Designed in Europe for professional kitchens, these handy helpers made food preparation faster and more pleasant for home cooks, spawning an era of more adventurous cooking.

Before the food processor, people used electric blenders, hand-cranked grinders and food mills.

Our mother relied on her Foley food mill to rice potatoes (for the silkiest mashed potatoes), make spaetzle and purées: her splendid applesauce, tomato sauce, soups and vegetable and fruit purées. A food mill can also be used to make baby food.

The old-fashioned food mill maintains a few advantages over a food processor or blender:

 
The device rests upon a bowl or pot; the food is added and the handle cranks the ingredients into a smooth or textured purée, based on the grinding disc selected.

To make superior, seedless cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving, pick up a food mill like the one in the photo from Sur La Table, or this one from OXO.
  

A Rye Manhattan. Photo courtesy Joe’s Stone
Crab.

A Manhattan is a pre-Prohibition cocktail that’s coming back into retro favor. It’s made with whiskey, sweet vermouth and bitters and garnished with a stemmed Maraschino cherry. The traditional whiskey is rye, although Canadian whiskey, Bourbon, blended whiskey and Tennessee whiskey can be used.

The cocktail represents “classic simplicity,” says the general manager of Joe’s Stone Crab | Chicago, John Aldape, who provided this recipe.
 
 
MANHATTAN COCKTAIL RECIPE

Ingredients

1. COMBINE all ingredients except garnish in a shaker. Shake for 30 seconds. Serve “up” in a chilled Martini glass or an Old Fashioned (lowball) glass.

2. GARNISH with cherry and serve.
 
 
MANHATTAN VARIATIONS

There are many variations of the cocktail. Originally it was stirred, not shaken. And then, there are the spirits switch-outs:

 
In fact, you can have a Manhattan party and let everyone vote on the “best” Manhattan.
 
Find more of our favorite cocktail recipes.

Many people buy spiced tea as a fall and holiday favorite; perhaps the most popular is Constant Comment.

But you can make your own with the tea and spices you already have in the kitchen. In addition to black tea, you can make green spice tea or white spice tea, or rooibos (caffeine-free) spice tea, exactly as Ruth Bigelow did when she created Constant Comment tea in 1946.

We’ve seen a lot of recipes for spiced tea made from instant powdered tea, a can of Tang, and a can of powdered lemonade, mixed with nutmeg and cinnamon.

With all due respect to the first three ingredients: Yuck! Make your spice tea with whole-leaf tea and real lemon juice.
 
 
EASY SPICE TEA RECIPE

Ingredients

 
You can keep playing with the spices until you have your perfect recipe. Consider adding cardamom, chocolate, ginger, licorice, and/or peppercorns.

Then, you can fill pouches with your signature tea blend (using loose tea, not bags) and give them as gifts to tea-loving friends.
 
Preparation

1. COMBINE water, cinnamon, and cloves in a medium pan. Bring to a boil; reduce heat. Cover and simmer for 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

2. ADD tea bags; steep for 5 minutes. Remove tea bags and spices.

3. SERVE the tea hot or iced with a lemon wedge and choice of sweeteners, although the spice flavors are so exciting that no sweetener is necessary.

[2] It’s easy to make spice tea without special tea bags like these. On the other hand, a tin of spice tea bags makes a nice seasonal gift (© by Aimee Seavey | New England Today).

It can be either.

 
 
MORE TEA

Find more of our favorite teas and recipes in our Gourmet Tea Section and our Tea Glossary.
 
 

They’ve developed this tasty recipe for deviled eggs with bacon and Cheddar cheese—delicious at breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack time.

Prep Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 0 minutes
Servings: 24 servings (1 serving = one stuffed egg half)
 
 
RECIPE: DEVILED EGGS WITH BACON & CHEDDAR

Ingredients

Deviled eggs can be made up to 12 hours in advance.

1. CUT cooked eggs lengthwise in half. Remove yolks to medium bowl. Reserve 24 white halves. Finely chop remaining 4 white halves. Save remaining 2 yolks for other use: crumbled into salads, on cooked vegetables, in baked potatoes, etc.

2. MASH yolks with fork. Add mayonnaise, sour cream, mustard, lemon juice and pepper; mix well. Add chopped egg whites, bacon, cheese and chives; mix well.

3. SPOON 1 heaping tablespoon of yolk mixture into each reserved egg white half. Refrigerate, covered, to blend flavors.

4. GARNISH with a dusting of paprika prior to serving.
 
 
COOKING TIPS

Egg Freshness. Very fresh eggs can be difficult to peel. To ensure easily peeled eggs, buy and refrigerate them a week to 10 days in advance of cooking. This “breather” allows the eggs time to take in air, which helps separate the membranes from the shell.

Peeling Tip #1. Hard-cooked eggs are easiest to peel right after cooling. Cooling causes the egg to contract slightly in the shell.

Peeling Tip #2. To peel a hard-boiled egg, gently tap egg on countertop until shell is finely crackled all over. Roll the egg between your hands to loosen the shell. Start peeling at large end, holding egg under cold running water to help ease the shell off.

Storage. In the shell, hard-cooked eggs can be refrigerated safely up to one week. Refrigerate in their original carton to prevent odor absorption. Once peeled, eggs should be eaten that day.

Easy Filling Technique. Here’s the no-mess method: Put the filling in a 1-quart plastic food-storage bag. Push filling toward bottom corner of bag. Snip off about 1/2-inch of corner. Squeeze filling from bag into egg whites.

Picnic Or Tailgate Food Safety Tip. Place filling in plastic bag; carry cooked white halves and filling mixture separately in cooler. Fill eggs on the spot, pressing filling out of snipped corner of bag.
 
MORE DEVILED EGG RECIPES

Who knew you could make jam without cooking it? That you could set it in the freezer? That it could be such a fun activity?

And that freezer jam is low sugar, with just one-fourth of the sugar and fewer calories than conventional jam (it’s less thick and sticky, too)?

The next time berries or any other favorite fruit are at a good price; pick up four cups’ worth. Then, you just mash it into a purée, mix in the sugar and a special pectin, No Cook Freezer Jam Fruit Pectin.

While we haven’t tried it yet, we’re planning to mix in Splenda and see how we do with sugar-free freezer jam.

See how easy it is in the video below. Try it and let us know how you like it.

For the differences between chutney, jam, jelly, marmalade, preserves and more, check out our Jam Glossary.