This is just a brief Christmas eve photo essay, before I move onto making all my favorite Christmas Eve buffet finger foods. Barry and I received the most precious package of homemade cookies the other day — a beautiful, fragile batch of ultra-thin, crispy Sand Tarts. Here we are, enjoying them!

Thanks to Donna and Mike and Lois and Odessa — you guys are the very, very, very best.

Hmmm...what could possibly be in here?

COOKIES!!!!!

Barry goes into cookie rapture

Can I eat another one? Or else the whole tin?

I’ve never written a review panning a restaurant before. But I’ve never had a meal this bad before.

We were hungry for lunch this morning while out running errands in Beaufort. Imagining a nice plate of something with a lot of broccoli, I suggested Chinese food. We had tried Taste of China and found it to be OK, but very Americanized Chinese. So we decided to try something different, Dragon King, located in a strip mall on US 70.

Over the counter was an illuminated photo menu, and the food in the photos looked appetizing. I’ve seen this sort of display before, and the food that is served never looks as good as the photos. I’ve always assumed that was just because the food we  eat is not “styled.”

But I had an epiphany as I sat at the table, waiting for my broccoli shrimp. “I’ve just realized that those are stock photos. I bet they use the same ones in all these Chinese restaurants.” We studied the photos for a bit, thinking to look more closely the next time we go to a different Chinese restaurant.

Our hot-and-sour soup was brought out by a very small boy, probably about 8 years old, who carried them from the kitchen one at a time. He made a face at me and deliberately placed both bowls of soup in front of Barry. The soup was neither hot nor sour, and the fried noodles served with it were stale.

As we ate our soup, a TV above our heads was blasting a brain-numbing infomercial for the Total Gym. Someone had turned it on for our benefit. I wondered if they received a commission on every Total Gym sold to a customer.

Finally, after about 20 minutes of the Total Gym commercial, our entrees arrived. The little boy brought Barry his General Tso’s Chicken. This explained the wait — it looked as thought they’d gone out and gotten him an order of Chicken McNuggets, brought it back, and doused it in a mixture of catsup and corn syrup. It was garnished with two perfectly-steamed, bright green broccoli spears.

Then the woman brought my broccoli shrimp. A disgusting mass stared up at me, a pile of olive-colored mush and four shrimp swimming in a salty brown liquid. You’d have to dig awfully deep in the garbage to find broccoli in that state of decomposition. I stared enviously at Barry’s plate — not the Chicken McNuggets, but those two broccoli spears, the only edible food on either plate.

I have eaten a lot of mediocre food in restaurants, but this was the worst food I’ve ever been served. Worse even than the “chicken breast sandwich” at Roland’s Barbecue, where they stuck a fried chicken breast, bones and all, between the unadorned halves of a white pasty hamburger bun. That was merely strange. This was criminal abuse of a vegetable. And four rubbery shrimp who died in vain.

I was both hungry and distraught when we left. A real treat was in order, something to erase the memory of the awful broccoli. A few minutes later, I was sitting in  a comfy rocking chair on the front porch of Parson’s General Store in Morehead City, eating a scoop of cherry ice cream. In hindsight, I wish I’d skipped lunch entirely. Then I could have had TWO scoops.

Today, April 2nd, is National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day.

Whether this is a real holiday or a bogus one, it gives me a chance to write about two of my favorite foods and two of my favorite people.

If you are from overseas, you find American peanut butter “ghastly,” to quote British writer Annie Hill. It’s gooey and sticky and full of sugar and hydrogenated oils and artificial-sounding ingredients. That’s about 98% of the American peanut butter market, and I find it ghastly, too.

But there’s another kind. In some stores, you walk up to a machine that holds raw peanuts in the top. You put your container under the spigot, push a button, and simple ground peanut paste comes out.

We don’t have a place like that around here, so we buy natural peanut butter in jars. The ingredient list is simply “peanuts, salt.” It’s less convenient than the “ghastly” stuff, because  the nut butter separates from the oil. When you get it home, you have to stir it, or shake it, or do something to mix it back up again.

