recently. I use turmeric a lot — it’s not just an infrequent seasoning to me — I occasionally take it in a fairly high dose (500mg – 1g) as a supplement, and sometimes as an anti-inflammatory. I’m not telling you to do that. This is not medical advice. I’m just saying… I use a LOT of turmeric!

So, guess what? There are some ways you can test your turmeric at home to see if it’s been adulterated! One of those ways is the water test There are many articles and videos — google it, you’ll see. For your convenience, here is one looks like it is from the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare of India. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this information, but I have seen this test listed in a variety of places, many of which seemed legit. But keep your skeptic pants on and do your research into the validity of this if you’re going to take action on it.

I tried it myself, with the four types of turmeric I currently have in my house, and I was shocked at the difference! I cropped the photo close, so that you can’t see my labels, because I don’t want to disparage anyone, especially since this is very unscientific. But check out my results!

According to the test, it seems like the one on the left is the best one, and if this test is really a way to tell if turmeric is adulterated, it certainly looks like the one on the right meets that criteria. (I put the turmeric in the water left to right, so the one on the left actually had the turmeric in it the longest.)

Though I won’t give out actual brands/names on this, I will tell you the source types for each. From left to right:

1. A turmeric/curcumin supplement (I opened the capsule)
2. Small, family farm (US-based)
3. US-based company that sells turmeric in bulk packages.
4. Small, family farm (international)

Now, I need to find a source for concentrated hydrochloric acid, to do more of these tests! And from now on, it will only be third-party lab-verified turmeric for me! I don’t care if it costs more!

Replacing tomato in soup?

Short answer:

• deglaze your pan with lemon juice, after sauteeing aromatics
• use a bit of chopped spinach in the soup to balance the lemon
• stir in white miso toward the end of cooking

Long answer:

I made lentil soup today, and it tastes like it has tomatoes in it. I am nightshade-intolerant, so I don’t add tomatoes to anything, but I remembered that a while ago, I got a question about how to replace tomatoes and/or tomato paste in soup, which I didn’t answer because I didn’t know what to do.

[Full disclosure: I’ve been out of the nightshade-eating game for well over 10 years now, so my determination of tomato-like flavor could be off. My nightshade-eating husband said the soup did not taste particularly tomato-y to him, but had a nice umami flavor, and he recommended half of whatever was the “zing,” which I’m assuming was the lemon – see recipe below.]

Today, I made soup to use up a bunch of random stuff, and the soup came out amazing, so I thought I’d share.

LENTIL SOUP
Cook in heavy-bottom, oven-safe pan
makes 6 servings

• 3 TBS pork fat or ghee (I used pan drippings from last night’s pork chops)
• 1/2 cup tasso ham, trimmed and diced
• 3 large leeks, trimmed and diced
• 1 small lemon (juice only) – [husband suggested 1/2 lemon’s juice would be better]
• 1 cup raw butternut squash, trimmed, peeled, de-seeded, diced (if you have leftover already-cooked squash, I’m sure it would be fine)
• 2 large carrots, peeled and diced
• 1 lb fresh spinach, well-washed, well-drained, chopped (if you have some that is already cooked with excess liquid squeezed out, that’s fine, but the amount would be around 1 packed cup)
• 2 cans Bioitalia Organic Lentils (14 oz / 400 g each), well-rinsed (These are the only canned lentils I will use – if I didn’t have these, I’d just cook the lentils myself – I don’t know why these are so good, but they just are.)
• 1 Bonafide Frontier Blend Bone Broth, 24 fl oz (or your own bone broth – just note the ingredients in this bone broth so get the flavor right – also, for you no-nightshaders, this is a safe broth)
• 2 TBS white miso (I used Miso Master Organic Mellow White Miso)

Sauté diced leeks over medium heat, and ham in pork fat until leeks are translucent and fragrant, and there just starts to be some browning on the bottom of the pan.

Deglaze pan with fresh lemon juice, stirring to get all browned bits incorporated.

Add butternut squash, carrots, spinach, and continue stirring, until everything is coated nicely. If you need moisture in the pan, add a little more fat, or a little bit of stock, so nothing burns.

Then, making sure the lentils are drained and rinsed, add them to the pot. Add the stock as well. Pre-heat oven to 300ºF. Stir everything in pan well, and (still over medium heat) bring to a boil.

