Nutgraf

I have a couple of super cool but pretty worn old Scan wood tabley things. I love ‘em – they’ve got a great shape, good proportion, elegant and spare design, and have served me well lo these many years. I have treated them somewhat roughly and the tops are all marked up with old water stains and whatnot.

It's a nice lookin' console, no?

I’ve long wanted to try to tidy them up a little, but have no time, skill or patience for a real project, and so have mostly just halfheartedly rubbed them with furniture polish or wax, noticed that no miracles took place, and then promptly forgot about it for a while. Honestly, they deserve better treatment.

Since today is kind of a quasi holiday (quasi only because not everyone has it off), I finally consulted the Great and Benevolent Internet to see what gems of homemaker wisdom it might be able to provide. The consensus was that I should place a white towel or piece of flat-like cloth on the stain and gently iron it for a few minutes.

And holy shit, it worked.

The stains were not completely removed (really, they were pretty bad), but the big ones were definitely significantly healed. So, let it be known that even years-old water stains can be abated by gently ironing a white cloth on the wood.

Oh, Internet. Is there anything you *don’t* know?

Do you have a piece of housekeeping advice? I know there are some really awesome tips out there. Share yours!

We had some family over to dinner on Sunday, and wanted to make it a little bit worth their while (our cousin is a fantastic chef), so we planned to do something a little bit special for dessert. And who doesn’t like creme brulee?

We couldn’t inflict our first effort on our unsuspecting relations (lives are at stake here, people), so we had to do a run or two in advance to make sure we know the details and have examined any loopholes.

Phase One: I mixed everything up, following Alton Brown’s very fine recipe on Foodnetwork.com. Since it has to rest and chill out and set for a couple of hours before you get to set fires, I made a round on Monday to be ready to scorch on Tuesday. Just like a cooking show! Then, on Tuesday, I mixed up a second batch, so we’d have another chance to refine our torch technique in advance of the big event.

Pictures below are from various parts of the process. When it was time to get our torch on, we coated them with sugar, and got burning.

A very fine experiment with a highly satisfactory result. Things we learned:

• Use a pretty thin coating of sugar. In the first round we made too thick a crust – it was an instant toothache
• Let the cream cool properly and completely, or your custard may not have a totally smooth texture because it’ll make the egg yolks a little grainy.
• Rum extract adds a nice flavor (because hey, it takes like rum), but it’s best used sparingly.

I hope it helped make dinner at our place a little more bearable for our long-suffering family members.

As fizzy water aficionados already know, sparkling water is lively, light, exhilarating and guilt-free. But when the fizz is gone, all you’ve got is a glass of flat, brackish liquid that tastes as if it were squeezed out from between two rocks. It seems that some waters lose their sparkle faster than others. For those of us who drink it by the barrel (and judging by the comments left by the lovely readers of this blog, Spouse and I are in good company), it is a matter of both financial and environmental significance to make sure we get the most out of our investment.

Courtesy of Arlene, Friend of Mom, we have this excellent new fizzy water conundrum to explore.

Topics upon which to draw hasty conclusions include:

• What brand holds its fizz best?
• Plastic or glass?
• Which one is the least objectionable when served flat?
• Effective strategies for fizz preservation?
• Harebrained strategies for fizz preservation?

I’m going to do a little research before publishing a more formal methods post, but currently intend to pick the top couple from our last fizzy water experiment, add some supermarket brands, and maybe throw in one or two more subjects (have a bottle of Voss on standby for just such an occasion).

Please send suggestions for test subjects, techniques and clever titles.

Everyone's a critic.

We arrived, we obsessed, we sampled and tasted and discussed and ate some of those lovely flat Spanish almonds from WholeFoods, and we scribbled furiously.

Our tasting crew included some of the sharpest critics I know. Hey – there’s nothing wrong with having high standards. But they took no prisoners as they sampled the goods. They made a couple of suggestions for improving the methodology, including a four-part fizziness metric (bubble size, quantity, longevity and relative sharp/softness). These will be taken under advisement for future regimens.

And then came the tabulation. Man, do I dread tabulation. And now the results are in:

Trader Joe’s Sparkling Mineral Water wins!

Comments from our illustrious panel for Trader Joe’s included:

• Nothing special.
• Refreshing, thirst-quenching.
• [this space intentionally left blank]
• Tiny happy bubbles.
• Lots of sting/fizz, not enough sparkle. Fuller taste than previous 2.

It might not sound like a strong showing, but we had some pretty polarized reactions to many of the others. Assorted comments include:

• Fizz all bite and no sparkle.
• Almost industrial.
• To be reevaluated.
• Carbonated salt water.
• Needed an almond to cleanse palate.
• Dirty, metallic.
• omg bad.

Well kids, that was fun.

One surprise was that Safeway brand Club Soda tied for 2nd place with San Pelligrino. Testers noted that it had a sweet overtone, without any real mineral flavor. Fine work, Safeway!

So here we are. With a winner in a batch of 10. But we didn’t get to test all of the varieties I wanted to. I really was looking forward to lightly obsessing over some of the restaurant staples: Voss, Saratoga… so we’re likely to do a round II.

Suggestions for how to improve the second round are welcome! As are additional brands to test.

We drink a lot of fizzy water around here. Not as much fizzy water as we drink tea, but still a statistically significant amount.

It’s definitely an indulgence – seems decadent to have it with dinner, in a lovely glass with a wedge of lime. It’s something only an adult would bother with, being highly responsible with no calories or alcohol. But once I got started with it, regular sodas started seeming unbearably sweet and syrupy.

Featured Fizzies

And people who drink this stuff regularly have opinions about it – which brand is the best, which is senselessly fancy, which tastes like an old tire. And restaurants charge out the wazoo for the stuff, marking it up a greater percentage even than wine. More restaurants are getting a piece of the action, too, asking right up front whether you’d like sparkling or still mineral water, or just tap. The implication, of course, is that sophisticated diners order fancy water and don’t you want to be in that group?

So, which one is the tastiest? The fizziest? Delicious? Heinous?

Today we taste-tested 10 sparkling mineral waters, and had some great results, some thoughtful critiques, and a lot of backseat experiment design (Spouse, I’m looking in your direction). I’ll work up the results in the next day or two, but today I present the details of the experiment.

Waters Tested:

1. Gerolsteiner
2. Archer Farm: Target
3. Poland Spring
4. Whole Foods Sparkling Mineral Water
5. Trader Joe’s Sparkling Mineral Water
6. San Pellegrino
7. Perrier
8. Club Soda: Safeway
9. World Market Sparkling Mineral Water
10. Apollinaris

Methodology!

We’re reusing some of the materials from the bottled/tap/Brita water taste test, and following the same protocol:

1. We wrote the name of the water on the bottom of each plate.
2. Poured corresponding waters in to tiny plastic cups, and set them on top – with the name concealed.
3. Someone else came into the room shuffled the plates, numbering them from 1-10 with a stout, Sharpie marker.
4. Testers sampled each water and write down observations identified by plate number.
5. Testers will gave each sample a rating on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the the most delightfully tasty water a sophisticated palate could ask for, and 1 being bilge.
6. Written observations should be funny. 80’s hair band references and colorful emoticons are encouraged.

There are dozens more waters on the market, and I need to do some more research on the actual differences between mineral waters, club soda and seltzer. But phase one was a good time and we’re all super well-hydrated now. Go team.