apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Saw this posted on the St. Louis Riverfront Times "Gut Check" blog and couldn't stop laughing. I know Kitchn readers will appreciate it so I had to share!

It's their version of the top 10 most useless kitchen gadgets: http://tinyurl.com/ldwa8p

I was wondering when there is gonna be another book club.

Because it is official Tontitown Grape Festival week, in anticipation of loading up in a few days, I have made grape ice cream. It is such good, good stuff. Better when I can pick up some of the amazing grapes, but good.

Before that, I had picked up some peaches in Texas and made them into ice cream as well.

Did anyone read the article, "Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch", by Michael Pollan in the NYTimes on Sunday?

Made my second attempt to caramelize onions in the crockpot last weekend, and for the second time, it pretty much worked but something tasted off in the onions. Has anyone else had success with this method?

Trying to figure out if it's the technique (slow cooker) or if the onions I used were about to turn.

@I'mBored
On your suggestion, I read the article. In typical Pollan style, it's an interesting look at the decades-long trend of people spending less time cooking and the more recent trend of people watching more Food Network.

So many of my friends watch, but don't cook. I think they feel intimidated, or as Pollan says, haven't actually learned anything about cooking by watching food shows. I used to be sad that I didn't get the Food Network, since I love to cook, but now I feel reassured that I don't need it.

I read the Pollan article and its hard to disagree with him. Like Montreal poster, I have similar friends who need say the "love" to cook but yet hate to do so and would rather have a beautiful kitchen and eat out all the time. It was an insightful read.

Ugh! to shameless self-promotion (^) posing as a genuinely interested commenter...it's a step away from spam.

As for the Pollan article - yep, it's his typical style and very well researched. I especially enjoyed the fact that one of his primary interview subjects was someone who was so ensconced in the business of marketing "food products" and clearly took the opposite view. Sometimes articles like this are just filled with people in agreement preaching to the choir. Sites like thekitchn.com and other food sites and blogs do great work in encouraging the curious home "chef" to try new foods, new cooking methods, and explain the importance of eating locally, sustainably, healthfully. It's good though for mainstream media to present these ideas to the "masses". If just one more person is now going to get into the kitchen to actually cook their dinner, instead of just assembling it from prepackaged and prepared ingredients it means we're making progress.

Hey, thanks for pulling the "spam" commenter ;)

Substituting marzipan for almond paste

I want to make these tasty-looking amaretti cookies from Smitten Kitchen . I bought a tube of almond paste (it says "almond paste" on the side), but when I got home, I noticed that the tube also says "marzipan."

I know that marzipan has more sugar than almond paste, so I should reduce the 1 cup of sugar called for in the recipe, but by how much?

The marzipan contains 180g of sugar in a 227g (8 oz) tube, which makes it 79% sugar. How much sugar does almond paste have?

I would appreciate any input. I want to make sure I remove enough sugar; I'd rather have less sweet cookies than tooth-achingly sweet ones. Thanks.

@kestral127, I have made carmelized onions in the Crockpot several times, always very successfully. I wonder what's off? I pretty much fill my Crockpot to capacity with sliced onions (regular yellow onions) and put in an entire stick of unsalted butter. It takes FOREVER, at least 12 hours, sometimes more like 14, to get perfectly dark, soft, carmelized onions.

"Off" onions would certainly queer the dish. Or maybe you're not filling the Crock and they're burning a little? Too much or too little butter might affect the taste enough to make it seem wrong to you. It takes so very long that it's hard to have patience, but when I've tested the onions early, the texture wasn't right and they still had a bit of a raw edge, so I left them in for 2 more hours. Could that be it?

@cmcinnyc - OK, if you've done it successfully, I think I can blame the onions. A few of the ones I threw in there had a gross, mushy outer coating that peeled off. I took off the layer underneath that, washed the rest of the onion and just used it normally, but maybe that wasn't the best idea. I think I did a crock about half full on low for about 8 hours with some olive oil on top.

Now that sweet onions are at the farmer's market, I may just buy a bagful and try again.

On staying cool in the kitchen:

The other night I made a tofu salad that turned out to be quite tasty... check it out at www.letseatyall.net

I used just a few ingredients and it all came together in under 20 minutes

@HFXNS, maybe try the dough minus a cup of sugar and then mix in more if you need to? I'm not sure how you're supposed to mix everything together so that might not work, but it would be worth a try.

@emmers87, all foodies/cooks should read at least one or two of the Redwall books by Brian Jaques. The description of food in those is just unbelievable. And they're cute, simple stories to boot.