Tundra from First Alert: your first defense
against kitchen fires.

Cooking for Thanksgiving? Stove fires are the number one cause of home fires in the U.S. We’ve had one in THE NIBBLE kitchen.

Here’s an important tip from The National Consumers League: Keep an oven mitt and a large pot lid next to the stove. If a small fire starts in a pan, turn off the burner. Wear the oven mitt while carefully sliding the lid over the pan to smother the flame.

Never pour water on a grease fire and never use a fire extinguisher on a pan fire—it can spray or shoot burning grease around the kitchen and end up spreading the fire.

Also make sure you have a kitchen fire extinguisher nearby. When our fire started, we lost valuable minutes trying to figure out how to work the fire extinguisher. That’s why we were thrilled to discover the Tundra—a push-button aerosol can that anyone, from children to the elderly, can handle. We’ll never be without it again.

Our favorite ice cube trays from ISI Orka keep ice cleaner and fresher and color-code our “specialty” ice cubes.

You can make festive ice cubes for holiday drinks without investing in special pumpkin- or holly leaf-shape ice cube trays. And you can do it more elegantly, too!

Just freeze one of the following in each section of a regular ice cube tray:

We create different trays of “designer ice cubes” to match to different sweet or savory beverages. It’s easy to keep the garnishes straight in our favorite color-coordinated ice cube trays from iSi Orka.

Get a set of great kitchen knives and you’ll instantly be a better cook—everything you cut will look terrific. Dull blades don’t let you slice finely or crisply. They’re also dangerous—they require more force, which can lead to slips and cuts. (When was the last time you sharpened your knives? Look in your Yellow Pages directory or ask at your local hardware store for a blade-sharpening service.)

If you’re going to invest in a set of knives, don’t skimp: You may only buy them once in a lifetime, so get the best, even if that means starting with just the five basic blades. What are the best brands? There are old standards, and new ones come onto the market each year as technology improves.

Gorgeous Shun knives, licensing a design by
master bladesmith Bob Kramer, are available
at Sur La Table and Williams Sonoma. They’re definitely not recession priced; if you have to
ask, you can’t afford them.

Call a store that sells numerous brands, like Sur La Table, and ask to speak to the head of the knife department. Make an appointment when he or she will have the time discuss your needs in detail, and make recommendations.

Dishes that seem to be of limited use can multitask to serve several purposes. Soy sauce dishes, for example, can be used to serve lemon slices, individual condiments like chutney and tartar sauce, mini sides of applesauce, sour cream, and cocktail nibbles. Or use them to serve scallions, anchovies and other “optional” garnishes, as well as savory or sweet toppings (chocolate chips, nuts, coconut) to sprinkle on desserts. You can place soy sauce dishes on plates to contain runnier foods. Or use them to serve individual portions of after-dinner mints or other treats with coffee. If you think that your specialty dishes have only one purpose, think again!

• Read about some of our favorite condiments.

Crisp bacon emerges from the microwave.
Pour off the fat at the bottom of the cup.

Here’s a “green” approach to cooking bacon—and a less messy one, too. WowBacon microwave bacon cooker cooks crisp bacon in the microwave, without the greasy, spattering stovetop mess or the need to drain the bacon on paper towels.

How’s that green? Based on National Pork Council Data, Americans buy 500 million pounds of bacon a year to cook at home, and use 3 billion paper towels to drain it on and clean up the bacon grease. Put end to end, the towels would wrap around the world 20 times. The NPC did not provide an estimate of how many trees were felled to make the paper towels, but you can guess that it’s more than a few. With WowBacon, the fat drips to the bottom of the cup so the bacon doesn’t lie in the grease; the bacon holder lifts up and you dispose of the fat at the bottom of the cup.

You can pick up a WowBacon unit for $19.95 at WowBacon.com. Think ahead: It could be the solution to your holiday gift challenges.

• See our favorite ice cube trays—we won’t use any others.
• What’s the scoop on bottled water versus your muncipal water from the tap? Check it out.

William Bounds, one of our favorite kitchenware and spice companies, has invented the better veggie steamer. It solves the problem we’ve always had with the standard variety: how to remove the hot steamer from the pot, and how to stop those little metal feet from scratching our cookware. The silicone stay-cool telescoping handle is heat resistant to 600°F, and the silicone feet never scratch.

The steamer is dishwasher safe and $13.00 at WmBoundsLtd.com. William Bounds also makes lovely pepper mills and salt mills (to grind sea salt).

The “better” vegetable steamer has a cool
silicone handle and no-scratch silicone feet.

Flexible FireWire grilling skewers are practical, efficient and fun.

What’s new in grilling? FireWire Flexible Grilling Skewers, professional-grade grilling skewers that are as practical as they are fun. The skewer is a stainless steel cable, twice as long as most skewers, that enables you to take your skewered food from marinating bag to grill to plate, all on the same flexible wire. Efficiently, FireWire can circle the perimeter of the grill like a necklace, enabling you to cook burgers, chicken, steak or corn in the center: You have new-found space on your grill surface. And the stainless steel stays cool, allowing you to turn or reposition the wire or remove the food from the grill without using tools. Probes on each end of the wire make it easy to both pierce food and to grab the wire.

Conventional steel skewers eventually rust and wooden skewers are one-time use; stainless steel Firewires last a lifetime. While you can’t hold the FireWire and nibble your food upright as you can with a conventional ten-inch skewer, the fun of flexibility more than compensates.

Check out the FireWire video at www.firewiregrilling.com. You can buy them at Amazon.com. $9.99 for two wires. That’s a very cost-effective gift to bring to every cookout you’re invited to.

Barbecued cheese? Well, in a way, with the Barbeclette from Boska Holland (http://boskaholland.com). This kitchen gadget (or more accurately, BBQ gadget) lets you melt cheese on the barbie, raclette style—hence the name (barbecue + raclette = Barbeclette). Cute, huh?

What do do with barbie-melted cheese?

The Barbeclette is less than $14.00 on Amazon. Simple and fun, bring one as a gift (perhaps with some cheese) the next time you’re invited to a barbecue. You’ll be the hit of the party.

Place a piece of cheese in the Barbeclette and grill, baby, grill.

Do you carry your own grocery tote to the supermarket instead of taking bags that just get thrown away? Good for you! Another way for environmentally-concerned people to save the environment: reusable produce bags let you BYO to the supermarket, so you aren’t throwing plastic into the landfill every time you buy lemons, apples and cucumbers.

The bags are made of fine mesh with a drawstring, are machine washable and virtually weightless. They’re see through, so cashiers can scan or input the code. Using these three bags just once a week can save as many as 150 plastic bags per year!

Go green with reusable produce bags.

Sold in sets of three bags for $7.50, two of the bags measure 11.5 X 14.25 inches and one is 14 X 16.25 inches to hold large items. Get some for yourself and note them on your holiday list as a good, inexpensive green-conscious gift. At 3Bags.com.