Happy Birthday Peter!!

If you have a moment, please wish him a Happy Birthday!!! Hope your day is filled with food, food, and more food … oh and cakes and chocolate too

DLE Podcast Episode 022: King and Queen of Fruit

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Join us as we talk about wakes, customized chocolate bars, egg timers and the King and Queen of Fruits

Follow us on twitter (dammitletseat), leave us a voice mail at 620-3DAMMIT, or send us an email at feedback@dammitletseat.com

Review: Harvest for the iPhone

Another in our series of app reviews to help you in the kitchen, this time I took a look at an app suggested by Chuti—Harvest for the iPhone.

Harvest is a very straight-forward app with one purpose—to help you select the best fruits and vegetables when you’re at the market.

The interface is very intuitive. Launch the app and you’re given an alphabetical list of all the produce in the app to choose from:

Select the item you’re looking for, or use the search filter located at the top right hand corner to search for an item and then select it. Once you’ve done that, you’ll be taken to the item’s page, which consists of lots of good information starting with a picture of the produce, how to choose the best of the bunch, some information about the item and even (if you click on the “Storing” button in the upper right hand corner) how to keep the produce fresh once you get it home.

One other useful piece of information available in Harvest is the item’s “Pesticide Level.” It appears at the bottom of the item’s page and you can even choose it as an option on the main screen of the app to sort the produce by “Pesticide Level.” The last option on the main screen is the “About Harvest,” which gives you a link to their website (which is not very useful as it’s just an advertisement for the app) and a button to suggest more produce items.

All in all, I found Harvest to be a valuable and very easy-to-use app, especially for a food noob like myself. It was super convenient to have in my pocket on my phone when I was wandering around the market. My only gripe about it is the price. The website lists it for $2.99, the App Store has it (at the time of this writing) for $1.99 and it’s been on sale at least once for $0.99 It’s totally worth it at 99 cents, not a bad deal at $1.99, and not worth the price at $2.99. I think it’d be nice if they stuck with the $ 0.99 price, but I’m not altogether unhappy with it at the $1.99 price. I’m going to give it 4 pans.

(all prices are in US Dollars)

Harvest for the iPhone
by Sean Murphy
Available in the App Store [Link]

zucchini and ricotta galette via smitten kitchen

I saw this and thought it would be a great addition to my workplace’s menu vegetarian lineup.
Light and summery and made with the number one garden overrun: zucchini.

zucchini and ricotta galette | smitten kitchen

zucchini and ricotta galette

Chocolate + Customize = Chocomize

I saw this today on uncrate.com, and just had to share!

From uncrate.com:

Chocomize

With a name like Chocomize ($6), you might think about a service that lets you customize your chocolate bars. And you’d be correct. Pick your chocolate bark base and add more than 100 different kinds of fruits, nuts, herbs, and candies, or simply select from one of the company’s best-selling bars, like the Smores Bar with graham teddies and mini-marshmallows, the Candy Bar with gummi bears, chocolate candy, and Nerds, or the Spicy Special Bar with black peppercorns, mini chipotles, and cayenne pepper.

I did some poking around at Chocomize and boy am I curious. From things like macadamia nuts to edamame, cinnamon to cardamom, butterscotch to candy orange slices you could really make some wild combinations. I will be ordering shortly and I will report back!

Sorry Chris, no Rainbows!

Keep your melon cool

As I’m sure anyone reading the blog or listening to the podcast knows by now, I’m a bit of a Japanophile. I’m constantly amazed by the gadgets and tools that are available in that country including this little beauty… the Watermelon Cooler!

From Picnics Not Weird Enough? via Switched.com

Apparently, enjoying a fresh slice of watermelon isn’t a strictly American experience; just check out this Japanese-made watermelon cooler. According to Crunch Gear, it also has the ability to warm your melon (for whatever reason), or anything else you put under its plastic dome. For about $230, you can wheel your watermelon right up to the beach and bask in your lack of frugality.