And then there’s the jelly. There are two kinds of jelly, too. There’s the cheap stuff, full of high-fructose corn syrup and food coloring and a tiny bit of fruit for texture. And there’s the good stuff: Homemade.

In the early 90’s, Barry and I had the good fortune to live with writer Elizabeth Bolton, known to us as Barbie, at Hill Farm, outside Portland, Oregon. Barbie was constantly whipping up batches of jam based on whatever ingredients came her way. A free crate of kiwis? Kiwi jam. Blackberries everywhere? Blackberry jam. Plums, pears, apples, blueberries — each represented another batch of jam to spread on Barbie’s mouth-watering homemade bread. Elderberry jelly was her specialty.

A few years after she passed away, we visited Hill Farm. In the pantry, tears came to my eyes as I saw the rows and rows of jam jars, some with the custom logo I’d designed and her distinctive handwriting. Even though she was gone, she was still feeding us.

Barbie’s jam-making skill was passed along to her son, Michael, who lives in Southern California. He and his family make a special jam, too — burnt kumquat, from fruit grown on their property. Barry and I have one jar left, and it’s so special, we’re saving it until Flutterby is launched. That jar is more important than champagne, and we’ll probably have to write a special christening ceremony for the boat that includes a bite of it for Neptune.

Michael planted an elderberry bush a few years ago, and it recently bore enough fruit for jam. So he did a very special thing. He made up a batch of jelly, and into it, he put a spoonful of jelly from one of his mother’s jars. He plans to use her jelly until it’s all gone, and then, he’ll seed each batch with a spoonful from one of his jars. So there will always be a tiny amount of Barbie’s jelly in every one of his jars of deep purple elderberry jelly.

We have her homemade bread recipe, so we can even make the correct substrate for it. Barbie’s been gone for over 10 years now, but she’ll always be feeding us, thanks to Michael and his homemade jelly. Yum.

Here are a couple of fun things to do with peanut butter and jelly: 1) Take a whole wheat tortilla and spread it with peanut butter and jelly. Peel a nice, ripe banana that’s the same length as the diameter of the tortilla. Roll the tortilla around the banana and enjoy. 2) Make a PB&J on bread. Then grill it until the bread is browned and crisp in butter in a skillet or on a griddle. According to the folks at Graceland, this was one of Elvis Presley’s favorite foods.

Easter’s right around the corner, too. Don’t forget about Barbie’s Goldenrod Eggs, to use up those extra hard-boiled, colored eggs.

Last December, Barry and I caught a ride from Beaufort, North Carolina, to Raleigh with Dan Smith, of Funny Farm. It was a miserable evening, raining cats and dogs, and we bounced along 2-lane roads in Dan’s Big Red Truck, swapping tales and keeping each other entertained.

In Goldsboro, North Carolina, Dan introduced us to his favorite barbecue joint, Wilbur’s. We sat down in the cavernous dining room, and the waitress put a basket of hush puppies in front of us, even before we’d ordered. It’s kind of like the tortilla chips you get at a Mexican restaurant.

I’d forgotten my glasses that night, as usual, and I was sure I was misreading the menu. How could they sell a barbecue plate for less than $5?

In the time since then, we’ve gone out of our way to avoid tourist traps, and we’ve found a lot of down-home North Carolina restaurants. I’m always amazed at three things: The hush puppies, the number of fried things on the menu, and the prices. You can stuff yourself silly, always for less than $10.

My problem with the hush puppies goes back to childhood, when I learned to associate them with seafood. As a result, I think of hush puppies as something you put cocktail  or tartar sauce on. But in North Carolina, they’re considered the bread course, served with butter. To me, putting butter on a hush puppy to me is like putting butter on a piece of fried fish!

