Rolls of colorful cloth napkins and place-
mats create instant table décor. Photo
courtesy MYdrap.

The elegant cloth napkins and placemats, made of cotton or linen, provide fashionable table-setting options: an instant fine-dining experience. The rolls are easy to store.

MYdrap is the first single-use napkin and placemat made of cloth (a choice of 100% cotton or linen). While the concept was developed for the hospitality industry—one-time-use, recyclable place settings that save on laundry bills—you don’t have to throw them away after dinner. They can be washed and re-used up to five times (some ironing is needed).

1. Variety is the spice of life. You can switch and combine colors with ease, to match different sets of dishes, seasons or holidays (there are 14 colors in cotton and 7 colors in linen). We don’t need red and green table linens year-round; MYdrap is a relatively inexpensive way to set a holiday table. The same goes special events like baby showers: Use pink and blue napkins and mats.

2. No fuss. For people who like table linens but not washing and ironing them, they’re a boon.

MYdrap is available in the U.S. at Bloomingdale’s, and online at CasaMyDrap.com. There are 50 napkins per roll. The cost per standard dinner napkin is 60 cents.

It’s French for “everything in its place,” and it’s how cooks are trained from the outset to prepare recipes.

It simply means that before starting to cook or bake, everything needed to prepare the recipe is gathered, pre-prepped (chopping onions or measuring flour, for example) and set on the counter in easy reach. Only then is a cook ready to begin.

It’s surprising how many home cooks don’t follow this simple system. If you’ve found yourself looking for the lemon to zest, stopping to hunt for a kitchen tool or realizing that you don’t have enough butter, you’ll find that cooking is more efficient and unharried when you put mis en place in place.

Thanks to Chef Louis Eguaras, author of 101 Things I Learned In Culinary School, for this tip.

All in place and ready to cook. Photo courtesy RestaurantWindow.com.

Although National Mushroom Month draws to a close today, these tasty, low-calorie fungi should be enjoyed all year round.

Learn from The French Culinary Institute’s Marc Bauer how to slice mushrooms evenly and with little waste.

Substituting part or all of the meat in your recipe with mushrooms can help stretch your food budget.

For more how-tos, visit our Food Videos Section.

This 10-cup manual drip Melitta Coffeemaker set is just $12.95 at Amazon.com.

Before 1908, coffee was a gritty affair. The percolators of the time tended to over-brew the coffee, making it too bitter. Espresso machines left grounds in the cup. Reusable linen bag filters were an option, but who wanted to empty and clean them?

Housewife Melitta Bentz (1873-1950) of Dresden, Germany sought a solution.

In 1908, Mrs. Bentz tested different ways to create a permeable barrier between the grounds and the brewed coffee. She hit pay dirt when testing blotting paper from the notebook of her older son (in those pre-ball point, pre-felt tip days, people wrote with pen and ink, and used the paper to blot up the ink spills).

Mrs. Bentz tweaked the product and received a patent in 1912 for “a coffee filter with a curved and indented bottom and with slanting extraction holes,” to be used in combination with “filtration paper.” It was a hit. Today the company, run by Melitta’s grandchildren, has a workforce of some 3,800 people in 50 countries. In the U.S. alone, it sold $100 million worth of filters in 2009.

You can see the original device here. It doesn’t look like today’s sleek plastic cone and cone-shaped filter, (shown in the photo), but it did the trick.

Make your French fries or sweet potato fries crisper by doing what the chefs do:

Let the raw potatoes stand in cold water for at least 30 minutes before frying.

To get them extra-extra crisp, double fry them.

First, par-fry the potatoes at 325°F for three minutes, until soft, but not brown. Remove and drain on brown paper bags.

Next, bring the oil temperature up to 375°F. Cook the fries a second time for 4 minutes, until golden and crispy. Drain on fresh brown paper bags, then paper towels. Season and serve.

How should you season your fries?

Photo © Idaho Potato Commission.

Hate to slice the potatoes with a knife? Treat yourself to a vegetable/French fry cutter, which also makes zucchini fries a breeze.