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PrintTIps & Trends: Products
Handy things for your home.
“Stop! Eat an
Apple Instead!”
Record-O-Clip is a fun, handy household gadget. A variation on the regular bag-clip idea, this one records a 16-second personal message and plays it back every time the clip is opened.
Easily re-recorded (literally at the touch of a button), the Record-O-Clip has virtually unlimited uses, and is a great conversation-starter and an unusual gift. Depending on who recorded the last message, the clip might provide an audio update of a workday schedule, help children remember their household chores, or warn a dieter to take it easy on the junk food.
Jim Sullivan, creator of Record-O-Clips, invented the product and started his company after being laid off from work. He says on his website, “If you share my challenges with compulsive snacking, you need to get one. If you just need a little whimsy in your life, you need to get one. If you like to cheer for the underdog, then you need to buy a whole box of them.”
Each plastic clip has a handy magnet on the back and comes with its own batteries. Record-O-Clips are available for purchase online at www.recordoclip.com. Price and shipping costs vary depending on how many units are ordered.
Port:
An Elegant Choice for
Après Anything
Port, a fortified wine that has been enjoyed for centuries, is undergoing a revival, especially among Americans (who are rated sixth in overall port consumption), and women worldwide, who consume nearly half of all port each year.
All grapes used to make port come from the Douro River region of Portugal, the third oldest defined and protected wine region in the world. The flavor is on the sweet side, resulting in a drink that is richer, heavier, and with a higher alcohol content than regular wine (about double).
For generations, port drinkers have needed to decant their bottles and consume them immediately. However, modern wineries have adopted several techniques to make their port ready-to-pour straight from the bottle and with stopper caps that keep the port fresh for several days.
The majority of port wines are non-vintage, made in the Cuvee style, by blending the yields of multiple harvests to obtain the best of all possible wines.
Warre’s Otima Ten-Year-Old Tawny Port and Graham’s Six Grapes Reserve Port are just two examples.
Tawnies are considered the most versatile to serve—as an aperitif or digestif, or with various soups (especially broths), antipasto, cheese of all sorts, desserts, or coffee.
Warre’s Otima Ten-Year-Old Tawny Port pairs wonderfully with creamy fondues, roasted nuts, melons, tortes, or a variety of custard desserts.
Graham’s Six Grapes Reserve is a ruby port, robust and fruity in flavor. Excellent paired with dark chocolate desserts, it is bottled “young” and has been called “the everyday port for the vintage port drinker.”
Because of its higher alcohol content, port is usually sold at liquor stores rather than wine-
specialty shops.
Finally, a Way
to Keep Bread Fresh
Do you love artisan-style bread? We do! And luckily, NexGen Bags has come up with a terrific new product to make one of those wonderful loaves last more than one day.
Bread Armor Artisan Bread Bags, now available at 460° bread in Driggs, provide a solution to the problem of bread that lacks preservatives drying up or becoming stale.
“They work great,” says one fan, among the many bread-loving locals who have kitchen-tested this product. “I’ve left bread in a Bread Armor bag for as long as a week and it’s still mold-free and delicious when I went to serve it!” says another.
After saving in a Bread Armor bread bag, the loaf will actually become soft. To give the outside of the bread that fresh-from-the-baker crunch, pop the unwrapped loaf directly on top of the oven rack, turn your oven to 225 degrees, and reheat the bread for about ten minutes, (if your oven’s already hot, three or four minutes at 450 degrees will do the same thing). Let it cool again before slicing.
According to NexwGen’s website, one of their bags will keep bread fresh up to two weeks, although few can resist consuming fresh-baked bread for that long.
Bread Armor bags are constructed of multi-layer film, FDA-approved, and fully reusable, resealable, and recyclable. They come in handy rectangular sizes to hold the most popular styles of bread; 460° bread currently carries the bags for Ciabatta/Rustica bread (dimensions are 8.4 inches by 17.5 inches) and baguette (5.3 inches by 27.5 inches).
The bags are high-performance, too; they seal with a heavy-duty zipper-gripper and can also be used for marinating meat and freezing food (which will also stay fresh longer).
Bread Armor Artisan Bread Bags retail for $3 for a pack of two. As of press time, 460° bread was the only retail outlet for them in the area.
To watch a video of how this high-tech packaging works, go to www.breadarmor.com.
Pass the Cheese, Please! ?
Formaticum Cheese Paper is another kitchen-tested item proven to keep a favorite food fresh, now available at Jackson Whole Grocer.
Just as with any perishable foodstuff, proper handling and storage make a huge difference in keeping the good taste and fostering the long life of cheese. Whole wheels of cheese are aged, but once cut into retail-sized slices, cheese is more delicate and vulnerable to rapid deterioration, such as becoming moldy or dried out before its time.
Specifically designed to keep cheese fresh and delicious, Formaticum Cheese Paper is a two-ply product with a thin sheet of polyethylene on the inner side (this surface is wrapped next to the cheese) and an outer side that’s wax-coated and similar to traditional Kraft paper.
Most conventional food-storage materials are non-porous, which can make cheese smell and taste like ammonia. Further, non-porous wrap traps moisture, allowing drops of water to accumulate, causing surface mold and accelerating spoilage.
Because it’s breathable, Formaticum Cheese Paper allows for oxygen exchange and regulates the humidity level within the package. To keep flavors distinct, one piece of cheese paper should be used for each kind of cheese.
Retail packs come with fifteen sheets (11 inches by 14 inches in size) of cheese paper and cost just $6.49 at Jackson Whole Grocer. Thirty adhesive labels are also included to seal the wrapped pieces of cheese and provide a convenient spot to mark what type of cheese is in the package. For more cheesy info, see the Formaticum website www.formaticum.com.
