Cooking For Engineers®

These days when I reach for a spatula to turn food in a pan, I've been finding myself grabbing the GastroMax Slotted Turner more often than not. Tina bought this spatula for me after months (or maybe years) of listening to me complain about our various spatulas. After buying the GastroMax Turner, my complaining has stopped.

Twelve years ago, I wrote an article comparing plastic and wood cutting boards which may be why one of the most frequent questions that I get is what cutting board do I use in my personal life. For the last six years, I have been using cutting boards made by Epicurean Cutting Surfaces and my wooden cutting boards haven't come out of storage for years. Here's why I like the Epicurean boards.

In the United States, food grade containers are containers manufactured with materials that the Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has approved as safe for use in food preparation and storage. Food grade materials are generally known to not leach harmful substances or react with food in a harmful manner. In most home kitchens, we'll find an assortment of different materials used in our containers ranging from glass to plastic to ceramic to metals. But are all food grade materials similar? Should we care if a container is marked Microwave Safe? Let's take a closer look at some common materials used in food containers and if they are microwave safe. Additional information can be found at: foodsafety.gov Food Grade Containers for Brining

Whenever I shop for food, I look at the ingredients listing to see what went into it. It started off as just a simple fascination with what factories use to make foods, but now I'm looking to see if partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (an indicator of the presence of trans fatty acids) are in the food (as well as other "unnatural" substances). I have a tendency to shy away from foods that have ingredients that I cannot recognize - but what are these weird ingredients and what do they do? What are they doing in my food (especially since I don't have them in my pantry and don't use them in my home cooked meals)? Here's a list that I've been slowly compiling of food additives.