All the cool kids use induction

I stopped in to visit some clients from a year ago last night and in the course of catching up with them, the conversation turned to their new kitchen of course. These clients had completely gutted and reconfigured their home over the course of a year and have been living with the results for the last three months.

These kinds of post-mortems are really interesting to me. I like to conduct an interview of sorts and find out what people really like about the results of their renovations, and equally important, what they would do differently if given the chance.

Well these two were ecstatic with their results and most of the praise they were doling out was being heaped all over their 36" induction cooktop. Induction cooking is all the rage in these parts and it's caught on all over the country. In my part of the world, piped in gas is the exception rather than the rule and induction offers a lot of the benefits of gas cookery in its temperature control, and it beats the pants of a typical electric cooktop. My lovely clients went whole hog and bought a Kuppersbusch, the Cadillac of induction cookery. Everybody's jumping on the induction bandwagon anymore, and there are induction options that can suit any budget.

Kuppersbusch EKI9560M 36" Induction Cooktop with 5 Cooking Zones, 12 Power Levels, 3 Preset and Front Sensor Touch Controls

Induction cooktops aren't new, but the technology has been improved upon remarkably as induction makes its latest foray into the American appliance market. Induction is an electric technology but it parts company with electric cook tops pretty quickly.

An induction burner is essentially an electromagnet. Turning on an induction burner activates this electromagnet. The resulting electromagnetic field excites the molecules in the pot or pan resting on the burner and that molecular excitement generates heat. In regular electric cookery, an electric current runs through a heating element and generates heat. So the primary difference is that in induction, it's the pot that gets hot, not the burner. The image at the top of this page is not an exagerration, that's really possible with an induction cook top.

Induction cooking can heat up a pot or a pan more than twice as fast as a regular electric burner while using 25% less power.

What gets me all hot and bothered about them is the freaky way they behave. I mean that in the most complimentary way I can. But when you set a pot to boil on an induction cooktop, you can move the pot and put your hand right on the same burner. The electromagnet can only generate heat when a ferrous (iron-containing) metal comes into contact with its field. No ferrous metal, no heat. There is very little wasted energy involved in induction cookery and a parlor trick that vendors always do at training seminars is to set a dollar bill under a skillet and then cook something. The food gets done perfectly and dollar remains unaffected. Another trick I learned at my last Wolf class was to cover an induction burner with a layer of paper towels prior to frying bacon. After the bacon's cooked, removing the paper towels leaves a clean and grease-free cooking surface. Brilliant!

About the only downside to induction I can think of is that it requires the use of iron or steel cookware. Aluminum, glass, copper, etc. simply will not work. If a magnet sticks to a pot, then you can use it with induction. Induction also behaves differently than other power sources and it will take a couple of tries to master the technology.

Well, a cool way that you can wade into the induction cookery pool with committing to it fully, is to buy an induction hot plate. Avanti makes a great one and this model from A J Madison comes with a 10-1/2" induction-compatible skillet.

Avanti IHP1501 12" Portable Induction Cooktop with 6 Temperature Settings, 2 Power Settings, Electronic Display & Settings and Skillet

That hot plate has all of the features of a full cook top without all of the hassles and expense involved in replacing a major appliance. This 12" burner has all the power of a full-size cook top and you can get one for yourself for $150. Boiling a pot of cold water for pasta in three minutes will make a believer out of you, trust me on that one.

Oggetti Luce busts my buttons

Someone asked me over the weekend for a lighting recommendation, she wanted an opinion about how to light an island. My knee-jerk reaction is to suspend mini-pendants from the ceiling over the island. I do it so often that I forget that there are other options. Well, even though there are other options, I'd rather not think about them.

Three years ago, I found myself a lighting trade show and it was there that I first stumbled into the offerings of Oggetti Luce. Oggetti sets the standard in Italian lighting design so far as I'm concerned and of all their collections, the Amore gets me the most worked up.

The first example of Oggetti Luce I saw at that trade show was their Onion pendant in green. Here it is.

