On the horizon: The Water Mill

This is the Watermill by Element Four. Element Four is a British Columbia-based company that's determined to solve the world's potable water problems and their first product in that direction is their Water Mill.

The Water Mill mounts to the exterior of your home and distills pure water from the air. It's estimated to cost 35 cents a day to run and it cranks out 3.2 gallons of water a day. The Water Mill can be connected to a sink top dispenser, the ice and water dispensers on a fridge, its own wall-mounted dispenser or it can run into a separate, refrigerated appliance dispenser. The diagram below shows these four dispensing options pretty well.

While the Water Mill can't supply all of a household's water needs, it can provide ample drinking water for a family or individual and it will help you throw away the bottle for once and for all.

Happy Birthday

This was my Grandmother, Guellma Gevene Flowers-Smith-Stewart and she was born on October 22nd, 1905. We called her Gram sometimes and Gevene when there was a good story to tell that involved her. There were always good stories to tell that involved her. 

Gram died 11 years ago and a part of all of us went with her. But a bigger and better part stuck around. I cannot turn a mattress or iron a shirt without thinking of her, nor can I laugh or gossip with my sibs without her being in the middle of it. I report to my friends that my place is "Gevene clean" and they know that I've spent the previous day scrubbing my floors and vacuuming under the sofa. She's why I have a bar of Fels-Naptha soap under my sink and why I insist on doing everything myself. She taught be to be self-reliant, to draw strength from adversity and above all to laugh. Some people just loom large and Gevene certainly did that. I've heard it said that the dead live on when the living remember them. If that's true than this lady will be around forever. 

The baby in this photo was her first great-grandkid. Well, she's a grown woman now and in three weeks she's going to be married. My siblings, my parents and I will get together for my niece's wedding and celebrate. Wow. The first of my nieces and nephews, my parents' first grandkid, is getting married. We'll laugh and dance and knowing us, argue. But more than any of that, at least so far as I'm concerned, we'll do our best to make sure that the great lady who begot all of us lives for a little while longer.

More proof that bottled water is a pre-packaged LIE

The Environmental Working Group (EWG) commissioned a study of the quality of 10 domestic brands of bottled water. The ten brands were purchased from eight different states and the District of Columbia, then sent to the University of Iowa's Hygienic Laboratory for analysis. Samples were also sent to the University of Missouri for further analysis. You can read about the methodology of the tests here.

Municipalities are required to test for contaminants every year and then to make the results of those tests available to the public. Check the website of your municipality to find out what's in your tap water. The bottled water industry has no such requirement.

The EWP's study concluded:

Altogether, the analyses conducted by the University of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory of these 10 brands of bottled water revealed a wide range of pollutants, including not only disinfection byproducts, but also common urban wastewater pollutants like caffeine and pharmaceuticals (Tylenol); heavy metals and minerals including arsenic and radioactive isotopes; fertilizer residue (nitrate and ammonia); and a broad range of other, tentatively identified industrial chemicals used as solvents, plasticizers, viscosity decreasing agents, and propellants.

Read the study. Stop buying and using bottled water. Today.

What a friend we have in cheeses

I think cheese is the ultimate food. Honestly, I could live on a diet of nothing but the stuff, the stronger and stinkier the better. 

The kids over at Apartment Therapy have a resident cheese monger, and she's always brimming with great ideas and hints on how to better enjoy that most wonderful of foods, cheese. Anyhow, she ran a list of ten rules on how to store and expand the shelf life of various cheeses. I'm reprinting it without shame or any of my editing and I credit her fully and completely. Here's her original column. As much as I don't want to think about it, the holidays are around the corner and if your anything like me, you'll have a fridge filled with exotic cheeses for the next couple of months at least. Here's to the better enjoyment of cheese!

The top ten rules of storage and shelf life:

1. There's good bad-smelling cheese and bad bad-smelling cheese. Smell your cheese when you purchase it (which is actually a key factor in enjoying the taste of your cheese, as well) and evaluate whether the current scent is just slightly more offensive or if it sends shivers of disgust down your spine. Trust your sensory instincts.