Here are some of the cheap, memorable places where we’ve eaten around here:

The Captain’s Table, Morehead City: Located on Route 70, this is a family place where you have to walk through the large smoking section to get to the small non-smoking section. The owner told me he tried it the other way, and lost a lot of customers. This is tobacco country, after all. The food is fried, fast, and cheap, and the service is friendly. I always eat too much (especially on all-you-can-eat oyster night), so I don’t have room for the mouth-watering pies.

Roland’s Barbecue, Beaufort: The barbecue is good, but I’ve had trouble with other menu items. I once ordered the chicken breast sandwich, because it sounded healthy. What I received was a plain white hamburger bun with a fried chicken breast sitting on it. The weird part was that the chicken breast was not boneless! When I asked the lady at the counter if there’d been a mistake, she just gave me a toothless grin and laughed. I guess that means nobody every orders the chicken breast sandwich.

No-Name Pizza, Beaufort: This is the healthiest cheap restaurant in town, with excellent gyros and subs, as well as pizza and Italian dishes. Their hamburgers are enormous! And the tzatziki is so good, I can eat it with a spoon. The only downside is, they don’t serve hush puppies. I bet they’d be good with tzatziki.

Golden Corral, Morehead City: This is not just a restaurant, it’s a (frightening) cultural experience. It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet with hundreds of foods, and you can stuff yourself until you hurt. I know, I’ve done it. The last time we went, our group included people from Switzerland, Australia, Oregon, and Wyoming, all amazed at what North Carolina has to offer in the way of food. But if you can focus on the salad bar and protein foods and not give yourself a stomachache on sweet potato casserole with marshmallows, it’s a good value.

Big John’s, Beaufort: When we moved out of the boat and into the van, cooking became a serious challenge, and we were too tired to drive into town. So we ate at Big John’s at least once a week, because it’s only a mile from the boatyard. If you didn’t know it was there, you would miss it, because it’s actually inside a BP gas station on Highway 101 at Steel Tank Road. Their cheese steak and pepper steak sandwiches are excellent, and they make good pizza, too. It’s probably better for takeout than eat-in, but we didn’t have any place to take it, so we put up with the giggling teenagers who hang out there.

Barry came back to the boat recently and found me laughing my head off like a lunatic. Because we’ve been doing fiberglass work in the main cabin, we’ve moved out of the galley and are cooking on a 2-burner Coleman stove on a picnic table under the boat.

But I can’t let the Coleman stove stifle my creative cooking instincts. And I’ve been meaning to make cookies for my friends here in the boatyard for a while. Finally, this past Sunday evening, I made a batch of No-bake Oatmeal Cookies.

One of the rules I break all the time is this one: Never ever make an untried recipe for company. In this case, I was hoping they’d be good enough to give away, but I wasn’t stupid. I didn’t tell anyone ahead of time and get their expectations up.

I carefully followed the recipe, which came from an issue of Practical Sailor. It’s not exactly Cooks’ Illustrated or Gourmet — in all the years I’ve read the magazine, this was the first time they’d actually printed a recipe. There are a lot of sailors out there with stoves and no ovens, so no-bake cookies are important!

Anyway, the reason Barry found me collapsed in laughter was the result of my attempt at no-bake cookies. The result was suspiciously like peanut butter-chocolate fudge with oatmeal in it, not a cookie-like consistency at all. And when I tried to cut them, they crumbled horribly. So I came up with a new name for them, a contraction of “fudge” and “cookie”: Fuckie.

As Barry came around the boat, wondering what was so funny, I knew I had to offer him one. “Honey,” I gasped, “Would you like a … fuckie?”

“A WHAT?” he asked. Between chuckles, I managed to explain the name. I tried to hand him one, but half of it dropped off before he could eat it. They truly were “fuckies.”

Nonetheless, they tasted OK, and folks who are working on boats need all the treats they can get. So I passed them out, and they went over remarkably well. One reason might be this: I chickened out and changed the name. I mean, most people won’t accept a fuckie from someone they hardly know.

Fookie, anyone?

