About Janice Bear

Janice Bear designs unique garters (for offbeat brides, burlesque, Tuesdays...) because she believes everything you wear should be a reflection of you - right down to your underpinnings. To learn more about what she does and why she does it, please visit her blog.

Janice Bear August 24, 2012

Tooling Around: Stop, In the Name of Love

My darlings, we need to talk.

First, you need to know it isn’t you; it’s me.

I hope we can still be friends. If not now, then in the future. Perhaps we’ll even find ourselves together again. Who knows.

Sometimes, the most powerful tool you have is the word “no.”

If you say “yes” to everything you prioritize nothing, and, without priorities, your business cannot become the very thing you most want it to be.

Via Jones Design Company. Click image for details.

I do not have the time or energy to make Tooling Around everything I want it. Honestly, you deserve better. The team of Scoutie Girl writers so carefully selected by Tara Gentile and Carrie Keplinger can give you more of what you need right now. I must, therefore, step down and leave you in their capable hands. I plan to stop by every now and then, if you’ll have me.

In the meantime, I want to leave you with some of my favorite tools: websites. Many of these are my go-to sites before I ever start writing a post. I think you’ll like them, too.

For the stitchers:

For the sketchers and the painters:

http://alisaburke.blogspot.com/2012/08/frequently-asked-questions-sketching.html

For the renovators:

http://www.brooklynlimestone.com/p/hi-renovators.html#.UC6Z_PVjdD9

For the floriculture lovers:

http://botanicalbrouhaha.blogspot.com/2012/08/working-designer-wednesday-mixed-bag.html (Look at every single Working Designer Wednesday post).

For the crafters:

http://www.lemonjitters.com/2012/02/craft-adhesives-basics.html

For the bakers:

http://www.makeit-loveit.com/category/make-a-cake-series

For the writers:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/40uYMR/www.dailywritingtips.com/50-problem-words-and-phrases/

For you all:

http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2011/exploring-handmade-tools/?ref=fp_blog_title
http://pinterest.com/ (The place for inspiration, tutorials, and losing track of time).

Darlings, I’m so glad to have had you in my life. Thank you for welcoming me into your hearts, homes, and internet browsers. I’ll miss you when I’m busy tooling around in my studio.

But for now, I must say…

Via Piccsy. Click on image for details.

Filed Under: Buy You, For You, Tooling Around Tagged With: goodbye, links, tools 1 Comment

Janice Bear August 10, 2012

Tooling Around: When I Get All Steamed Up

About a month ago my Shark died at the tender age of three. For two days I worked to resuscitate her, but no amount of surgery could bring my baby back. She was far too large to flush down the toilet and my usually tolerant husband drew the line at a burial in our back yard, so I was forced to drag my Shark to the curb and watch sadly as the garbage truck took her away.

I looked at my husband with despair. “The house just isn’t the same, anymore,” I wailed. He pet my hair in that consoling way, offering to help me pick out another. “But that Shark was a gift from your mother! We can’t just up and replace it!” He assured me we could; we might even find something better.

So the research began and let me tell you, there are a lot of floor cleaning options out there. Wait, you guys knew I was talking about my beloved steam mop, right? I can’t even imagine what our cats would think of having any other kind of shark in the house. “Dinner!“ maybe?

Shark Steam Mop S3101. Click image for details.

Anyway, you know by now how we like to research things before we let them become a part of our household. Computers, cookware, vehicles, appliances… I guess we really take the whole “caveat emptor” thing pretty seriously. Unfortunately, web research was all but useless in this case. It seemed like every mop, steam or otherwise, got as many good reviews as it did bad. Even the most helpful reviewers had a list of cons almost as long as the pros.

Time was running short – in our entire house we haven’t a single carpeted room and the tile floors were looking pretty nasty.

I can’t live with nasty floors. We opted to visit our home goods standby, Bed Bath & Beyond, where the staggering array of options included, in order of price from least to greatest:

The newer version of our Shark

This other kind of Shark

A super duper Shark

Hmmm.

Well, at least we had a history with the brand. Sadly, that history includes some sterile but not spotless floors, and a fair amount of scrubbing on my hands and knees. Then again, the online searches had turned up some positive notes. Along with all those negative ones. Agreeing we wouldn’t really know until we gave it a try, my husband lugged the mid-priced option off the shelf and handed it to me.

