Household Tips

The items sold at Eden&Eden are carefully chosen authentic materials known for their contemporary aesthetics. They’re ultra-feminine but also imbibes that rich European culture.

Here are just some of the things you can score from Eden&Eden:

Aside from kitchen items, the store also has home fixtures, home decorations, jewelry, accessories, clothes and purses. The choices are a little bit quirky but tasteful.

Eden&Eden is located in San Francisco, California.

Check the website here.

This is truly a great Mommy Kitchen helper. It’s so easy to use for parents with weaning babies. You can steam veggies, meat and fruits with it, even as the vitamins and flavors are retained. You can also use this to reheat or defrost baby’s food…

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For households who love to leave notes on the fridge a lot, the Amana Jot Refrigerator should be one of the most important kitchen appliance you’ll ever need. Instead of living stick it notes (which could actually get lost), one can simply just write the note on the fridge’s surface and yes, use that as the notepad.

The fridge has the following features:

• 17.6 Cu. Ft. of Capacity
• Dry-Erase Door Finish
• Contoured Doors
• Up-Front Temperature Control System
• Interior Light
• 2 Full-Width Adjustable Spillsaver™ Glass Shelves
• 2 Garden Fresh™ Crisper Drawers
• 2 Fixed, Full-Width Door Shelves
• Gallon Door Storage
• Deli Drawer
• Dairy Center
• Wire Freezer Shelf
• 2 Fixed, Full-Width Freezer Door Shelves
• Factory-Installed Ice Maker

An 18 cu ft beauty will set you back at around $749 via Amana.

The Intellisteam was developed by Morphy Richards. It is a high profile steamer that comes with an LCD and 1600W of water heater. This kitchen helper has three control settings for different types of steaming. Steaming can be done simultaneously with four different kinds of food, without having to contaminate their flavors. It also has an auto-warm setting, keeping food warming for up to 40 minutes.

Basic features:

• Preset cooking times for a large variety of foods including meat, fish, vegetables and rice.
• Cooking times can be personalised and added to the memory for future use.
• No cross-contamination of flavours.
• Includes rice tray, food plinth to create an extra shelf, and 2 sauce trays.
• Boil dry alarm if water reservoir reaches unsafe levels.
• Selection of recipes included.

Via Lakeland through Hometome

Most pot does come with a lid but these aren’t the type which are air-tight, or posstibly keep food from burning.

This silicon lid from Delight is manufactured to deliver just that and it makes cooking even more perfect. The see through window allows one to take a peek on how the dish is progressing, and the additional silicon spatula is a handy tool that helps handling food better.

This set costs $34.50.

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People used to go about their lives without the convenience of what we call the refrigerator. Back then, they ate everything fresh and stored everything else in cupboards. When the refrigerator was invented, life did become easy. But farming, grassroots living, was pushed farther away out of “civilization”. and then living arrangements became more complicated.

Did you ever long for a time when life used to be very simple? Would you want to go back to living like that? This is the very idea behind the iGreen,  a kitchen design by Veneta Cucine and Nilay Shah, a designer from India. The iGreen has no room for the refrigerator. Instead, everything in the kitchen is made of trays from wood and biodegradable materials.

With the iGreen, you only have to store food that will be consumed for a few days, never in excess. It is a proactive way to help preserve the environment because there is less waste and energy produced with a kitchen like this.

Need a fast and cheap solution for dingy copper around the kitchen? Clean it with equal amounts of ketchup and water.

Here’s a great list of tips for packing the kids’ lunches (it’s back to school time!) or your own!

Packing A Lunch Kids Will Love
To make sure your children bring fun and nutritious meals with them to school, follow these easy-to-follow tips:
1. Keep food cold and safe by packing an ice pack in an insulated lunch box.
2. Pack your child’s favorite cut-up fresh fruit and include a toothpick or place fruit on a skewer to make eating it more fun.
3. Include a small container of low fat ranch dressing to make veggies, like baby carrots and red pepper strips, more appealing.
4. Offer a low fat cheese stick or yogurt for bone-building calcium.
5. Include a variety of lean protein sources such as tuna, turkey, and chicken.
6. Pack a healthy beverage of 100 percent fruit juice, water, or low fat milk.

lunch, school

Have you ever picked up drinking glasses from the sink, only to realize that they had have been perfectly stacked? And now they’re stuck? Here’s an easy way to separate them. Fill the cup with cold water, then dip the bottom cup in hot water. The temperature difference should make it easy to pull the glasses apart.

stuck glasses

Here’s an easy way to clean a coffee pot. This can be especially useful at work or in a house without a dishwasher! Instead of scrubbing out the pot, simply fill it halfway with ice, pour in a good shot of salt (1 to 2 Tablespoons) and swirl the ice around. The salt will do the cleaning! When you’re done, dump out the ice and rinse out your sparkly clean coffee pot!

cleaning, coffee pot, salt

If your oven looks anything like mine, it isn’t pretty. I can’t ever remember actually cleaning an over, except that one time just after college when I was moving into an apartment where I swear to God I could smell the lead from the seventy years of paint layers. But, that was just a “mild” cleaning.

