I mentioned a few weeks ago, in my Kitchen Confessions Vol. 2 post that I’m taking a break from my weekly food posts and will be posting any new recipes we are trying on Pinterest. Honestly, during the summer we tend to be more ad hoc in our meal planning, making salads for dinner or grabbing a meat or fish and veggies to go on the grill, as opposed to doing more involved dishes. We try to go to the farmers market more regularly, and I will often try to make up meals around what we are able to find. Today, I’m putting a little twist on life lessons and sharing some tips/tricks/did you know items about food:
- Eggs stay fresh after their expiration date or if you buy eggs from the farmers market and you don’t have an expiration date, here is an easy test to see if they are still good (this came from Work the Thing blog):
- Did you know that bell peppers are female or male based on the number of bumps on the bottom? Four bumps is female and is better for eating raw, where three bumps is male and better for cooking.
- Most imported olive oil is not pure olive oil but a mix of lesser grade olive oil or other oils. This article gives a fun infographic on how that happens. It is best to look for single origin olive oil or olive oil from the United States (here are some suggestions). We started buying single source olive oil from Costco, and you can really taste a difference. Here is a report from the USC Davis Olive Oil Center, probably giving you more information than you want to know about olive oil…but pretty interesting.
- Did you know you can make your own powdered sugar and brown sugar? I’ve tried the powdered sugar, and it turned out pretty well, except you need a clean towel or something to put over your food processor as it creates quite the sugar cloud. I have not tried making my own brown sugar yet but it looks pretty cool.
- Making iced coffee concentrate is really easy, and you should not be wasting money on buying it. P has been making our own for the last couple of weeks now, and has even gotten me drinking it (and I don’t really drink coffee). Alicia from JayBird shared her way to make iced coffee a few weeks back, you should it check out. P’s method involves ratios and the scale, remember the pour-over post.
Do you have any food tips or tricks to share? What life lessons did you learn this week?
