Life@Home July 2013

July 2013

Past meets Present reviving family history in Troy 10 ways to use nail polish in your home!

Healthy Hostas!

Tips for keeping predators at bay

Water Worries

Is your H2O good to go?

The BEST cookware for your kitchen!  Details on page 36.

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Contents Home

18

In Every Issue 10 12 14 20

Talk Back On the Web Editor’s Note Window Shopping

In This Issue 24 Past Meets Present

The Vadneys live life in Troy with a (re)purpose

36 Banging Pots and Pans The best cookware for your kitchen

40 Water Worries

Is your H2O good to go?

52 Getting Started

Creating a garden around a new pool

Features July 2013

July 2013

18 Home Life

Where the heart is

Life@Home | Ideas and Inspiration for Living

Past meets Present

32 Design Defined

reviving family history in Troy

Mirror, mirror, on the wall

34 Problem Solved

10 ways to use nail polish in your home!

www.timesunion.com/lifeathome

Happy Hostas!

Tips for keeping predators at bay

Making two old chairs into two new chairs

44 Dollars & Sense

50 Down the Garden Path

46 Living Green

57 10 Ways to Use ...

Teaching your children about money How ending food waste can help the environment

48 Refurnished Living

Tips for keeping hosta predators at bay Nail polish!

59 Tech Tips

Must-have summer apps

Get out your old T-shirts!

Water Worries

Is your H2O good to go?

The BEST cookware for your kitchen! Details on page 36.

On the cover: Photo by Mark Samu  timesunion.com/lifeathome | 7

After back surgery elsewhere, the last thing this patient expected was more pain than he went in with. Unfortunately he ended up with a condition known as “failed back syndrome” which made walking a challenge and running impossible. When he came to Capital Region Neurosurgery, our spine specialists suggested a minimally invasive procedure. After a brief recovery period he quickly reached his goal of walking pain free and was soon on his way to reaching his next goal—running his first 5K. 1220 New Scotland Road, Slingerlands, NY 12159 (518) 439-4326 Appointments in 48 hours

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At 43, when he was left immobile by back pain, he asked us to help him walk.

Instead, we helped him run.

Contents Life

In This Issue 78 Playing with Ketchup Spice up your next cookout with this homemade condiment

65

73

Features 63 Help Me ...

... clean my siding!

65 Kitchen Crumbs Try this shaved ice for grown-ups

66 Dish

Hanging with Chef Ian Brower

70 The Vineyard

Rethinking California Sauvignon Blanc

73 Table@Home

Fresh, local veggies from the farmers market

81 My Space

Lisa Ferretti’s favorite spot

82 Photo Finish

Pretty in purple

66

81 timesunion.com/lifeathome | 9

 Talk Back

The story behind the story ... from our contributors Read below about how our contributors learned new things while working on this month’s edition of Life@Home.

Savvy Saving

Food for All Ann Hughes

Cari Scribner

Happy Hostas Colleen Plimpton “Empress Wu” is touted to be the world’s largest hosta.

It sports blue leaves three feet across and can attain a size of four feet by five feet.

A sheltering place in the garden for the family pet! See Colleen’s story on page 48.

Color Me This 

Melissa Forenza

Who says you need a lot of loot for a pair of Louboutins? No. 1 on our list of ways you can use nail polish (aside from on your fingers and toes, duh) is by far my favorite. See Melissa’s story on page 55.

The Slow Condiment John Adamian Once you start thinking of ketchup as a condiment with close ties to fish sauce, it sort of explodes the ways you expect and want it to taste. I made a batch with funky vinegars and extra mustard seeds, adding a nice horseradish-y zing. I realized that making homemade ketchups allowed for more creative uses of the stuff in other dishes.

See John’s story on page 78.

We asked ... you answered Join the conversation! facebook.com/ lifeathomemagazine

There’s always something happening on Facebook. Click to add your two cents and enter contests.

Pots and Pans Laurie Lynn Fischer Researching this article made feel somewhat vindicated. Because of suspicions about the safety of non-stick surfaces, I’ve been cooking with cast iron and stainless steel for years. I learned how to season them so food won’t stick and how to improve my recipe success rate with the right pan for the job. Best of all, I discovered a sturdy organic corn cob scrubber for cleaning up afterwards.

See Name’s story on page 36.

Here’s what our readers said this month on Facebook.

• My favorite, can’tlive-without-it cookbook is ...

• What would you do if you had a million dollars?

Madonna: How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman

Kathleen: Pay bills. Pay off my mom’s and my kid’s bills. Take my whole family on a beautiful vacation. But, most of all, I would buy all the special needs equipment my granddaughter could use to help her in her daily struggle to walk and have fun.