Once soup gets to a boil, shut off heat on stove. Stir in miso, incorporating it well throughout the soup (you might need to break up the miso a bit). Then, (optional) put the pan, uncovered, in the oven for approximately 30 minutes.

You can just eat the soup after it’s cooked for a while on the stove, but the low, slow cooking in the oven really tenderizes the ham chunks, thickens the soup, and brings the flavors together really nicely. When I took it out, it was more flavorful than it was on the stove, and it was very thick, like a stew. I’ll probably add more broth or some water when I reheat it again.

NOTE: I used a 5.5-Qt All Clad D5 dutch oven to cook this in. <— the link goes to an amazon page where the dutch oven is $384.95 at the time of this writing. I just want you to see what it looks like. I just bought mine through HomeandCookSales for $182.80 in Sept 2020, and I love it! HomeandCookSales runs “VIP Facotry Seconds” sales for All-Clad and other brands, and while it’s hit or miss what they’ll have, they’re totally legit. I mention this pan specifically, because the D5 line is made in America (some All-Clad is, and some isn’t), AND because the D5 indicates there are 5 layers of metal (alternating aluminum and steel), so it’s a heavy-weight pan (things don’t burn as easily), it’s oven-safe, and the lid fits nice and tight (great for braising). If you can get one of these things on sale, DO IT!!!!

Lunch meat?

Normally, I don’t really like lunch meat, because it often has shady ingredients.

Autolyzed yeast extract?  Organic corn syrup solids? “Contains wheat” ???

However, Diestel Organic Turkey Breast is the best-tasting packaged lunch meat I’ve ever had, and the ingredients are the cleanest I’ve ever seen.  I wish I could get it on the East Coast, but no dice. I would eat this every day if I could.  If you’re on the west coast, I’d stock up on it!  

What is the perfect diet?

Because the game keeps changing, there is no way to have a truly perfect diet, or a truly perfect life. It’s a moving target, which means you have to keep adjusting your aim. The way to keep making your diet (as well as your life) better is to do more stuff that makes you feel good in the long run and do less stuff that makes you feel bad in the long run. 

If you can’t tell what makes you feel good and what makes you feel bad, keep a journal and track what you eat, what you do, and how you feel. Look for patterns. Do you have more or less energy? Are you happier or sadder? Is life better or worse?

It is always a good idea to consult with a trusted medical doctor and tell her what you have in mind, and what you’re trying to accomplish.

If you can only do one thing to get closer to what you want to achieve health-wise, I’d say cut down or eliminate added sugar to your diet.  Here’s a great list of how sugar is ruining your health (references are at the bottom).

Where can I find replacement brushes / heads for the Casabella Smart Scrub bottle brush?

I found a replacement that works for these discontinued replacement heads!  The heads fit onto the stem of the Casabella dishwashing brush, and they’re cheaper than what Casabella used to charge!!!  I’ve used the heads now for over a month (and I do dishes at least a few times a day), and they’ve been great!

The replacement heads / refills are the Munchkin 2-piece Shine Stainless Steel bottle brush refills.  They sell on Amazon for $4.49 for two (cheaper than one of the Casabella ones used to be!).  I’ve shown the two brushes below, so you can see the Casabella (green) one is much longer than the Munchkin.  For me, I need the length to wash bottles that are bigger.  But I ordered the full bottle brush from Munchkin, just in case the replacement heads didn’t fit, so I would still be able to use the new brush.  Now, you don’t have to!

The Casabella brush is all gross in the photo because I’ve just been using it to scrub really dirty pots and pans before I wash them – I couldn’t bear to get rid of it until I found a replacement.

They have a similar-enough screw-on base to work!

This is the way the Munchkin refill fits on the Casabella stem.

Update on Xavier, 9.24.16

Seems like people like to see what’s going on with my avocado tree, Xavier.  Here he is, September 24, 2016. I didn’t see buds this year, but he seems healthy and strong. I know we are going to see major leaf drop this fall, like we always do!

Pruning your avocado tree?

Hi folks!  Wow, it’s been a long time since I posted here.  I hope I remember how to use WordPress (I’m kind of a Tumblr person now).  Anyway, I’ve received so many comments and questions about how to care for avocado trees, that I wanted to post the results of how extreme trimming of my tree Xavier went last year.

This is how Xavier looked on January 13, 2015, right before I pruned him.

This is how extreme the pruning was.

