• Kitchen
    • How to Choose Cookware
      • A No-Nonsense Guide to Cookware Materials
      • Cladded sidewalls vs. disc-bottomed cookware
      • Cookware Thickness Database
      • Thermal Rankings: Gas
      • Thermal Rankings: Electric and Induction
      • Heat retention myths and facts
      • How to choose an enameled Dutch oven (Le Creuset, Staub, Lodge, etc.)
      • Lids: Glass vs Stainless vs Universal
      • Handles: Rivets vs Welds vs Screw-On
      • What’s the difference between 3-ply (tri-ply) and 5-ply and 7-ply?
    • How to Choose a Knife: In-Depth Product Reviews: Kitchen Knives, Sharpeners, Knife Blocks, and Other Knife Storage
    • How to organize pots and pans (and dishes, cutting boards, and lids) with racks and shelving
    • High-Powered Blenders: An In-Depth Review of Vitamix vs. Blendtec vs. Oster vs. Also-Rans
    • How to Choose Steamer and Pasta Inserts
    • Garlic Presses
    • Induction Stoves
    • How to Choose Sous Vide Equipment
      • In-Depth Product Review: ANOVA Precision Cooker (an Immersion Circulator for Sous Vide Cooking
      • Does pot material matter for sous vide cooking?
    • How To Choose a Cooktop
    • In-Depth Product Reviews: Silicone Spatulas, Turners, and Scrapers Comparison
  • Home
    • A Post-Plastic Home: Known and Unknown Dangers of Plastic, and Alternatives
    • Affordable Water Distillation
    • Sleep
      • Blue Light Special: How to get more sleep in one easy step
      • In-Depth Product Review: White Noise Generators as Sleep Aids
  • Body
    • Eat Poop or Wash Your Hands
    • In-Depth Product Review: A Guide to Feminine Hygiene Products (Menstrual Pads, Diva cups, etc.)
  • Science
    • Does cooking food create toxins and carcinogens?
    • Is Induction More Efficient Than Electric Coil or Gas?
    • Induction Interface Discs: Why They Don’t Work Well
    • Maillard Reactions (Why Food Tastes Good)
    • What’s the healthiest cooking oil?
    • Understanding Imperfect Science
  • Food
    • Emergency Meals – Fast, Easy Cooking for Busy People
    • Fake vs. Real Foods: A Savvy Buyer’s Guide on How to Identify Genuine Food Products and Forgeries
    • Garlic: anti-cancer and cardiovascular health benefits
    • Nutrition
      • The Green Smoothie is the Most Important Meal of the Day
      • Paleo Diet: It’s A Starting But Not Ending Point
    • Food Safety
    • What’s the healthiest cooking oil?
  • Books
    • In-Depth Product Review: Amazon Kindle Fire 7 (2015) Tablet
    • Cookbooks
      • In-Depth Book Review: The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen
  • Baby
    • Food and drink
      • Nutrition: Avoiding Palm Olein in Baby Formula
    • Safe Plastic Breast Milk Storage Bags: A Guide
  • Cleaning
    • Kitchen
      • In-Depth Product Review: Bar Keepers Friend (BKF)
  • Travel/Outdoors
    • In-Depth Product Review: Iwatani ZA-3HP Portable Butane Stove
    • Taking risk out of driving cars
  • Deals

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Kitchenware Giveaway

Last year we gave away some very nice kitchenware.  If you’d be interested in another giveaway, please comment on Facebook.  Yes, we’ve barely done anything with our Facebook page in years, but we’re gauging interest.

This is only open to USA residents who are capable of Liking the page.

 

Taking risk out of driving cars

caraccidentFor many people, the riskiest part of the day is driving a car.  About 33,000 Americans die each year in motor vehicle accidents.1  That’s just deaths, not including injuries like brain damage, broken bones, and lost limbs.  As the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) puts it: “Motor vehicle crashes are a leading cause of death in the U.S.  More than 2.5 million drivers and passengers were treated in emergency departments as the result of being injured in motor vehicle crashes in 2012.”2

When driving, you are at the mercy of other people’s driving skills–or the lack thereof.  No amount of “defensive driving” can prevent a reckless driver from driving six inches behind you on the freeway.

After an aggressive driver rear-ended Ann’s car and seriously hurt her neck several years ago ringing up tens of thousands of dollars in medical bills, we decided we needed a change.

But how would we change the behavior of other drivers to reduce the risk of another collision?