No.

It was really big. No, big isn’t right; it was really long. Cumbersomely long. And heavy. I did not like it so back on the shelf it went, and out the door we went.

A day or so later I was at Target getting, I don’t know, liquid soap refills, when I saw their selection of steam mops. I sneered at the Sharks, fiddled with a Haan, looked at the Bissell, then I saw IT. “Clearance.” Twenty minutes later I had a Hoover assembled on my family room floor.

Yep, the very scientific method of “which mop is on sale?” determined the winner.

Hoover Blue Disinfecting Steam Mop. Click image for details.

Turns out, it was an excellent choice.

The triangle shaped head pivots, allowing me to get into every corner and up against every baseboard.
I can practically lay the handle flat without the head losing contact with the floor which means I can mop under the couch, the beds, even part of the refrigerator.
The cord is loooong. Thirty feet, to be precise. For the first time ever I can mop my foyer, living room, dining room, and kitchen without changing outlets.
The tanks are removable and, therefore, easy to refill.
1. Did you see that “s” up there? That’s right. Tanks, as in two of them. One is for water and one is for cleaning solution.
2. You can absolutely mop using only steam, but if you choose to use the cleaning solution you are able to use as much or as little as you please. A dial on the front lets you choose the amount of cleanser you want released along with the steam.
3. As for the water tank – it has a filter. I still insist on using distilled water, but you don’t have to. Because the mop has its own filter.
4. Do you know what that filtered water is turned into? Steam. Germ-killing, dirt-lifting steam.
  1. Unlike my Shark, the Hoover has a power button so I can turn it off between uses (I clean my house in stages). As far as features go, this one is pretty minor, but I really like it.
  2. The steam is controlled by a trigger so I can let it go as long as a want on both the to and fro motions. In comparison the old-model shark only released steam when pushed forward.
  3. The shark also only released steam from the front whereas the Hoover has multiple steam outlets scattered across the bottom of the head.
  4. Possibly my favorite feature is the carpet refresh system. The mop came with three microfiber pads – two solid and one with holes. The hole-y one is specifically for hard flooring surfaces, but the solid ones can also be used on carpet. Oh yes. There’s an extra plastic frame in which you place the mop head causing the mop to “glide” over carpeted surfaces. It isn’t a carpet steamer – you don’t use the solution and you can’t suck dirt and water back out of your carpet – but it really does loosen dirt and help get rid of smells caused by cats and stinky little girl feet.

Now, the downers. All two of them.

This sucker is rather heavy. I tell myself the heft makes for a good workout, but really it is something of a hassle.
I have no idea what sort of ingredients are in the included/recommended cleaning solution. I have decided to remain ignorant for the time being. Because I’m something of a tree-hugging hippie, I try to stick with simple, natural, and homemade cleaners. Since my Hoover is still shiny and new I don’t want to take a chance at screwing it up by using something not approved by the company. I limit my use of the cleanser to every other mopping, and only on the lowest setting. Eventually I’ll get around to checking more forums and reviews to see if I can substitute something more in line with my “green” preferences.

And there you have it; my new favorite pet…er…tool is a steam mop. I still occasionally spot clean with a scrub brush and elbow grease, but I am pretty pleased with my dreamy, steamy Hoover.

And you? What sort of tools heat things up in your home?

- – -
Writer Caveat: Please keep in mind the comparisons above are between a new Hoover and an older model Shark. Our Shark was a first generation model so some of my comparisons are unfair. New models generally are better than old so apples were not pitted against apples here.

Filed Under: Buy You, For You, Tooling Around Tagged With: cleaning, home 2 Comments

Janice Bear July 27, 2012

tooling around: coming clean

Image via Lehigh Valley with Love. Click for details.

I hate doing dishes. HATE it. It is, in fact, one of the reasons I decided to have a kid.

Okay, that last bit isn’t true. My husband is the one who does the dishes. You see, the rule in our house is “whoever cooks does not clean.” I do a large portion of the cooking, and while I try to rinse and tidy as I go, I mostly avoid the responsibility of post-meal cleanup. I know; it’s a pretty good gig.

But, if you’ve been following along, you know our recently purchased stainless steel cookware has prompted some change in our approach to many kitchen matters. We’re re-learning how to cook, and we’re mastering a new way to clean.

Don’t wait to wash.