Xavier always looks kind of bad in the winter time.  I live in a cold climate, and my home gets very chilly.  There is always a lot of leaf drop when it gets cold, but last winter, I felt like Xavier was getting really unhealthy and needed to “start over.”

I am not an expert on plants or anything, but I have had great luck with Xavier and many of the plants I have, so I decided to give it a try.  I was careful to prune with my clean Felco Pruning Shears to make good cuts.  (I clean the shears with rubbing alcohol after every trim – I can’t tell you whether that’s a good thing for the shears or not – only Felco knows for sure, but that’s what I do.)  I didn’t water him very much at all during this time before the leaves grew back, because I felt he was dormant.

It took many weeks for leaves to grow back, but they grew back abundantly, just as when Xavier was healthiest!

I am proud to report that Xavier looks great.  I just took this photo today (January 31, 2016).  You can see Xavier is a lot healthier this winter than he was last winter.  Sure, there are some brown leaves, and there’s been a bit of seasonal leaf-drop, but still!  Just look at my guy here!  I didn’t add any fertilizer or compost this year, either.  Just water!

Xavier on January 31, 2016.  Looking good!  (I’ve got to lose that Diamond Armor Minecraft mask I made for my son for Halloween years ago!  JEEZ!)

 

Other avocado tree-related posts of mine:

How to grow an avocado tree from seed

Should I prune my avocado tree?

 

 

 

Gluten Free Breads?

Julian Bakery Gluten Free Bread

If you’re trying to eat gluten-free, be careful with breads and baked goods because a lot of the time, grains are replaced by starches and they are very carb-heavy and you just end up trading one problem for another.

There are only two gluten-free breads I like.  Canyon Bakehouse Cinnamon Raisin Bread and Julian Bakery Paleo bread (Coconut Paleo Bread pictured above – it also comes in Almond, which is in a brown package).  I also like to substitute bread all together for a delicious Julian Bakery Coconut Wrap (I actually had no idea that my favorite paleo bread and my favorite coconut wrap was made by the same people until I started writing this post and looking for links, because I never use the brand name when talking about them!)

The Canyon Bakehouse bread is a nice, tasty treat, but a bit carby/starchy, as most gluten-free baked goods are, because most use starches to replace the grains that have gluten in them.  So, this isn’t the kind of bread I’d eat every day or anything.

The Paleo Bread is low carb (because it’s not starchy), is moist, has a fairly strong baking soda taste (which is well-tempered if you eat it with something, as opposed to eating it with nothing on it), and really needs to be toasted, IMHO.  The Coconut “flavor” does not taste like coconut at all to me.  It just doesn’t have any nuts (as opposed to the Almond one), and is made with coconut flour.  It is sold as a frozen bread, so I let half a loaf thaw out at a time in the fridge.  If you try to toast a frozen piece, it takes forever, and will likely be unsuccessful.  Even thawed, I don’t usually crisp it up like regular toast in the toaster, it just kind of gets warm.  I like it moist for sandwiches.  My diet-twin and BFF Joe B. (hi, JOE!) says he likes to put the slices in the oven for 15 min at 350.  I don’t know if that’s frozen or thawed, though.  If you’re looking for a grain-free, gluten-free, low carb, fairly low-sodium bread (that is also yeast-free, starch-free, soy free, GMO free, and nut free), Coconut Paleo Bread is the one!

Recycled wrapping paper?

I love Wrapsacks, the 100% cotton, reusable giftbags. The thing I like the most about them is the website where you can track where your wrapsack goes, because there is a unique ID code in each one. The recipient will need to enter that code into the website in order for it to be tracked. I love the idea in theory so much, but in reality, I gave away a total of nine gifts in wrapsacks, and only 3 were passed along (and tracked). And none of those three were tracked after that.

If you’re looking for recycled paper gift wrap, I only found one that was both recycled, AND was made in America. The brand that I found was called Waste Not Paper, and not only was it 100% recycled (30% PCW – Post Consumer Waste), and made in America, but it also seems like a good company, doing things right (see their “green story).” I found it at The Container Store.

I found recycled wrapping paper everywhere when I was looking for it last year, but almost all of it was from India. Wow, it was gorgeous paper, and I loved that it was recycled, but I wanted to cut down on the carbon footprint of the paper as much as I could, so I wanted to minimize the transport, and also support American jobs. (I only wrapped one present in actual wrapping paper last year – all the rest were in outdated subway maps, some of the kid’s art projects or newspaper/packing paper we decorated.)