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Stuffed Spanish Olives via AJ Gourmet

Monday, December 8th, 2008

Olives by La Novia Del Sol (via AJ Gourmet Foods) are not your typical jarred olives.

They render fancy olive-bar olives (even Mario Batali restaurant olives) rather… uninspiring.

Really, how can you beat Feta-Stuffed Green Spanish Olives?

Perhaps with Orange-Stuffed Olives?

Strike that, my favorite is the unabashedly-picante Habanero Pepper-Stuffed Olives.

Olive lovers rejoice!

AJ Gourmet Foods, $5.99 per jar (discounts for larger quantities)

Gadget: Custom Coffee Grinder

Tuesday, October 14th, 2008

As I’ve stated previously, I’m not inclined to buy a lot of gadgets to clutter my kitchen, but here’s one that is worth its space: a custom coffee grinder.  I have the Hamilton Beach model pictured above.

If you’re a coffee drinker, it allows you to only grind a few days’ worth of beans at a time and thus enhancing freshness.  You can set the lever to various grind sizes within categories of “auto drip” or “espresso.”

But I also use it for other things: if I need to quickly grind up an herb or a spice, or when I want to make some raw/demera/turbinado sugar more suitable for recipes (or to better dissolve in coffee).

Save yourself a future heart attack, though, by carefully wiping down the blade if you use sugar or any other substance that could get sticky.  Not because a sticky blade will cause a heart attack, per se, but because a sticky blade may not turn and will thus make you think your coffee grinder just died, which may cause severe distress.  But it didn’t die, and you can calm down, it’s just sticky.