Remember all that scientific stuff I shared about preheating pans to close the pores in the steel? Good, because I’m going to talk about it some more. Steel holds heat (shocking, I know) and that is lucky for us because hot steel is a lot easier to clean than cool steel. By taking the time to scrape the miscellaneous food boogers out of your pans the instant you remove the food, there is no time for the pores to re-open and grab onto those sticky bits and pieces.

Can’t scrape right away? That’s understandable, but don’t give those food particles a chance to get comfortable. Take a second to pour some dish soap and water into your pan so it can soak while you eat. I don’t recommend soaking for more than an hour unless you enjoy those tiny flies that like to play around the sink.

Get an arm workout.

Apparently, stainless steel cookware is dishwasher safe, but we’re always a bit wary of the dishwasher in our rental house. It only gets the job done about two-thirds of the time and we really want to give these pots and pans the type of care that will help them last.

Whether we scrape or soak after the food is prepped, we (usually my husband) scrub after dinner. Start with hot water, dish soap, and a dish rag or sponge. Grasp the pot with one hand and, while it is submerged in sudsy water, rub the pot’s surface with the rag/sponge using a circular motion. Do the whole pan, inside, sides, handle, and bottom. If you do this nightly, those little circles will really have an impact on your bingo wings.

Once your cookware is spic and span, rinse off the suds. I find that cool water works best for rinsing because it tends to calm the soap bubbles, while warm to hot water activates the suds.

Polish your way to shiny pots and some muscle tone.

Did you notice how I didn’t tell you to dry your now-clean pots? That’s because it is time to give them some polish.

In all our web searches about stainless steel cookware it was almost unanimously recommended that we get ourselves some Bar Keepers Friend. One container sets me back $1.99 at the grocery store. So far, our culinary adventures have required us to polish our cookware after every use, but I’ve been led to believe some people only polish a few times a year.

You don’t really have to polish the entire pan; just the spots with areas with stubborn scorch marks or other residue. Here’s how it works. Sprinkle a generous amount of the powder onto one area of the pan. Using the same circular motion as above and a bit of pressure, scrub the offending area. BKF instructs you only to work for 90 seconds before rinsing (this is why you only want to pour it on the area you will be working on). Repeat the sprinkle, polish, rinse cycle until you’ve achieved a shine you can be proud of.

NWA Foodie is a proponent of Bar Keepers Friend. Click image for details.

Two tips:

When I say “generous amount” I mean generous amount. We found being sparse with the powder translated to more repetitions of the polish cycle and/or spots and scorch marks that lived to see another meal.
You want your dish rag or sponge to make good contact with the surface of the pan. For us, the mesh scrubby sponges just couldn’t get the job done. Let BFK do the scrubbing, you provide the elbow grease. Again, you can do the dishes and tone up your arms. Win-win.

Ready, set, dry!

Line-dryable dishes; oh yes they did. Click image for details.

Really, this shouldn’t take any instruction. Your pans are washed, polished, and rinsed. All that is left is for water to evaporate. My grandmother actually washes all of her dishes by hand then loads them into the dishwasher to dry on the racks. Then she sighs happily about all the modern amenities in homes today. Other people have a drying rack on their counter or, like my mom, spread out a clean towel and artistically arrange the pans that need to air dry.

We, however, have disgustingly hard water. Hard water + air drying = nasty, cloudy spots. I did not polish my pots just to have them develop a case of stainless steel chickenpox. Therefore, we wipe our dishes dry. Before you giggle over the thought of me looking very Betty Draper while drying dishes, I’ll have you know my husband looks very cute standing over the sink sipping a martini and drying pans.

Filed Under: Buy You, For You, Tooling Around Tagged With: cooking, cookware, kitchen Leave a Comment

Janice Bear July 13, 2012

tooling around: now, we’re cooking

In my house, one must know how to put out a grease fire. Click image for details.

Last month I claimed “cooking with stainless steel cookware is a little like learning to cook all over again.” When I wrote that, I had no idea how true it really was. Luckily, my daughter is out of town all summer so my husband and I have plenty of time to practice without the added pressure of filling an eight-year-old’s bottomless pit of a stomach.

“Cooking well is about three things: good ingredients, good and proper tools, and love. Cooking is craft. Respect it and celebrate it!”