Sometimes, when I’m reading, there’s a description of how to make something that sounds delicious, even though it’s not precisely a recipe. Like the Fondue recipe from occupied France, this one comes from a World War II memoir. In this case, it’s the second book of Roald Dahl’s autobiography, Going Solo. I highly recommend this a quick read, and a book that’s hard to put down. Dahl is the author responsible for such childhood classics as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach.

Dahl was living near Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and working for Shell when war was declared. As one of the few Englishmen around, he was expected to lead a platoon of local black soldiers and round up any Germans trying to leave the country. Given his lack of military training, even he thought this was ludicrous — the Sergeant and the troops were very well trained, and he was embarrassed to be catapulted into a leadership role over them, solely based on his skin color and nationality.

On top of this, when they set up the blockade, he hadn’t thought to bring any food (he was used to having those things taken care of by his servant, a funny and capable man named Mdisho). The 23-year-old Dahl rather humbly asked the Sergeant he was commanding for some of the evening meal that was prepared for the soldiers.

“Then the Sergeant made a fire out of sticks and began cooking supper for his men. He was making rice in an enormous pot, and while the rice was boiling, he took from the truck a great stem of bananas and started snapping them off the stem one by one and peeling the and slicing them up and dropping the slices into the pot of rice. When the food was ready, each askari produced his own tin plate and spoon and the Sergeant dished out large portions with a ladle. Up to then I hadn’t thought about my own food and I certainly had not brought anything with me. Watching the men eat made me hungry. ‘Do you think I could have a little of that, please?’ I said to the Sergeant.

‘Yes, bwana,’ he said. ‘Have you got a plate?’

‘No,’ I said. So he found me a tin plate and a spoon and gave me a huge helping. It was absolutely delicious. The rice was unhusked and brown and the grains did not stick together. The slices of banana were hot and sweet and in some way they oiled the rice, as butter would. It was the best rice dish I had ever tasted and I ate it all and felt good and forgot about the Germans.”

I haven’t tried making this yet, but it sounds delicious to me, too. I think I’ll make a pot of pressure-cooker brown rice, toss in some sliced bananas, and then put the lid back on to steam for a few minutes. It’s even simpler (and more healthy) than a version I published with white rice and coconut cream, and somehow it reminds me of Cindy’s poached banana dessert. Or my favorite Ecuadorian tomato soup with bananas.

The moral of the story is, when you cook with bananas, you don’t need a whole lot of other ingredients. Just a tin plate, a spoon, and good manners.

Have you ever looked carefully at the condiment shelf in your fridge? I bet you can identify items that are years, maybe decades old. And then there are things we wouldn’t know how to keep if we didn’t have a refrigerator and freezer. For example, mayonnaise, or butter, or fresh ginger.

For years, I’ve been reading about cruising sailors who live without refrigeration. Boat refrigeration is expensive to install and painful to maintain, and it’s the item that uses the most electricity, a scant resource. So I’ve always assumed that we would just learn to live without it.

But living on a boat at anchor and living on a boat on jackstands are two different things. We don’t have nice cool water around our boat, and without masts and booms, we don’t even have any shade. It is hot, hot, hot.

But we have a vehicle, and there are plenty of places to buy ice nearby. Block ice, which keeps longer than cubes, is a little harder to find, but we found the places that carry it. Beaufort Ice, the wholesaler, will sell it to us if we happen to be in town during regular business hours. Once, at the end of the day, they gave us a free block, because we didn’t have exact change. They distribute their blocks to other places, like Captain Kenny’s BP station and the strange and dark mini-mart we call “Skankland,” but of course it costs more.

So we started buying a block of ice for our icebox every day. Sometimes we would go two days, and then buy two blocks. But it’s a hassle. Our friends were using block ice, too, until they got their fridge working. Now, when they see us hauling ice back from the gas station, they just smile contentedly. “You should buy a little refrigerator,” said Gigi. “I saw them for $64 at Kmart, I think, or Wal-Mart.”

She was right. We were spending over $70 per month just for the ice, not counting the gas and the time. I went to Kmart and plunked down the credit card. Returning home, Barry put the new fridge over his shoulder and carried it up to the cockpit. “It sure is light,” we both commented.

