Here are a few non-recipe items from June food magazines that we liked.
Martha Stewart Living
We love this suggestion for making muffins more festive and easily portable by making Crisp Muffin Wrappers out of parchment. We tried it when making Best Blueberry Muffins (pictured right) earlier this month. It's a great alternative to using muffin cups.
Also from MSL and Merchant4.com come these crazy Chikotan Charcoal Stirrers, which are charcoal sticks made from Japanese bamboo. Used in high end bars in Japan, these drink stirrers absorb impurities in beverages.
MSL also has some wonderful ideas for infused liquors, such as Beet-Cucumber Vodka, Lemongrass Peach Sake and Fennel Vodka. As our herbs start to take off, we look forward to experimenting with some of our own. We especially like the idea of making these as gifts for housewarmings and summer gatherings.
Fine Cooking
We're going to keep Fine Cooking's handy guide to preserving fruits and vegetables through freezing at hand for later this summer, when we're in need of using up vegetables from our CSA. Freezing through preserving is something we've experimented with for a few summers. We've had great success with some vegetables (especially bell peppers), but also some freezing failures (like eggplant).The handy guide walks you through how to best prep 20 fruits and veggies prior to freezing them.
Gourmet
MixMyGranola.com is a new site that allows you to create your own customized granola blend. Ingredients range from the delicious (dried blueberries and cranberries) to the exotic (Goji berries, Chia seeds) to the whimsical (gummi bears, animal crackers).
The MixMyGranola team reached out to us earlier this summer, asking if we'd like to create our own blend. We did, building a mix that included Goji berries, dried blueberries, Chia seeds and roasted almonds. Pricing depends on how many ingredients you add (ours totaled $11.04 plus shipping).
If you want to give MixMyGranola a try, the site is offering Bitten Word readers 10% off their orders. To receive the discount, use the promotion code "BITTENWORD" when you check out.
And finally, also from Gourmet, we're in love with these adorable Pantone PA27 Series coffee mugs. We had first seen them earlier this summer at the San Francisco MOMA gift shop. Our coffee needs these mugs.
And now, on to July!