That’s what Paula Lewis had to say when she chimed in on the “gone to pot” discussion. That woman might need to go into sign making. Sadly, I’m not sure my methods for (re)learning to cook really honor the art.

Cooking is trial and error.

The internet is a wealth of cooking knowledge. You can find articles, videos, and tips on just about every aspect of food preparation. Sure, surfing the web helps, but so far, nothing has beaten old fashioned trial and error.

Preheating

A lot of web articles recommend pre-heating your stainless steel cookware before food ever touches it (examples here and here). My husband, the super-researcher, came across something adequately scientific that explained how heating the cooking surface eliminates any imperfections in the metal, reducing available areas for food to latch onto (stick). I assume he found something like this awesome article by Talley on Houseboat Eats. Also included are a couple of very clear videos.

“As you might imagine, this ideal window of heat has to do with the atoms in the pan moving around and ‘opening and closing the pores’ in the steel. In this sense, the ‘pores’ almost act like tiny teeth that bite into your meat and cause sticking. At the right temperature, the ‘pores’ are static, and your food doesn’t stick.”

Somehow, I came away from this with the idea that I needed to heat my pan on high heat, then reduce the temp and start cooking. NO! Actually, if you want to test the limits of your patience, this might work for you because it takes F-O-R-E-V-E-R for the pan to reach an acceptable (read: non-scorching) cooking temp. We’d had our stainless cookware five weeks before we were able to cook food within five minutes of turning on the stove. The trick, for us, is to heat the pan on medium-low heat (4 out of 10 on our knob) for 60 to 90 seconds. By then, water will usually dance and I can turn the heat down to 2 or 1.

Lubrication

After the heat gets turned down, we get to do a little more waiting. I generally chop stuff for two or three minutes. If you get impatient and start throwing oil into the pan you will be rewarded with smoky, gooey, sticky mess, and a husband that whines about cleaning it up. Actually, my husband never whines. He occasionally throws me a look of disbelief.

In truth, the too-hot oil will smoke almost immediately, giving you time to wipe out the pan before things get too nasty. Butter is far less forgiving, so I recommend you either stick with oil or get yourself a non-stick pan if butter is your go-to lubricant (see LuAnn Poli’s comment on my last post).

Pouring Oil 2. Photo by fdmount. Click image for details.

Cooking Heat

Sometimes it helps to read the instructions. You are all very clever so I’m sure you always read the manual before using a new doodad. I, on the other hand, was too cool for the pamphlet of tips Emeril kindly enclosed with his cookware. The result of being too cool? I made my food too hot. That’s right, we ate blackened meals for about four days. Somehow, I think burning 800 calories in 30 minutes does not mean setting the chicken on fire.

I think day four was when I finally read Emeril’s advice: You’ll have to cook at lower temperatures than you may be accustomed.

Oh. Another place to find such pearls is, you know, THE ENTIRE INTERNET. Besides the web posts already mentioned, the tip about lower heat is mentioned here and here (and just about everywhere else).

So after I heat the pan on medium-low, then turn it down to low or lower, I cook the food at low, lower, or lowest. Lowest is denoted by the very cryptic “Lo” on the knob for the burner.

It think – think – I am finally getting the hang of it. To date my biggest triumph has been a yummy veggie pot pie with totally not burned onions and fennel.

It looks a little dull, but it smells divine.

Bacon, on the other hand… Someday. In the meantime, I have some Mexican Meatball Soup to make for dinner. While I do that, why don’t you fill up the comments with your own cooking (mis)adventures. Next time we talk we’ll get into the nitty gritty of getting the nitty gritty off your cookware. Feel free to share your tips on that, too.

Bon apetit!

Filed Under: Buy You, For You, Tooling Around Tagged With: cooking, cookware, janice bear, kitchen, pans, pots, tools 1 Comment

Janice Bear June 29, 2012

tooling around: scoutie girl has gone to pot

My last couple of posts (here and here) have been serious, so today we are stepping away from topics of emotional heft to focus on a group of physical objects with measurable weight. We’re talking heavy duty tools.

My new stainless steel pots!

Not my cookware or my kitchen, but a nice dramatic photo nonetheless. Click image for real details.

Actually, I believe the proper term is “cookware.”

