I got this neat old contraption from one of our best Vintage suppliers. He found it at a flea market in Connecticut.

Rotor spinner

It says “Rotor” on the outside pressed into the galvenized steel. The interior basket is tinned wire.

The coolest part is the drive mechanism which works by way of a ribbon wrapped around the driveshaft. You pull it out to start the spin and then when it reaches the end of the ribbon the basket changes direction and re-wraps the ribbon on the shaft so you can spin again!

I can’t find any patent info on this. Please send along any info you have on this cool old tool.

Spinner mecahnism

Spinner basket

This July 4th, we slept under the stars and stripes at the first ever Queens Farm Museum Campout.

photo by Joel Bukiewicz

Thanks to Brooklyn Based, Sweet Deliverance, and of course, the Queens County Farm Museum for an amazing time!

OK, pig porn after the after.

photo by Ernie Monteiro

we just got a new book in: The Vegan Scoop by Wheeler Del Torro.

i was lucky enough to try some Wheeler’s Black Label vegan ice cream at the 2008 renegade craft fair in mccarren pool. it was great! i eat dairy ice cream occasionally (i’m not vegan. i’m a vegetarian with a vegan love interest, and i cook only vegan.) and i wouldn’t have guessed this stuff was nondairy. while there are some great commercially available vegan ice creams out there, a lot of them are noticeably ‘different’. but wheelers -will- fool your friends. and it was tasty! i only had chocolate, but it was a rich awesome dark chocolate. but despite rumors that Wheeler’s would be opening a shop in our own williamsburg*, so far as i know it’s still only available in boston, where they have an ice cream shop and recently expanded into a restaurant.

a few vegan ice cream cookbooks have just come out this year, which is great, since i only knew of one before that, Vice Cream. But i’ve definitely been highly anticipating Wheeler’s book. And now it’s finally here, and just in time for Ice Cream Month! I took my copy home monday. there are some super unusual flavors in here (in my experience anyway) like yam (not sweet potato. yam). i thought red bean at the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory was unusual! there is also a wasabi ice cream. and shandy**. there’s regular stuff like rocky road and peanut butter too. and vanilla and chocolate.

the book sports a pretty thorough glossary of ingredients, broken up into several lists: basica (that is, sugars and thickeners), fruits/veggies, legumes and then spices. from thumbing through, it seems that all wheeler’s recipes involve a soymilk/soycreamer combo, but he encourages experimentation and includes a brief rundown of other non-dairy milks. my one complaint there would be that it’s hard to find non-dairy creamer that isn’t soy. i know there is something called ‘coconut cream’ (as opposed to coconut milk) but i don’t know if that would work. but i also know of a product called Mimicreme, which i’ve used for ice cream before, that is soy free and mainly cashews. i actually think it’s pretty awesome, and just found out you can get it at khim’s millenium market on driggs.

there are also quite a few recipes for things that aren’t ice cream, like fruit sushi and amaretto fudge. and one thing i do particularly like, as an information junkie of sorts, is the ‘tidbits’ of information about ingredients in the sidebar. not things you necessarily need to know, but great for those of us who like to know stuff. there are also quite a few recipes for things that aren’t ice cream with suggested flavor pairin including fruit sushi and amaretto fudge!

for the book club meeting tonight we read A Dilly of a Death, a pickle themed, texas-set murder mystery. so i’m making Wheeler’s Sweet Cucumber ice cream. it’s not pickles, but i don’t like pickles anyway. I’ll let you know how it turns out!

*while wheelers has yet to open an outlet in the big apple, 2 vegan ice cream parlors have opened in manhattan since last summer.  Stogo and Lulu’s.  both feature soy and non-soy vegan ice creams, but i can only attest to lulu’s: it’s great!  still though, williamsburg could use its own vegan ice cream parlor.  for now we’ll just have to settle for milkshakes from foodswings and the chicago soy dairy ice cream they serve at Vinnie’s and Penny Licks.