Then we plugged it in, and I read the little manual. Wait, what’s this? It’s a thermoelectric model with no refrigerant. It says it can lower the temperature up to 20 degrees from ambient. That won’t work when it’s 95 degrees — who wants a 75-degree refrigerator?

I went back to Kmart and carried the fridge to the customer service desk — I didn’t even need a cart to return it. I should have known that a 22-pound fridge wouldn’t work.

So on to Wal-Mart, where we bought one that weighs 55 pounds. We had to use a block and tackle to get this one up to the cockpit. But it has a real compressor, and a tiny freezer compartment where we can make ice cubes, and although it’s only 1.7 cubic feet, that’s enough room for our milk and cheese and lunchmeat and a few vegetables.

We’ll have to sell the fridge when we launch the boat, and then we’ll figure out how to live without refrigeration on the water. But in the mean time, we’re in cool heaven. And instead of carrying ice up the ladder, we get to carry something better: Ice cream!

Have you ever wondered how to cook a turkey on a charcoal grill? When it’s time to cook a turkey, it’s usually a holiday, and the kitchen is a madhouse. There are pies and casseroles and rolls to be baked, and the oven is never big enough for everything. Cooking the turkey outside is a simple solution — especially since there is often a grill cook or two around the house with nothing to do.

For years, the culinary highlight of our annual White Elephant party was a grilled turkey, which served dozens of hungry guests with minimal work. As I once wrote on Adventures with Meps ‘n’ Barry:

Barry discovered how easy it was to throw a turkey on the barbecue grill, so that became the central menu item. He’d take it off the grill as the party was getting in full swing and plop it on a platter in the middle of the table, next to a carving fork and knife. Then he’d walk away.

The guests would stand around, looking puzzled. “Who’s going to carve the turkey?” they’d ask. Finally, someone who couldn’t stand to wait any longer would just pick up the knife and start carving away. And Barry and I would give each other a high-five, since we knew how to cook a turkey, but didn’t want to admit that carving it was beyond us.

This past Christmas, Barry’s mother prepared a turkey on her grill, and we documented the process with the camera. It’s so easy, it’s worth buying a turkey any time of the year!

What you’ll need:

A large kettle-style barbecue grill (such as a Weber)
A large bag of charcoal – regular briquettes, not Matchlight
Lighter fluid or a chimney-style charcoal starter with newspaper
A rectangular pan (disposable foil pans work, but may leak) to put under the turkey
Optional: Hardware cloth to hold briquettes
Optional: Turkey lifter
Optional: Lid spacers — metal rods or 2×4’s wrapped in foil

1. Before buying your turkey, measure the height of your grill lid from the grate that holds the turkey. If your turkey isn’t small enough to fit under the lid, you can use spacers to gain an extra inch or two. The spacers are illustrated in step #9. (The turkey may take a little longer to cook, but the results will be fine.)
2. Light your charcoal, using either lighter fluid or a chimney-style charcoal lighter with newspaper.
3. Meanwhile, prepare the turkey. Remove any giblets, wash the turkey, and tie up the wings and legs with wire or string. Rub the outside of the turkey with butter or olive oil. Important: This cooking method does not work with a turkey that’s stuffed. If you want stuffing, you’ll have to roast it in a separate pan in the oven.
   
4. Once all the briquettes have a layer of gray ash on them, they’re ready to use. Using tongs, divide the briquettes into two piles, one on each side of the grill, with the rectangular pan in the middle. There should be about 25-30 briquettes on each side. The goal is to cook the turkey with indirect heat and catch the drippings in the pan. One way to make this a little easier is to create “baskets” out of hardware cloth to hold the briquettes on the sides.
   
