apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Say hello to our favorite new kitchen tool! Seriously! We were skeptical when a friend first gave us a set of these microwave cooking covers, but they have quickly gone into daily use in our kitchen. Ironically, the place we most use them is not in the microwave.

Winter can be a tough time for those of us who want to eat sustainably but live in areas of the country where, frankly, not much is growing. Some friends of ours in Boston told us about their farmshare through Enterprise Farm, a local Massachusetts farm that's bringing something a little different to the table this time of year.

If you follow Mark Bittman's NY Times blog, The Minimalist, and you've been paying attention this past year, you maybe have noticed that Mark Bittman has been paring down on the luxuries and focusing on the sustainable.

He was on Good Food this past week talking with Evan Kleiman about his non-diet diet and how it's changed the way he thinks about food. Did you know he's lost 35 pounds?!

Do you use a silpat for your baking? These flexible, reusable sheets jumped from professional kitchens to home kitchens a few years back, and now we can't imagine baking without one. They're one of the most useful and versatile products to come around in a long time!

In his latest book Ratio, Michael Ruhlman makes a very strong argument for passing on the store-bought stuff and making your own stock at home. He says (and then repeats again and again), "So much of great cooking and soulful dishes begins with stock, the extraction, distillation, and concentration of flavor." It's true. We know it's true. So why don't we do it?

Here's the scenario: you're trying to stick to a pretty tight food budget, but you're also conscientious about the food you buy. You can only afford to buy one or two organic items a week. What do you buy? And just as importantly, why?

We've always harbored a secret, and likely quite idealized, fantasy of one day working on a farm. Until that day comes, we can get a tiny taste for what it might be like at Drumlin Farm, a working farm and wildlife sanctuary run by the Massachusetts Audubon just outside of town in Lincoln. We headed over there a few weekends back to check it out...

We know many of you are trying to bring your own lunch to work with you these days, and we're here to help! This weekend, let's get our acts together and make sure we have a plan for the week...

We felt like we'd won the golden ticket when we were invited to go on a behind-the-scenes tour of Taza Chocolate in Somerville, Massachusetts. You didn't have to ask us twice! Taza has been producing stone-ground, organic chocolates out of their three-room factory space since 2006, and their chocolate-making process has some distinct differences from those used to produce most fine European-style chocolates. Take a look!

While looking for information on microgreens last week, we came across a fantastic chart from the Splendid Table explaining all the different stages of growth for salad greens and other edible plants. According to this chart, commercial growers identify and sell produce at nine distinct stages - think you can name them all?

Bostonians, you don't have to travel far from home if you'd like to do a little fishing this summer! Many lakes and ponds right in the city are annually stocked with fish by the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife - all you need is a fishing pole, some bait, and a license. Do you have a favorite Boston-area fishing hole?

posted originally from: TheKitchn

In the restaurant biz, this is called "FIFO," or "First In First Out." Unlike some of those crazy molecular gastronomy shenanigans, this is one restaurant trick we can definitely apply at home! Let's take a look...

This came up during our discussion on the pros and cons of electronic delivery for food magazines, and we thought it would be interesting to put the question out there. Do you display recipes on a laptop while cooking, or is that just begging for trouble?

Or maybe a better question is have you ever done it? Everyone's looking for ways to save money and trim down the food budget these days. Maybe it's time to return to the barter system...