**from wikipedia: “Shandy is beer flavoured with ginger ale, ginger beer, lemonade, or other soft drink. The proportions of the two ingredients are adjusted to taste, normally half-and-half, although shandy that is sold canned or bottled is typically much weaker (about one part beer to ten parts lemonade).”

the ice cream is a ginger beer shandy. i had a can of lemonade shandy in scotland once. once.

The fine folks at thekitchn.com came by last week and took some great looking pics of Harry and Taylor’s kitchen. Follow through to see the real reason why the store never carries the Terra Pyrex pattern – Taylor hordes it all!

copyright apartmenttherapy.com

I forgot to mention to them that the glass in the cabinets is called Metallica. It helped narrow the choice.

See the full tour here!

We the food people bring you careful, artisanal producing with absolutely NO pretenses. Food and tools made by human beings

This Sunday afternoon, June 28, come to the East River Bar on S 6th St between Bedford and Berry. Last year, there were cataclysmic downpours, which was real fun.

So Google alerted me this afternoon that Lila’s cupcake post had been reposted. And that’s not all, folks. Without further introduction, the text follows:

Notes from a Former Cupcake Bake-off Victor
The only foreword I ‘ll give is that I composed this on my tiffin interruption. So pardon the wild autonomies I ‘ve taken with grammar and dissemble that I maked n’t have my college grade ( which all told equity, as Harry can evidence, is round not square ) in Journalism.

There are very much of cookery competitions in Brooklyn. There Holds the Chili Takedown ( which will be followed by the Tofu Takedown this hebdomad ), the Bacon Throwdown, a Chili Cook-off, Emily Farris ‘ Casserole Competition… the listing travels along. All are great playfulness, usually regard a just sum of inebriant and vanquish the usual manner to encounter people therein metropolis. May 11th will label the 3rd one-year Brooklyn Kitchen Cupcake Bake-off, an event which holds a particularly special spot in my bosom.

It was the springtime of 2008. I was out of college exactly one twelvemonth and like most post humanities expats, got verily good at feeding myself free of charge whenever possible. Gallery gaps for vino and cheese, dumpsters for beigel, barrooms for peanuts and best of all, cooking competitions. The cupcake bake-off was being kept at the barroom, Brotherhood Pool. I reasoned that inviting beer would be goodly deserving the value of the 30-some cupcake tastes I could hit by entering. More importantly, I retrieved what the appreciate was for Brooklyn Kitchen ’s last patronize competition, the Casserole Cook-off. It was a LE Creuset enameled projected Fe Dutch oven. A retail value of around $ 300. I rationalise that the Cupcake award would most likely be a KitchenAid pedestal social. It shoulded be.

The hebdomad prior, I forced upward my entry patterns. The regulations of cooking competitions generally rotate about happening a balance between good, simple flavors with a cagey decent presentation. Cypher wishes a pretentious cupcake. I determined to hold the formula BASIC and the designing, well, quirky- without disclosing to the fact that I holded small experience in bar decorating, or the tools for it. Soil cupcakes were born! Semi-sweet chocolate cupcakes ( formula courtesy of Elissa Strauss at Confetti Cakes ) with cocoa icing, dunk in crushed deal oreos and an solemn branchlet of batch germinating from the Centre.

Three and a half vodka tonics afterwards I holded sufficiently stuffed my face pertinent that all cupcakes, from vegan Lead & J to Julep Buttercream, all savour the same. There Holds even an sticky YouTube interview with the ladies from the blog Cupcakes Yield the Bar ‘ exposing my sugar and intoxicant induced fury. I retrieve getting stacks of regards. But I besides recall being sort of rummy.