   
   
5. Put a little water into the drippings pan.
6. Place the grill on top of the charcoal and drippings pan.
   
7. If you have a turkey lifter, put it on top of the grill.
   
8. Put the turkey on the grill, centered over the foil pan. (in the photo below, the turkey was not perfectly centered, and the left wing was slightly scorched)
   
9. Put the lid over the turkey and set a timer for one hour.
10. Optional: The spacers shown below are only needed if the lid does not fit over the turkey. In a pinch, when we discovered the turkey was too tall at the last minute, we used 2×4’s wrapped in foil, one on either side of the grill. But if you know ahead of time that your turkey is too tall, metal rods like these are an elegant solution.
    
    
11. When an hour has passed, open the grill and add 8 or 9 fresh charcoal briquettes to the burnt-down briquettes on each side. There’s no need for lighter fluid. It’s easiest to do this if you remove the turkey to a baking sheet. When you put the turkey back, check to make sure it’s centered. You may also want to add a little water to the drippings pan.
    
12. Repeat step #9 every hour until the turkey is done. The total time should be about 12 minutes per pound. Use a meat thermometer to be absolutely certain that it’s done.
    
13. If you want to make gravy from the drippings, use a baster to remove the drippings about a half hour before the turkey is done.
14. Remove the turkey to a platter. Let it sit for 15 minutes on the counter before carving. If you put it on the table at a party, it will usually take about 15 minutes of discussion before one of the guests grabs the carving knife.

I took a very special photograph today, a plate of tiny poached pears stuffed with cream cheese. Why is the photo special? It represents the last four pears. What a relief!

Barry’s parents have several pear trees that produce delicious pears every fall. Unfortunately, they produce too many of them, and they ripen all at once.

Two years ago, we took as many as we could eat and gave pounds of them away to friends. We made batch after batch of pear sauce. Then I found a juicer at the thrift store. We began to juice many pears each day, tossing in a small lime or lemon wedge, peel and all, to give the juice some additional “zing.” This went on for days, until one day, the thrift store juicer whined and gasped and croaked. It was worth the $3 I’d paid for it, and had almost gotten us through the season.

Last year, we took another huge batch, but we didn’t give as many away. Instead, we borrowed a food dryer, dipping the cored pear quarters into Fruit Fresh and then drying them for hours. The work was interminable and the results tiny. We ended up with about a gallon of little pieces of dried pear skin. Not worth the effort, even if they were chewy and sweet.

This year, we found a blender at the thrift store and discovered pear smoothies. We used at least four pears a day, and the motor on the sturdy blender was up to the task. I stopped in to visit a friend at breakfast-time last week. “I have a treat for you,” she said, “we made pear smoothies this morning.” I couldn’t help but laugh. Not only had I already had a pear smoothie that day, but after two months of them, a pear smoothie was no longer a treat!

Barry and I also took pear crisp or pear cobbler to every potluck, giving us a chance to refine the recipe. Each batch called for three pears, but we doubled the topping and sometimes used as many as ten pears. We made salads that used the pears, along with home-grown apples and cucumbers. Barry made sparkling pear cupcakes, halving the recipe but accidentally leaving the same number of pears as a full recipe. No surprise, they were very moist! Finally, this morning, I was down to the last eight, the tiniest ones. They were too cute to put in the blender.

So I carefully peeled them and cut the cores out, then poached them and stuffed them with cream cheese. As I handled the delicate things, they felt like old friends. But after I ate them, I could only feel relief. They’re gone, and now I finally get to eat something else!

I recently wrote about my favorite kitchen gadgets, the small ones (see A few of my favorite things, part one). The following short list has my favorite big things, the ones that don’t fit into a drawer. One reason they’re favorites is because they all come with great stories. Some have multiple uses. For instance, the salad spinner can also be used to make art or dry your socks. And my husband is incredibly versatile.

Cast iron skillet with a lid. I inherited two cast-iron skillets from my mother, who’d gotten them from her mother. At the time, Mom had gotten some arthritis in her wrist, so she was happy to pass them along to someone who could actually lift them. I loved them like they were my children — I never washed them with soap, and I always seasoned them with vegetable oil after each washing. Then, several years later, catastrophe! My mother discovered a recipe for blackened fish and demanded the return of one of her cast-iron skillets. It took us months to get a new skillet as well-seasoned as the original, 75-year-old pan.

