THE NIBBLE BLOG: Products, Recipes & Trends In Specialty Foods


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TIP OF THE DAY: Try A Homemade Kitchen Cleaner

January 8, 2012 at 8:03 am · Filed under Kitchenware-Tabletop, Tip Of The Day


Save money by mixing your own household
cleaners. Spray bottles from Liquid Fence.

   Readers of this blog may have picked up the fact that we’re environmentally conscious. We do what we can to minimize our carbon footprint and we look for ways to repurpose everything before tossing the bottle, jar or can into the recycling container.

As we were cleaning out a cabinet, we came across an empty Windex spray bottle that had been stored, awaiting repurposing.

Shortly before that, we’d come across Grandma’s recipe for an all-purpose household cleaner. In the early part of the 20th century and for centuries before that, housewives bought the basic ingredients—baking soda, borax, rubbing alcohol, soap (liquid soap was patented in 1865), vinegar and washing soda (a laundry ingredient)—and made their own cleaning products.

Try this simple all-purpose cleaner, which we’ve been using on counters and appliances:
 

  • Fill an empty, clean spray bottle two-thirds full with water.
  • Fill the remaining space with white vinegar.
  • Shake to blend; spritz away.
  • If you don’t like the smell of vinegar (the aroma evaporates quickly), add a few drops of an essential oil. We had lavender oil on hand. Drugstores and natural food stores should have a selection of popular scents.

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    Not only does it work; the ingredients cost about fifty cents, compared with $3.69 to buy a name-brand bottle.

    If you like the idea of making your own household cleaners, here are recipes for everything from floor cleaner to non-scratch scrubs.

      

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    TIP OF THE DAY: Best Low Calorie Foods

    January 7, 2012 at 8:51 am · Filed under Diet Nibbles, Tip Of The Day

    Love great food but need help sticking to a New Year’s resolution?

    We never start a diet without loading up on these favorites from our Diet Nibbles Section. Each is so delicious yet low in calories.

  • Bare Fruit Cinnamon Apple Chips. Almost as satisfying as apple pie. A .4-ounce serving is 29 calories. The chips are feather-light, so it’s a nice serving size. Get some. Read our review.
  • Blackberry Patch No Sugar Added Syrups. At 35 calories a tablespoon, add some to yogurt, use as a dipping sauce for apple slices or anywhere you need some sweetness. In Blackberry, Blueberry and Maple Pecan, one tablespoons is 25 calories. Get some. Read our review.
  • Bilinski’s Chicken Sausages. Low in fat and as little as 70 calories for a juicy link, we enjoy these with an egg for breakfast, for lunch with sauerkraut, in many dinner recipes and as protein-packed snacks. Get some at the supermarket—brands vary by region. Read our review.
  • Boylan’s Bottleworks Diet Sodas. Nobody makes better soda—regular or diet—than Boylans. The diet sodas—black cherry, cola, creme, orange and root beer—have 0 calories. Get some. Read our review.
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    Combining the crunch of chips with the flavor of apples, we love this low-calorie snack from Bare Fruit. Photo by Hannah Kaminsky | THE NIBBLE.
     

  • FAGE 0% Greek Yogurt. Instead of sour cream, try this thick, tangy yogurt. Or, sweeten it with honey or fruit preserves for dessert. Get some at supermarkets nationwide (Chobani and Oikos are equally delicious); 15 calories/tablespoon, 90 calories per six-ounce container. Read our review.
  • Garlic Farms Garlic Juice. A calorie-free spray that adds fresh garlic flavor to anything. Get some. Read our review.
  • Infused Whitefish Roe. At just 20 calories a tablespoon, crunchy caviar is a most delicious snack atop a slice of cucumber. The roes are available plain or in flavors such as citron, mango, passionfruit and wasabi. Get some. Read our review.
  • The King’s Cupboard Sugar-Free Chocolate Sauce. When you’re dying for chocolate, a spoonful of this luscious, fudgy sauce is more than satisfying. One tablespoon is 55 calories. Get some. Read our review.
  • La Nouba Sugar Free Marshmallows. Better than supermarket marshmallows; no one will believe they’re sugar free! Three plump marshmallows have 41 calories. Get some. Read our review.
  • PB2 Peanut Butter Powder. With just two grams of fat and 45 calories per serving, PB lovers have a healthy alternative to full-fat peanut butter (at 190 calories per serving and approximately 16 grams of fat). Reconstitute it into a spread or sprinkle it on yogurt and other foods. Get some. Read our review.
     
    Do you have favorite low calorie products? Add them to this list!

      

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    TIP OF THE DAY: Clean Out The Gadgets, Pots & Pans

    January 6, 2012 at 8:32 am · Filed under Kitchenware-Tabletop, Tip Of The Day


    When was the last time you used the wok? Time to start woking or give it away. Electric wok from Aroma.

    		   A few days ago, we suggested taking time to clean out the spice cabinet.

    Now, how about those kitchen gadgets, pots and pans? It’s a great weekend task, and other household members can join in, help and vote: what stays, what goes.

    Last weekend we went through our two overstuffed gadget drawers and found three lemon zesters, eight corkscrews, an electric uncorker we haven’t used in the two years since we received it as a gift, six vegetable peelers, a mango slicer that didn’t work for us and a manual egg beater we haven’t used in decades. Oh, and a gadget that turns radishes into roses for crudité platters.

    Elsewhere in the kitchen were grungy spatulas among newer ones. Two sterling silver cake servers from a past life of lavish entertaining. Seven bowl scrapers (we don’t use them, but companies keep sending them to us). Plastic containers piled so high, the stacks keep falling over.

     
    Among the pots, pans were much larger space hoggers. Stainless steel frying pans we haven’t used in the years since we switched to nonstick surfaces. Specialty items like the tamago pan we last used around 1990, to make Japanese omelets for sushi. A beautiful like-new double-sided waffle maker—but we’ve given up the pancake and waffle group for protein-focused breakfasts. An electric wok we liked, but out-of-sight-out-of-mind, we haven’t used in a year.

    If you’ve got a similar situation, this Tip Of The Day will solve it.

  • Toss out anything worn or grungy.
  • Put everything that doesn’t deserve the space it takes into a box. If you’re undecided about certain things, put them in a second “TBD” box. Consider them for a day, then move them into the first box.
  • Ignore emotions that tempt you to keep Grandma’s egg beater and the pricey juicer you only used once.
  • Invite friends and neighbors to stop by for coffee and to take their pick. Donate everything left over to a cooking school or a thrift shop.
  • If you like to organize events and can resist the temptation to acquire things you don’t need, you can host a white elephant party to help your friends donate their excess paraphernalia.

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    Enjoy the extra space you’ve freed up. We live in a small apartment with no storage lockers or other storage space.

    But even if you live with a luxury of space, someone else can enjoy your white elephants.

      

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