I realize Never a Plain Jane Designs doesn’t have any relation to cooking, but some of your businesses do. And really, aren’t we all sort of in the business of home keeping? I know it sometimes feels like a job to me…

My cooking credentials
I prepare at least five meals a week for my family of three plus whatever school mates my daughter drags home. I didn’t have much of a cooking education growing up because my mom preferred to do it herself. As a result, my last ten years in the kitchen have included some learning, a bit of trial, and a lot of error.

Bacon preparation, for one, has always eluded me. My ability to fill the house with smoke every single Saturday had become something of a family joke. That is, until Mother’s Day when my husband and daughter tried to make breakfast. Smoke filled the house and it had nothing to do with me. Turns out, our eleven-year-old anodized pans had been in use about four years too many. The bottoms were no longer flat which caused hot spots, and the finish on every pot and pan had long lost its uniformity. My history with food prep has been so sordid, though, we never thought some of my shortcomings might actually be due to my tools.

The Research Began
I have one place and one place only for researching food-related anything: theKitchn. I searched “cookware,” read about five of the posts, and was ready to burn up my credit card on a full set of All-Clad saucepans and skillets. Luckily, my other half is a more cautious and conscientious shopper. He did his search on Google and read reviews from several websites regarding

Copper Cookware
Stainless Steel Cookware
Caring for Cookware
Bonded Bottom vs. Tri-ply
Buying a Set vs. Buying Piecemeal
Brand Name Comparisons

All-Clad made the list of brands to check out. Also, Le Crueset and Calphalon. At this stage we were looking for two things: heft and comfort.

Weight and Hold Tests
Most of our (his) research indicated heavier=better, but we also had to make sure nothing was too heavy for me to handle it easily. A heavy pot filled with boiling water and food can be quite the work out, especially when my 5’2” self has to heave that sucker up high enough to drain it in the kitchen sink. We also didn’t want anything interfering with my mad pancake-flipping skills.

You can look at pots online all day, but photos don’t tell you what they’ll feel like in your hand. Despite their high price and excellent reputation, the All-Clad cookware had the most uncomfortable handles! The u-shape design meant narrow steel edges were pressed into my hand no matter what grasp I used. One Williams Sonoma manager confessed this was the most common reason cited by customers who passed on All-Clad.

On the other end of the weight and comfort scale is another caution: a pan that is especially light is typically less durable and/or well made. And never, ever opt to buy cookware just because it has the most comfortable handle in the history of pot grips.

Construction
Non-stick, anodized, tri-ply, bonded, cast-iron, steel, aluminum, copper, ACK! What does it all mean! To be honest, you guys, I still have only a faint idea. Here’s what I got:

We needed new cookware.
Our decrepit cookware was “non-stick.”
Copper conducts heat very well, but requires a lot of maintenance.
References to “tri-ply with a copper or aluminum core” seemed to be every which way we turned.
We could not afford top of the line.

In the end, tri-ply was what we bought so that’s what you get to learn about. Also called three ply, tri-ply cookware has three layers of metal.

Some pots and pans are constructed predominately of stainless steel with a bonded base. This means a layer of copper or aluminum and a second layer of steel are bonded to the bottom of the pan. If you look at it from the side it sort of resembles the sole of a platform shoe in that the bottom is very thick. The three layers make for even heat distribution and this cookware romanced me with its sexy-looking band of copper. Pans in this style are definitely available in our price range. They are also said to have a long life, but buyers are warned the bond will eventually break down causing the bottom layers to separate.

Other pans are made entirely of an aluminum or copper core sandwiched between two layers of steel. The center metal allows for even heat distribution while the outer layers increase durability and reduce maintenance. It also means the pot handles stay cool during stove top use.

Cut-away of Tri-ply construction. Click image for details.

And the winner was…
…All-Clad!

Sort of. We bought a set of Emerilware Pro-Clad cookware, manufactured by All-Clad, from Bed Bath and Beyond. The price was right, the three ply construction was right, the handles were right, and we had a coupon. Also, this stuff is oven safe up to 550 degrees. Awesome!

The learning curve continues
We’ve had our new set for almost a month and it is a little like learning to cook all over again.

Tell you what, I’ll tell you all about cooking and caring for my new pans next week, if you’ll share your cooking adventures in the comments below. Deal?

Filed Under: Buy You, For You, Tooling Around Tagged With: cooking, cookware, janice bear, kitchen, pans, pots, tools 4 Comments