But it was worth it. We use our cast-iron skillets for everything, and they can easily go from the stove to the oven for dishes like upside-down cake or chillaquillas. Properly seasoned, they’re just as non-stick as Teflon or Silverstone, and a lot safer.

Cuisinart food processor. Christmas, 1990. My fiance was flying from Virginia to Ohio to spend the holiday with me, but he nearly missed his flight because of my present. He had decided to get me a food processor, and after reading Consumer Reports, determined that nothing less than a real Cuisinart would do. The problem was that he blithely planned to walk to the airport, a distance of about two miles. He picked up his suitcase in one hand and the shopping bag with the Cuisinart in the other. A half block into the walk, he shifted hands. And shifted back. And forth. And back. And forth.

With packaging and attachments, that Cuisinart weighed almost 25 pounds. And so he struggled all the way to the airport. When I picked him up on the other end, his hands were still sore, and until Christmas morning, I had no idea why.

That Cuisinart is still going strong at 17. It slices, it grates, it juliennes, it chops. It makes perfect pie crust and apple-cranberry relish to die for. And every time I use it, I think about how much I adore the man who gave it to me.

Second-generation pressure cooker. There are two kinds of cooks in the world: Those who use a pressure cooker, and those who don’t. I can’t imagine life without a pressure cooker, because I love whole grains, dried beans, and long-cooking vegetables like artichokes and beets. I know you can simmer those things on the stove for hours; one of my old black bean recipes specifically mentions simmering for 4 hours. But after having a pressure cooker for 12 years, there isn’t anything I cook on the stove that takes longer than 45 minutes — and the burner is only “on” for the first half of that.

If a true pressure-cooker fanatic is someone with two cookers, I’m a fanatic.

The term “second-generation” refers to the fact that today’s pressure cookers have a spring-loaded valve and additional fail-safes to prevent pea-soup-on-the-ceiling explosions that made the original 1950s pressure cookers infamous.

Countertop salad spinner. For most people, the word “countertop” seems unnecessary, because what other kind of salad spinner is there? For me, the other kind is the big one, the one down in the laundry room.Until 1980, my mother washed her lettuce, always iceberg, and put it on the counter on a towel to dry. Salad spinners had been invented, but were not yet common. Then she read an amazing article in the New York Times that suggested putting the lettuce in a pillowcase, tying the top shut, and putting it in the washing machine on “spin” cycle. In a top-loading washer, when you get the knob in just the right position, it simply spins without spraying any water into the tub, and the centrifugal force is the same as any salad spinner.

The problem was, as the family teenager, the job was delegated to me. It was novel at first, but eventually I became bored with it, because I had to descend to the dreary basement laundry corner and stay there until the spin cycle, which always seemed a lot longer than necessary for a head of lettuce, was complete.

Today, although I have my own washer and my own dreary basement laundry room, I also have a cute little salad spinner from the thrift store. I don’t think I’ve ever used it to dry iceberg lettuce, but I’ve done many batches of romaine, Bibb, red leaf, spinach, and all manner of gourmet greens that weren’t available to my mother. I’ve also postulated that if a washer can be used as a salad spinner, then a salad spinner could be used to dry clothing. As a cruising sailor who believes that every item needs to have multiple uses, I wouldn’t be averse to spinning a few pairs of underwear or socks in it.

Barry, my sous-chef. There isn’t anyone I’d rather play in the kitchen with. He is more religious than I about seasoning the cast-iron skillets (he never really forgave my mother), and more likely to use the larger pressure cooker to create a batch of homemade chili so huge we’ll be eating it for weeks. He also shares “in” jokes with me, like the “shoot” attachment that came with the Cuisinart. They called it a chute attachment, but that had to be a misspelling. Its role in life seemed to be “shooting” food all the way across the kitchen instead of putting it into the bowl.

While the salad spinner could be used to dry socks, he’s so versatile — and kind — that he will also wash the darn things for me.