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.