Read the rest of the story at From Switched.com

It is crazy and expensive and reminds me of the Fisher Price Push Popper toys of my childhoold (which of course has been updated! (amazon link)

Review: Egg Boiler for iPad

I mentioned a few posts back that I was going to review some apps for helping out in the kitchen. This is the first post in that series and I’m going to review an iPad app called “Egg Boiler for iPad”. Egg Boiler for iPad is a very simple application that is intended to help you figure out how to boil the perfect egg.

The Egg Boiler interface is very straightforward and very cute. I say cute because it’s really kitschy. Looking very much like it came from the fifties it tells you to choose just three things to get started: Select consistency, Egg temperature and finally “Push the Pot!” to process your request.

Pretty simple right? Well to me not so much. Select consistency made sense.. Hard, Medium or Soft. Egg Temperature… that one was a little more confusing to me. I want the egg to be cooked… so Room Temperature didn’t make much sense and From Fridge didn’t really even make sense to me. It took me a time or two to realize they’re asking what is the temperature of the egg you’re going to cook. Once I thought it through it made sense but it didn’t at first. My other major complaint about the interface is that once you touch the consistency or the temperature there is no visual indication of what you selected. Not a show stopper but I feel that the re-wording of the the options and maybe a highlighting of what you chose could have gone a long way to making it easier to use.

Once you’ve made your selections and “Push the pot!” you’re taken to the second screen in the app, the cooking screen:

This screen I like much more. It gives you sort of “Post-it” style notes on how to boil an egg, a very large “chalkboard” area with the time it will take to cook your egg that is a count down timer, a reminder of what you chose and an alarm that makes a lot of noise when it’s complete, and I do mean a lot of scary, you won’t miss it noise. Very simple and well done. All in all the interface is just okay. I’d like some more clear description of what each step meant and also maybe a “quantity” selection as I very rarely ever cook ONE egg at a time.

That being said, I tried to cook a hard boiled egg using Egg Boiler for the iPad and it did indeed help me make a perfect hard boiled egg. Once I sorted through the interface, it was easy and fun to use, however, I don’t think I’d use it on a regular basis. I can’t see pulling out my iPad to just boil an egg. In addition to that fact, the application carries a price tag of $0.99 US which just seems pricey for an app I don’t think I’d use much.

To that end, I think I’ll give it a 3 pan rating. What do you think? Have you tried this app? Would you? Leave me some feedback!

Egg Boiler for the iPad
by Kyddgroup
Available in the iTunes Store. [Link]

Maple Bacon Coffee—Via Uncrate

Hmmm… I like maple flavor, I also like bacon (who doesn’t?), and coffee is just what I drink everyday… but somehow Maple Bacon Coffee doesn’t sound all that appetizing to me. Who knows?? It may taste wonderful. Someone want to try it out and let us know?

From Maple Bacon Coffee…

Even if you don’t have time to cook, you can still start your day the proper way with a cup ofMaple Bacon Coffee ($8). Imbued with maple, bacon, and (obviously) coffee flavors, this unique roast isn’t the boldest or darkest around, but it is the only one that will give you all the flavors of a proper breakfast without having to eat one. [Thanks, Derrick]

Girl & the Goat

Stephanie Izard’s Girl & the Goat opens Monday!

809 W. Randolph St.
Chicago, IL 60607
View Map

Jajik

Holy crap it’s been hot.

I think everyone hates cooking when the temps are high and we all get bored with salad after salad, so try this for a change.  It’s amazing how you can add different ingredients to get a completely different taste, and you can serve it as a salad or as a cold soup.

Wash, peel, and hack a few cucumbers.  Salt these.
Cut up a bit of onion, maybe a half cup, along with some garlic.  Use anywhere from 1-6 cloves.
Chop some parsley and mint, a half cup of each, give or take.
Put everything in a large bowl, stir in plain yogurt, cover and refrigerate overnight.
The next day, you can eat it as-is for a salad, or puree it if you want soup. Either way, it goes really well with fish.

Optional ingredients are cilantro, walnuts, dill, cumin, peas.

I’m thinking about doing a lentil variety also.