[Read more…]

Show 2 footnotes

  1. http://www.nhtsa.gov/About+NHTSA/Press+Releases/2015/2014-traffic-deaths-drop-but-2015-trending-higher ↩
  2.  http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/costs/index.html ↩

In-Depth Product Review: White Noise Generators (aka Sound Generators, Sound Machines): Marpac Sleepmate/Sound Screen 580A 980A DOHM-SS DOHM-DS and Alternative Sleep Aids

Marpac Sleepmate/Sound Screen 980A White Noise Generator
Marpac Sleepmate/Sound Screen 980A White Noise Generator

BACKGROUND

  • Do you have trouble sleeping sometimes?
  • Does your spouse snore?
  • Do you live in a unit with thin walls and loud neighbors next door?
  • Does your baby have trouble sleeping, or do you want to be able to calm your baby down with the push of a button?

What is white noise, and why does white noise help people sleep?

White noise is a consistent noise evenly distributed throughout all human-hearable frequencies.  However, some noise is better than others.  Humans tend to pick up higher frequencies better to the point where plain white noise can sound hissy and unnatural.  White noise that has been tuned to deliver more low-frequency noise is called pink noise.  And below pink noise is brown noise, which stresses those low frequencies even more.  Pink and brown noise are perceived by human ears as being flatter, with less hiss.1

[Read more…]

Show 1 footnote

  1.  http://www.livescience.com/38464-what-is-pink-noise.html ↩

Safe Plastic Breast Milk Storage Bags: A Guide

Lansinoh Breast Milk Storage Bags
Lansinoh Breast Milk Storage Bags

With another baby on the way, it was time to buy more breast milk storage bags.  We used mostly Lansinoh bags last time, but Ann didn’t like how flimsy they felt, so we looked at more brands this time.

The problem?  There’s surprisingly little information out there about breast milk bag materials.  (And as for sturdiness, reviews are contradictory, with lots of fans and detractors for each major brand.)  The easily-available information is as follows:

  • All breast milk storage bags are BPA-free, but so what? They have to be BPA-free by law (BPA is banned in baby food containers under US law).
  • Most brands don’t say much about phthalates (softening chemicals in plastic which are toxic).
  • Some brands don’t advertise what kind of plastic they use.

[Read more…]

In-Depth Product Review: KitchenAid KCH112KLKD Hard Anodized Nonstick 12″ Skillet with Glass Lid Cookware – Black Diamond

KitchenAid KCH112KLKD Hard Anodized Nonstick 12 Inch Skillet with Glass Lid
KitchenAid KCH112KLKD Hard Anodized Nonstick 12 Inch Skillet with Glass Lid

THE COMPANY

In 1897, Clarence Charles Hobart started the Hobart Electric Manufacturing Company (Troy, Ohio). The company sold motorized coffee mills, meat grinders, and (starting in 1908) stand mixers for commercial bakeries.

In 1919, after World War I, Hobart formed the KitchenAid division, which produced smaller-scale stand mixers for residential customers. Hobart continued to sell non-residential products under the Hobart brand. The overall company remained profitable and independent for decades, occasionally adding new product lines to the KitchenAid brand, such as dishwashers.

[Read more…]

In-Depth Product Review: Iwatani ZA-3HP Portable Butane Stove Burner

Iwatani ZA-3HP 12000 Btu Portable Butane Burner
Iwatani ZA-3HP 12000 Btu Portable Butane Burner

BACKGROUND

Iwatani Corporation of America is a subsidiary of the Iwatani Group of Japan, a conglomerate of over 250 companies employing 11,000 people worldwide.1  Iwatani is the market leader in Japan for liquefied petroleum gas, hydrogen, and helium, so they know their gases well.

Iwatani sells various consumer, commercial, and industrial products.  On the industrial side, Iwatani makes gas valves, hoses and pipes, heat-resistant paints, piezoelectric igniters, oxygen sensors, etc.  Some of Iwatani’s well known consumer/commercial products include the Iwatani butane cooking torch CB-TC-PRO (which uses the same 8-ounce (227g) butane canister/cassette size as the stove) and the Iwatani ZA-3HP Portable Butane Stove Burner, which is the subject of this review. (NOTE: as of 2020, it’s been cosmetically redesigned and renamed the Iwatani VA-30 butane stove; still performs the same and is still made in Japan.)

[Read more…]

Show 1 footnote

  1.  http://www.iwatani.com/iwatani-about.html ↩
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