Fast-forward to the bewitching hr. There were four winning classes, two victors in each along with a runner-up. Champaign and Simple Ornament, Exotic Ornamentation, Field and Simple Look, and Exotic Feel. Victors were denoted. Plain/simple smell: nope. Alien flavor: nope. Plain/simple ornament: nope. I holded n’t seen a KitchenAid yet, and I was n’t sure that if there was one, it would be confered onto the runner-up of the last class: Alien ornamentation. But perchance mint springtimes turned in oreo crumbs would be alien plenty to justify some free cupcake pans? Mayhap fancy flour? And would n’t you cognize it, they were! The remainder of the even is a bit blurry. I recall Taylor denoting my awards. I make n’t cognize what my aspect was. I belike holded a cockamamy smile on my face disregardless. Peering into my chocolate-brown Brooklyn Kitchen sack were three containers of scatterings. Dragees, instead. You cognise, those gilded Ag balls for adorning that are, in point of fact, comestible but no one believes you that they are because on the label it says middling clearly that they ‘re not okay for intake in the province of California. There was a cupcake pan in there overly. It was pinkish. And silicone- for baking six big uprose determined bundt bars. Courtesy of Martha Stewart.

Disregardless. I hold n’t won much of anything before or since. Well, that Holds not totally true. About three months subsequently, I holded an email from Taylor who was looking to employ at the Brooklyn Kitchen. I holded published it out and posed it downward following to my unemployment documents I was intending to register that hebdomad. Freelancer blew and I was broke. I looked from application to application. On Tayor ’s I need to name three facts about myself that would hold me qualified to huckster pots and pans ( and poach seedcases ). On Empire state ’s, I need to name my taxation info. I took to fill out the former. I considered about it and typewrote out my response: I do good popcorn, I take aid of my knives… and I won your cupcake competition. Rather.

I essay to think if I holded grouched about my awards. I was desiring I holded n’t. I really required a occupation. Doing a long narrative short, I ‘m typewriting this, one yr afterward, from behind the registry at the Brooklyn Kitchen while folding bar boxes for this twelvemonth ’s cupcake bake-off. I ‘ve been sayed what the heroic awardis. I ‘m not acrimonious. In point of fact, I ‘ve been reminded quite few times ( especially when carting examples of Mason jars in the rainfall, followed by a unbendable rap on the dorsum ) who came out the existent victor. Cheesy as it sounds, I really ca n’t reason.

Lila

REIDER DEEP FRY THERMOMETER

This nice old Deep Fry Thermometer was made by the REIDER co. It says N.Y.C. on it and “made in U.S.A.”

It’s aluminum with etched markings. and a nice wood handle. Wouldn’t be very good for candy or sugar though, as cleaning the bottom would be a real pain. It took some scrubbing to clean when I got it. It looks to be complete and has a great look to it.Have to be careful not to break this one, it’s got real old school mercury in the bulb.

Conservation!

I recently picked up a few of these 1940’s government pamphlets about the fishing industry while searching for vintage goods.

This one has the more interesting cover, the other three (for other geographic areas of the US, were blue cover with white writing)

They’re basically an informative pamphlet, in true exhaustive government fashion, about the fisheries as they existed in 1943.

A quick look at the index on the first page will give you an idea:

Index

But then the real kicker. Read the paragraph that appears in the FIRST PAGE! So much for conservation of the oceans being a “new” idea. I know that fishermen have been trying for years to both reap the benefits and conserve the resources, but the thing that I find most interesting is that this was published by the government. I guess once the war (WWII) ended and we needed more food to feed the expanding suburbs conservation was put on the back burner along with fuel efficiency, and any regard for the environment.

yup. that's conservation

Well I guess we can all learn something from our pre- post-war, and pre refrigerated shipping ideas. Better to eat a greater variety and closer to home. hmm not a bad idea.

Summer is almost here and we’re trying to make some room for some great new products.

We’ve got a great sale going on THIS WEEKEND May 27-31.

Stock up for summer with our Spring into Summer sale.

Sale includes great deals on:

Mario Batali and Emeril (by All-Clad) cookware

All-Clad MC2 Cookware 30% OFF

All Vintage items are 15% OFF

Bowls, Tools, Gadgets, Aprons, Servingware, Rolling Pins and MUCH MORE.

Sale prices available in-store only.

This is an old (1940’s or 1950’s) Meat Tenderizer. Probably came in a set of the ubiquitous “Ecko” or “L&H” tool sets. We’ll have to give it a try against a heavier one sometime for pounding out pork or beef.

The Meat Hatchet

It’s hard to see in the picture but it has two blades. Hard to know what the hatchet side is really useful for…