Dinner - just phone it in

Speaking of slow cookers - this is cool. I-Phone has a CrockPot app that allows users to download recipes from their I-Phones. What a great marriage of old-school and new-school technology.

 

Of comfort foods and slow cookers

I think slow cookers are great for making winter comfort food. The original, AKA the CrockPot (shown at right) has helped many a busy parent, but I love the new one I'm testing from Hamilton Beach that has a food thermometer built in. All-Clad also has a sexy new model that's being sold at Williams-Sonoma.  

This is the time, if ever there was one, for some cosy, warm-me-up winter foods. If you feel the same way, perhaps you’ll enjoy one of my fave slow cooker recipes for brown rice pudding, which was inspired by the brill food writer Mark Bittman. Here goes.Take 1/2 cup of brown rice and put in a grinder or blender very briefly – just to break the grains a bit. Add it, along with two 14-ounce cans of coconut milk, about ½ cup of maple syrup, and a cinnamon stick to a slow cooker and turn it on low for a couple of hours. You can use regular milk but the coconut milk is so much more delish. Before serving, stir in about ½ cup of white chocolate chunks and/or chopped pan-roasted hazelnuts. Oh yeah, it's good. Do you have a great slow cooker recipe? Share it with me, please - check out my Twitter request/contest for recipe ideas.

What does YOUR environmental footprint look like?

Three Canadian families have just begun taking part in the Great Green Challenge, a month-long promotional program launched by Whirlpool Canada that will be chronicled on a new website. The goal is for each family to reduce the environmental footprint of their household – with the help of Energy Star products from Whirlpool, natch. BTW, Whirlpool Canada owns Whirlpool, Maytag and KitchenAid. The website also offers regular tips on saving energy from Warrington Ellacott, energy efficiency expert for Whirlpool, and blog entries from each family. There’s also a contest for visitors to the site; enter it and you may win an energy efficient Whirlpool Duet laundry pair, which has a speedy 30-minute wash and dry cycle option and an energy-pinching dry cycle that shaves about 40 per cent off the energy used in a conventional dryer cycle. And it comes in a sexy, sexy red (see below!) Eco-function and form – what more could you ask for? PS - While I love the idea of a quick dry feature - never forget that the most energy efficient way to dry clothes is to hang them on a line - indoors or out.

Wallpaper - to DIY or not to DIY?

While researching this week’s Hot Home Products column, I got mixed reaction when asking experts about whether or not installing wallpaper is a DIY job. As with many home-related projects, I’ve decided that there are a lot of variables that go into the decision to self-install, including how handy you are, the type of paper you’re working with and the condition of the wall upon which the paper will be applied.

As with every decision, however, knowledge is power. There’s excellent information, including guidelines for roll sizes, on the site for the Wallcoverings Association, a U.S.-based non-profit trade association representing wallcoverings manufacturers, distributors and suppliers. If you are interested in the history of wallpaper, there’s fascinating stuff  on the website for the Victoria and Albert Museum  in London, England. And for something completely different, check out the LED wallpaper (shown above) by Swedish designer Camilla Diedrich, which was recently shown in my Conversation Piece feature on yourhome.ca

Mrs. Murphy - my kind of gal

Found a glorious new website that sells beautiful everyday items for the home made by independent Swedish designers, most of which have not previously been available in North America.Fromsthlm(that’s short for “from Stockholm”)  is a kind of a virtual pop-up store which every month offers new stuff by featured designers in limited editions for 30 days only. I came across it while researching designer Lotta Kühlhorn, whose pretty fabrics are now available at Ikea (more on that later). While I was on the site, I fell in love with cutting boards inspired by the traditional folk patterns on Nordic mittens, which come from Mrs. Murphy, a Swedish design firm headed by the elusive and slightly mysterious Mrs. Murphy. Fortunately, Murphy’s assistant, the pixie-like  Malin Ehlin, seems to know something about her and was willing to share in an online interview.  

It's not procastination - it's research

Had the pleasure of speaking recently with Lisa Bayne, CEO of The Artful Home, a very cool website that sells original art and fine crafts by North American artists. I think the company, which was founded a decade ago, and survived the infamous dot.com crash, is a really interesting example of how the internet has helped develop a new kind of market for artists, many of whom find that the practice of selling their wares at regional art shows costs too much – in terms of both time and money.

Sometimes, when I’m ignoring a deadline, doing in-depth research, I troll the site, just so I can look at interesting pieces like the "BroadWay Armchair" (see above), made of recycled metal by Boris Bally. My virtual visits are like a leisurely stroll through a beautifully curated gallery. That’s not surprising, given that the offering is overseen by Michael Monroe. Currently Executive Director and Chief Curator for the Bellevue Arts Museum in Washington, Monroe also directed the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery  — a treasure trove of 20th-century American craft — for over two decades. Working with Hillary Clinton when she was First Lady, he  also curated the White House Collection of American Craft.

And for years now,  I've sometimes ignored deadlines done research by browsing the virtual aisles of the Guild Shop, part of  the Ontario Crafts Council. Lovely, lovely things to look at. I’m predicting that with the growing interest in unique decor and authentic materials, traffic on both sites will really pick up this year. Which is a good thing, since I’ve resolved to pay more attention to business and less attention to, uhm, research.

I’m baaack

It would nice to say that I’m raring to dive headlong into the first month of this new decade, but the truth is that I feel I could do with another week off. Perhaps I'm just torpid from too much Christmas fare (see gingerbread entry below). Since an extra seven days on a sunny beach is not an option, it’s time to look ahead to a year of Hot Home Products columns, which appear every Saturday in the print edition of the Toronto Star – to which you surely subscribe, no??? Some of the topics I had planned to look at during the first quarter include new water filtration devices, counter-top materials, bedding trends, solar energy in the home and kitchen knives. I added condo-sized furniture and appliances to the list after getting a query from a faithful reader on that topic. I love getting correspondence from readers ­and while I can‘t always respond to every specific question, I do my best to refer them to another expert when I can't supply advice or consider doing a column on the general category of product they ask about. So if there’s a home-related product you’d like to know more about, let me know – it might become the inspiration for a future Hot Home Product column. And while you’re at it, tell me if you’ve made a home-related New Year’s Resolution. The two that top my list – put the finishing touches on the bedroom reno we started last summer and banish clutter from my house. Stay tuned on both counts.