Ahhh, even after all this time I can't be anything but captivated by it. The Amore collection comes in five colors and ten configurations. The entire collection is mouth blown Venetian glass and each piece is signed by the designer Eros Raffael. Signor Raffael is a master glass artist of great renown and each of these pieces is priced accordingly. I'd kill for a couple of them at home, but for now, I'll have to settle for the two we have in the showroom. Here's what the signature on an original pendant light looks like.

This Amore collection can be viewed as pretty modern, but when you consider that it's a classic material used in a modern way, these lights can go in any style room. We have them in an uber traditional room setting in our showroom and they look terrific. 

See? Like I said, they look terrific.

Of the five colors available in the Amore collection, I think the Amber and the Green look best. Here's a breakdown of the Amore's lighting styles.

The Onion Pendant

The Fiori Pendant

The Onion Sconce

The Fiori Sconce

The Fiori Torch

Thank you for filling the world with amore Signor Raffael.

Happy Inauguration Day America!

I have been waiting for this day for eight long years. Eight long years of malapropisms, hubris, contempt for everything I hold dear and more hubris. Good riddance and enjoy the dustbin of history. At long last, the grown ups are in charge again. 

How to fold a fitted sheet

I have occasional occasion to house and dog sit for an unnamed friend. This unnamed friend is someone I love like a brother and my life would be far less rich than it is without him in it. That said, he's not the most gifted housekeeper I've ever met and it's not an unusual thing for me to spit shine his house while he's out of town. I'm not the uptight, retentive person this is sounding like, really. But there are certain standards that until I met this unnamed friend, I assumed every one learned to maintain from childhood on.

As I said before, I'm not uptight and retentive, but there are limits to how much slovenliness I'll chalk up to a quirky personality even when I love the quirky personality like a brother. Well, the last time I was over there I opened his hall closet and saw before me a collection of wadded up sheets and pillow cases that make me shake my head even now. Someone claims no one ever told him how to fold a fitted sheet and so he just wads them into a ball and shoves them into a linen closet until he needs one. Appalling. Appalling! Am I the only one out there who had a grandmother around to impart these kinds of life skills? I mean, what kind of an adult can't fold a fitted sheet?

Without asking for a show of hands I know that there are far more unable-to-fold-a-fitted-sheet people out there than I want to know about. So in the spirit of public mindedness, I found a public service video that explains in simple, approachable terms, how to fold a fitted sheet. The video even stars a middle-aged man who's wearing a wedding ring, so that way no one's masculinity need be bruised in learning this vital life skill. So ladies and gentlemen, I now give you How To Fold a Fitted Sheet. Lights down please.

Sunday flights of fancy

As I was combing around the Internet yesterday, I came upon a blog called Fifi Flowers Design Decor. Fifi Flowers is the product of California-based artist and designer Fifi, and her site's filled with her paintings and photos of her work. It's a whimsical romp through the mind of a true free spirit.

Anyhow, one of Fifi's readers sent her some photos of a recent trip to the Amalfi Coast and Capri and it got me pining for a return to that part of the world. It's cold in Florida today. Trust me, when you move to a tropical climate, 60 degrees might as well be 20 below. Ugh! I can't stand cold snaps. Mercifully, they only happen a couple of times a year.

So today's a day that's perfect for daydreaming and fantasizing about warmer times. To help set the mood, here are a couple of shots from my trip to the Amalfi Coast in May of '08. All of these were taken by me in the charming-beyond-words town of Ravello. Some day, I'll post some shots of Positano, the town where I left my heart. But in the meantime, here's Ravello.

This is the view from a balcony in the Villa Ruffalo. That's the town of Maiori in the distance.

This is the restaurant balcony of the Villa Ruffalo.

Looking down at the terraced farms that cover this part of the world.

This is the front entrance to the Villa Cimbrone in Ravello.

The gardens of the Villa Cimbrone.

Me inspecting a statue of a young Apollo. Inspecting for artistic merit, of course.

A bust of one my heroes, Augustus Caesar.

One of myriad passages and entryways that cover this small hill town.

My friends and I stumbled upon a couple of young ballerinas from the High School in Ravello. It's a curious thing to think about people actually living and raising families in a place so enchanted as this.

Stay warm today gang. Send me some photos of trips to warmer places and I'll publish them in some kind of a warm up for the collective unconscious.