2. Taste it. If you can't figure it out by the smell, try a bite. If it doesn't taste bad, it hasn't gone bad.

3. Fresh, soft cheeses have a shorter shelf life than aged, hard cheeses. Young cheeses like ricotta, mozzarella, and fresh goat normally have a shelf life of 7-10 days, depending on when you purchased them. Generally speaking, the viability of this family of cheese is the easiest to decipher. If the specimen has a taste or scent reminiscent of that milk in the back of your fridge, your best bet is to toss it. Along with the milk.

4. Bloomy rinded cheeses like brie and Camembert will last longer than a fresh cheese but still have a high enough moisture content to spoil. Again, depending on the age of the cheese at date of purchase, this cheese style will generally last from three to six weeks. If the rind starts to develop a slimy, pinkish-reddish mold, consider it toast. Don't necessarily be afraid of ammonia-like smells. Ammonia is a natural by-product of cheese aging. Try taste testing in this case.

5. Washed rind cheeses like taleggio, limburger, and epoisses are best eaten straight from the cheese shop. These are the smelly cheeses, and the stink will only proliferate in the small confines of your refrigerator. Their rinds (and, in turn, the inner paste) will dry out and crack, which is nothing short of a death sentence for the bacteria living on the rind that makes this style of cheese distinctive. Washed-rinds will last two to four weeks, but try not to see them past their first week home.

6. Lightly aged, natural rinded goat cheeses, often individual in format and French in origin like aged crottin, chevrot, or chabichou du poitou are virtually indestructible. The nature of the cheese will change: it'll dry out and harden with age and the flavor will become assertive, but they won't turn. Try shaving an old dried up drum over a salad for an alternative to the ubiquitous sheet of parm or pecorino.

7. Aged cheeses like cheddar, gruyere, gouda, Parmigiano Reggiano, and fontina have been aged to an extent that ensures their durability. With such low moisture content, there's not much need to worry about these guys. In some cases, age can actually heighten the experience of these cheeses; more often the flavor will wan with exposure to air. If greenish-blue mold develops like in the picture at the beginning of this post, not to worry, just scrape it off.

8. Blue cheeses become more and more biting with age. You'll know by tasting whether or not it's become too strong for your taste. An old blue cheese will never hurt your health, only your taste buds. Blues with an especially high moisture content will go downhill more quickly. Wrap blues in tin foil to lock in their moisture.

9. The best way to store cheese is with cheese paper, which has an outer paper layer and an inner waxy layer. The next best thing is to wrap your cheese in parchment with a layer of plastic wrap over that. This way the cheese won’t dry out and you'll create a protective layer of humidity in the area between the plastic wrap and parchment. NEVER wrap your cheese in plastic wrap alone! Plastic wrap has a definite flavor and your cheese will taste of it.

10. Store your cheese in the warmest part of your refrigerator. In most cases, this would be the vegetable, cheese, or butter compartment. Even better, store all of your cheese together in a sizable Tupperware container. As mentioned before, cheese is alive, and cold temperatures limit important bacterial activity.

Nice things to say about composite counters

So I left off on Saturday with a rant about composite counters. Just to re-iterate my point, there is nothing natural about "natural quartz" counters. They are a whole different thing from natural stone and they are not a substitute for natural stone. With that said, I still specify them regularly and people who end up with them are always enthusiastic about how they look and wear.

Composite counters are essentially terrazzo and they look best when they are allowed to be that --something contemporary and calm. I think they look terrible when they are pretending to be stone.

Here's what I mean by my statement that they are not stone and are not a substitute for stone. There is nothing wrong with the color swatches above, I think they're kind of cool-looking as a matter of fact. But I would never use them in a traditional kitchen because I think that this product is out of place in a setting like that.

I think the kitchens in the photos above would have been much better served with a real stone counter. Contrast them with these shots from Caesarstone.

Here are some detail shots from the composite counter material I specify above all others, Caesarstone. Caesarstone markets itself more responsibly than the other brands that have an impact on the US market and it's not available in home centers. That's a home run in my book. Caesarstone also embraces the essential nature of composite and pushes it as far as it can. They have really adventurous colors and have lately been getting into interesting textures for their product. Hail Caesarstone!

I mean, check this out. The pebble-y pattern of this counter is a good touch. This pattern adds some interest without being distracting.

Composite counters are a good call but again, they are not a stone substitute. They cost as much if not more than a stone counter and they take you to a whole other place aesthetically. And even with all of that said and despite the truthiness of the industry that backs this material, I would still use it in my own kitchen. For me, that's the test anything I recommend has to pass.