What's Cool in my World

I'm laid up today so I thought I'd tell you about things we're newly crazy about:

1. Artisan Bread

As a bread baker, I was really skeptical about no-knead bread; especially recipes without milk, butter or eggs, but now, I'm a total believer. Having dough in the fridge ready to be baked is 57 kinds of awesome!

2. Mini Weapons of Mass Destruction 

I don't think my boys have ever loved a project book with the ferocity and obsession they love this one with. Here's what Popular Mechanics has to say:

...with the advent of modern household products and office supplies—binder clips, clothespins, rubber bands, ballpoint pens, toothpicks, paper clips, plastic utensils, and (of course) matches and barbeque lighters—troublemakers of all stripes have the components needed to build an impressive, if somewhat miniaturized, arsenal.

Toy designer John Austin provides detailed, step-by-step instructions for each project, including materials and ammo lists, clear diagrams, and construction tips, for mayhem-loving MacGyvers. The 35 devices include catapults, slingshots, minibombs, darts, and combustion shooters. Build a tiny trebuchet from paper clips and a D-cell battery. Wrap a penny in a string of paper caps to create a surprisingly impressive “bomb.” Several of the projects even include variations where combatants mount laser pointer sights to their shooters to increase their accuracy.

Finally, once you’ve built your armory, the author provides plans for a Top Secret Concealing Book to hide your stash, as well as targets for shooting practice. Never let your personal space go undefended again!

3. Small Batch Baking. 

What an awesome concept. The basic idea is that when you want brownies (or cake or cookies, or pie) that's fine. The problem comes in when you make a 9x13 pan of brownies, have the one you wanted and then six more because the whole pan is sitting there tempting you. With small-batches you make individual desserts and have none of those pesky leftovers to deal with. Brilliant, no? 

In our house this is especially wonderful as my boys love to bake and this saves us having a cake, cookies, brownies and cinnamon rolls all at once.

4. Safety Can Openers

I know we're a little late to the party on this one, but these are great and so much cleaner then the blade dipping into your food. A lot of the small batch cakes are baked in cans so having a dull edge was a must for me - can't have the kiddos slicing up their fingers. this is the one we have. It's awesome.

5. Stainless Steel Cookware

I wanted to get away from icky, toxic Teflon for years now, but the horror stories about the sticking-ness of Stainless scared me away. We took the plunge as our pots and pans were in truly desperate need of replacement (the Teflon peeling reminded me of bad sunburns I'd had in the 80's) and I love them. Yes, there is a right way to cook with them and it's no big deal. We've made all sorts of things including fried pot stickers and the browning you get from stainless is amazing! Here's mine:

Thanks for letting me share the things we're excited about right now.

Linking up to Maggi's Friday Night Fab Five

Just so you know, the links are affiliate links so I'd get a commission if you bought something. This has never happened, I just like the convenience of the links imbedded in Blogger - no wandering the internet to find pics etc.