brixton's Profile

I received the Oxo model as a gift 3 years ago and L-O-V-E it. I use it for making smooth sauces and pureeing soups - in fact, I just used it this afternoon! When our immersion blender kicked it, I didn't see the need to replace it, as the food mill makes smoother, more velvety soups than we ever managed with the blender. Three cheers for the food mill!

How in the world do they afford such a lovely house in Ann Arbor as an artist and art teacher? Color me super envious!

Jamie Oliver has a few. I've made his pork filet with roasted rhubarb, and this recipe for hot and sour rhubarb and crispy pork with noodles looks excellent.

Snow removal sucks, but if it snows where you live, you've just gotta suck it up and deal with it - or rent and hope that your landlord is responsible for snow and then actually fulfills that responsibility. Sorry.

Add a splash of vinegar at the end - I use balsamic, red wine, or apple cider - adds a twang that counters the sweetness and acidity of the tomatoes. Love it.

My husband does the Japanese fold, which is the strangest and possibly least intuitive method for folding shirts that I've ever witnessed. I put in a year obsessively folding and refolding sweaters, shirts, and all manner of other things at a Lands' End outlet, so I feel like I'm pretty set in the folding department. Also, I'm with @nestingdollgirl about the sleeve handling in the Japanese method. Weird weird weird.

We switched to a Chemex four years ago and I'm now so used to the routine that it doesn't seem like a hassle at all. Of course there are mornings when I don't get the coffee made - but those are usually the same mornings when I don't get a shower or don't eat breakfast.

Like other commenters have mentioned, it just becomes part of your routine. While the coffee is blooming, I measure the water. While the coffee is brewing, I pack my lunch or eat my breakfast or feed the cats. And then I go to work with an excellent cup of coffee brewed exactly the way I like it.

Thanksgiving 2003: my boyfriend and I arrive Thursday night to help friends prep for a Friday dinner for 14. Within an hour, the friends we are helping have left for the ER, one of them suffering a severe asthma attack, leaving us to prep all the vegetables and stuffing and to bake five pies. The sweet potato pie is so perfect that it looks store-bought. The Swedish apple and cranberry pecan are perfect. We didn't have the full recipe for the chocolate pecan, so it more closely resembles a solid candy bar in pie shape than anything else. My boyfriend burns himself on the explosive pumpkin pie when he pulls it out of the oven. Somehow everyone survived, and we had everything in its place and the kitchen clean by the time the friends returned from the ER around 1230.

But was the turkey thawed? That was the question at work all day on Friday, as we worried about whether our friend needed to go back to the ER. She didn't, it thawed, and dinner was perfect.

We have a GIANT piggy bank that gets most of our change - with the exception of change we receive while in the car, which goes into a coin slug for tolls and meters.

We bank with Bank of America and use their "Keep the Change" program - essentially purchases are rounded up to the next dollar, and the difference is swept off into our savings account. BoA matches your Keep the Change savings 100% for the first 3 months, then 5% annually. We've saved 462.94 in the last 3 years this way.

I was actually a little grossed out by how well BKF worked on the grout on our tile floor. Which is to say - we discovered that the grout was white, not gray!

@RosieGreenie, I think they're similar, but the active ingredient in BKF is oxalic acid, and I have no idea what the active ingredient in Ajax is. That is all from Wikipedia, so take it with a grain of cleanser.