Now that I am much older, slightly wiser, and far more cynical I am ready and able to clean my oven.

For a just happened spill or overflow, cover the area liberally with baking soda. When the over cools off, you should be able to scoop up the gunk with a metal spatula. The baking soda works by absorbing any liquid and gunk, like, pie filling, or pizza grease. However, it won’t stick to the surface of the over. The key for this home remedy for over cleaning is to catch the spill while it is still wet. Once it gets baked on, you will need a harsher cleaner.

Another earth-friendly over cleaning product is vinegar. Regular old white vinegar is one of the best household cleaning agents out there. It is pure and clean, doesn’t leave a residue and is not toxic. It also leaves a nice pleasant scent in your home without being overpowering.

Vinegar will cut grease and soften the baked on deposits if you cover the area thoroughly. Obviously, as it is a liquid, you can’t just coat your oven with it, as it runs off and that is a mess I don’t want to think about cleaning. It will work really well on the floor of the oven if you can pour a little into the bottom welled-out area. Also, the vapors will soften the gook on the walls after several hours. If you are in a hurry to see your reflection in your oven, try this: mix one quarter of a cup of vinegar and a drop of fresh dish detergent in a pint of hot water. Let it sit for a few minutes and then scrub.

Last, and definitely least on my list of choices is ammonia. Ammonia is not 100% safe. It can cause dryness and irritation of the skin, eyes, nose and throat and it IS toxic if ingested by children or pets. If you are using ammonia and you inhale enough vapors to cause you to cough, you are too close and should seek fresh air immediately. Ammonia is a very harsh chemical that will erode many materials. Glass is safe to use with ammonia. To rid your oven of baked on goo, fill a shallow glass baking dish with ammonia and let it sit in a cold oven overnight. After about 8-12 hours, the grease will scrub off the doors and walls fairly easily.

The best way to “clean” your oven is to not have to scrub it! Line the bottom with foil to catch drips and just replace and recycle it when it gets dirty, and, wash off the front window of the oven weekly, or after baking a particularly messy food.

If you think anyone has ingested anything toxic or potentially harmful, don’t hesitate, call the Poison Control Center immediately. It is a toll-free call! 1-800-222-1222

It is easy to wash the outside of a car windshield, but it isn’t so easy to wash the inside with that squeegee thing at the gas station.

Recently, my Mom asked me something to clean her windshield with and I gave her paper towel wet with Windex Multi-Surface Cleaner with Vinegar.

It worked like nothing ever before!

I use this on my bathroom mirrors and faucets to make them shiny and ultra clean.

When boiling eggs for stuffing, stir them for the first few minutes. This will set the whites, leaving the yolk in the center. You will have a strong wall of white around the center for stuffing that will not tear while filling.

eggs, cooking

Ronda wrote in to share this tip. I’ve listed Pam cooking spray in my favorite products and suggested spraying appliances and utensils before use to make cleaning them easy. Ronda says her favorite tip is to spray her Crock Pot before filling it so EVERYTHING washes away in the dishwasher. I plan to try this tomorrow when I take a dish to work. I remember when I hated to clean the crock pot, but that was before they had removable crock that could go in the dishwasher. Thanks for the Hint!

One of my friends in the emergency room was talking about how many people come in with food poisoning. Many people think that freezing food kills E.coli. NOT TRUE. That is why it is so important to cook food throughly. E.coli can also appear foods other than meat, but the biggest culprit may be your cutting board. I have a chopping block, but use it mostly for big jobs. Wood chopping blocks and cutting boards should be cleaned after use with hot, soapy water. Add a tablespoon of bleach to a quart of hot water and sanitize them frequently. I have a smaller plastic cutting board that fits in the dishwasher that I use for most things. It goes in the dishwasher every time I use it. Wash your hands, utensils, and work areas after touching any raw meat, fish or poultry.

E.coli, cutting boards, utensils, chopping blocks, bleach