HHHHHH: Where do we keep the pie weights?

I usually like these HHHHHH posts to feature more tested material, but I thought up a solution to a vexing problem this week and implemented it immediately.  We use certain items for cooking very rarely.  When we need them, though, we really need them.  Our kitchen storage prioritizes the oft-used items, of course, so these other things get tucked into out-of-the-way places.  When I need any given item obscura, I often struggle to remember which high shelf, deep cupboard or nested hiding place where we keep it.  Moving from a kitchen we'd inhabited for ten years to a new kitchen 18 months ago exacerbates the problem.  We might only use a given item once a quarter or less.

So, I started a list and posted it inside a cabinet door.  Next time I need the pie weights, I know where to look.  Each time one of us goes on a hunt for something, we can add it to the list.


What can't you find in your kitchen when you need it?

HHHHHH: New Kitchen, New Measurements

After I'd come up with a cool new masthead for what I hope will be a recurring feature, I realized that I'd already posted the tip I planned to feature. Because of the cool new masthead and because I'm really busy today and because I moved to a new kitchen and had to re-implement my own tip and took a new picture to prove it, I'm going to repost the same idea. Call the blog police.
My favorite cooking magazine, Cook's Illustrated, has a few recipes in which they have you make a sling in order to get something (no kneed bread, brownies) out of the pan more easily. There are specific measurements for these slings, and I like to follow them precisely because Cook's is nothing if not precise. Instead of busting out the ruler every time, though, I measure places in my kitchen that have the dimensions needed and then footnote those places in the recipe.

I've sent this tip to Cook's for their reader tips section, but, alas, they haven't published it. So I'll just publish it here once every ten months or so.

Also, for the record, I don't really consider myself a househusband because I do work part time, but the 7-H alliteration was too tempting. Art takes sacrifice.

Kitchen tip: measurements en place

I doubt that this kitchen tip, which I submitted to Cook's Illustrated, will get published. So I'll share it with you here. In several recipes that I make, things need to be measured and cut to a certain size. For example, Cook's loves to have you make a foil sling for your brownies and then just lift the whole shebang out as a slab. For the foil to fit, it has to be a certain length and width.

I'm not the type to eyeball a measurement like that, but instead of fetching my ruler every time, I've noted the lengths needed on the control panel of my stove. The stove panel works well because it has all those knobs and text and buttons and lights as reference points. Maybe you have a stretch of tile in your kitchen that would work as well (e.g. 3.5 tiles). Once I had my length markers measured I footnoted them in the recipe. Now I don't need the ruler in the kitchen; I just roll the foil out from the edge of the stove to the edge of the clock and cut there.