I like the way our family does Secret Santa for the adults and mass shopping for the kids, with the added benefit of everyone including the kids drafting up wish lists. The Secret Santa makes shopping a lot easier since we only have to shop for one adult instead of all of them, and it still enables the kids to get showered with tons of gifts as they should. Having everyone draft actual wish lists, complete with where-to-buy and detailed size/color info makes the experience even simpler. Everyone gets only gifts that they wanted and the hassle of post-holiday returns and exchanges are eliminated. This year I was treated to an extra surprise- in addition to my xmas gifts from Secret Santa, I also received a house-warming gift selected from my wish list! Here are the two mega-gifts I received:
On the left is the Aero Garden, an “aeroponic” planting system which means the plants grow with their roots suspended in humidified air. That’s right, no soil, so the edible plants you grow will never be covered in dirt or sand. You can get various seed kits for it, and the one I’ve started with is a Mixed Herb package which includes Mint, Dill, Cilantro, Basil, Purple Basil, Chives and Parsely. As you can see in the pic, each seed pod gets plugged into a hole in the base which contains water and it has its own lamp unit which is rigged on a timer so it stays on 17 hours a day. I’m supposed to remove those little plastic caps from the pods as soon as I see sprouting in a couple days. Other than that all I have to do is refill the water and add nutrient tablets to the water every two weeks (and the base has lights that will tell me when) and the plants are guaranteed to grow and be harvestable in about 6 weeks. As the plants grow I’m supposed to raise the height of the grow-bulbs so the plants never touch them. Very cool. These herbs should last me into spring and then I intend to switch maybe to the cherry tomato seed kit. If you’re interested in more about this ingenious device, I found this site which has a very detailed description of one user’s experience with it along with great pics.
The other mondo gift you see in the picture is the Waring MegaMix HPB300 commercial blender. Don’t be fooled by its pedestrian appearance; it packs a wallop. I’ve lusted after this baby for several years now, ever since my fascination with Charlie Trotter’s cooking first began. After tasting his amazingly rich vegetable sauces, I wanted to know how he did it. In his book Raw, it became apparent that a high-speed blender was part of the secret. Unless you have a high powered motor like the one in this MegaMix, you will end up with stringy, grainy or muddy results. I tried it out yesterday, tossing in some quick-boiled broccoli and some of the cooking water and the result was a broccoli soup that tasted like it was cream-based. So satiny and rich yet incredibly bright in broccoli flavor. Man it was awesome. I can’t wait to try it with cauliflower, and asparagus, and mushrooms and so forth and so on…
your post about the fast speed blender fascinated me…cuz i love charlie trotter’s sauces- so vivid in color and so pure in flavor.
aero garden looks really cool- you can make sauces with the veggies you grow from the garden!!!
cool post!
Yep, that’s the plan! So many of Charlie’s sauces are just veggie or nut purees often mixed with just water, not even olive oil. The one major difference is that for any veggies he cooks for these sauces, he cooks them sous vide which is probably just a tad overboard for home cooking.
Nice countertops too!
Thanks Sonia; you have excellent taste. 🙂
I had to look up sous vide, and found this cheery note:
Deadly botulinum bacteria can grow in food in the absence of oxygen: sous vide cooking must be performed under carefully controlled conditions to avoid botulism poisoning. To help with food safety and taste, relatively expensive water-bath machines are used to circulate precisely heated water; differences of even one degree can affect the finished product.
So, yeah, that might be a bit overboard for home cooking =)
In the interest of making sure we’re not propagating misinformation here, I should point out that the botulism thing, and any bacteria related issues are being overstated by the food police. It still comes down to cooking your food to the right temperature which is something you’d have to learn to properly control whether or not you were cooking in a baggy. The legitimate food safety issues with sous vide revolve around food that gets stored after sealing instead of seal-cook-eat which is how it should be done. It is true however, that slight temperature differences do have a big impact on the texture of the food cooked sous vide.