Kristi: Anything by Rachael Ray. I find her grating, but love that she offers tasty, realistic (AKA they have butter and salt in them) recipes that I can make when I get home from work.

Lynn: Better Homes and Gardens. Classic

10 | Life@Home

We’ve always incorporated leftovers into meals, but I will give more thought to the amount of food I buy — especially perishables. I had no idea discarded food posed so many environmental hazards.

See Cari’s story on page 44.

Susan: Build Mom her own onefloor little apartment, help little bro with bills, take hubby on a romantic vacation and buy my 16-year-old a car for her 17th bday.

Sara: Pay off the mortgage, help Brian pay for nursing school, take theology courses, go to Scotland!

Michelle: 10% right to my church, take care of family, give to many charities dear to my heart and then take a much needed vacation.

Photo: sozaijiten/Datacraft/Gettyimages.

Teaching kids to be financially responsible is not easy, but it is important. I have a 5-year-old who has been adding to her birthday wish list since October. I now know I can use that list to teach her about goal-setting and delayed gratification. This summer is a great time to steer her away from any machine that spits out a plastic figure and toward a quality purchase.

See Ann’s story on page 42.

more

ONLINE

Find more at timesunion.com/lifeathome Explore more content — photos, stories, recipes, videos and companion blogs — all in once place.

PHOTOS

VIDEOS

See more photos of this beautiful Troy home (left, and page 24), as well as more gorgeous photos from our featured Niskayuna garden (page 52).

Pickling is easy! Watch our video tutorial with chef Ian K. Brower (story, page 66).

STORIES DIY projects, vacuums and china cabinets!

Past and Present offers up new and interesting DIY projects. What are you vacuuming with? And check out this handsome refurbished china cabinet, all online!

LIFE@HOME ONLINE Pinterest

pinterest.com/timesunion Like our photos?

Follow us on Pinterest, where we pin all our original photography and more!

12 | Life@Home

Facebook YouTube

youtube.com/ TimesUnionMagazines Want to go beyond the pictures in the magazine? Check out our behind-the-scenes videos.

Life@Home Blogs timesunion.com/lifeathome

Follow our 518 blog for great local finds and our House Things blog for gems dug up around the Web.

facebook.com/ lifeathomemagazine

Like us! Join in our conversations! Win free stuff! And stay on top of all our latest stories and news.

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 Editor’s Note

Scan It

Why equipment might just matter

I es en tak h c t i k the th a Life in meaning wi ar t. on new and a Cusin er. n on Scanpa ’d known so I If only

have long prided myself on being a culinary Luddite. I do not own a stand mixer — yes, you read that correctly — and I went years without a blender. For all of my cooking life, I have mixed just about everything with a fork or wooden spoon. Occasionally I use a hand mixer for something like whipped cream.

Lest you assume this is all fine because I only enter a kitchen to microwave something from a box, I want to also note this: I am a good cook. In other words, somehow over the years I’ve managed to put good food on the table without having the latest gee-gaw touted by the plethora of chefs on the Food Network and other places.

I’ve had a bit of an attitude about it too, not unlike the person who haughtily looks down his nose at those poor uninformed homeowners who actually hire someone to plow their driveway or who own a snowblower. (Oh, wait. I’m married to that person. But that’s another story — or maybe just another sign we deserve each other.)

But my life changed two years ago when I got a four-cup Cuisinart food processor for Christmas. The first time I put an onion in that thing, I literally said, “Whoa.” I could not believe how easy it was — or how

incredibly stupid I’d been all those years. It all flashed before me in the five seconds it took that baby to dice my onion.

Which is also just about how fast it’s taken me to do some serious upgrading on the kitchen utensil/cookware front.

Where I once owned cheap frying pans that I probably bought in the grocery store 30 years earlier, I now have not one but two Scanpans, seriously expensive, nonstick (and friendly for the environment and you because they are PFOA-free) pans that are unbelievable to cook with. I also have a Cuisinart slow-cooker and multiple new gadgets I didn’t know I could live without, including a zester.

My daughter — she of the professional stand mixer and precise measuring cooking style — finds all of this amusing. And I find it more than a little ironic. Just as my need to cook for large groups regularly diminishes, I have more of the equipment that would make doing that possible.

At any rate, we’ve done a round-up in this issue of what’s new in pots, pans and cookware. We hope you find something you can’t live without. As you’ve probably guessed, I did. 

Janet Reynolds Executive Editor jreynolds@timesunion.com

Photos courtesy Amazon.

14 | Life@Home

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Furnishings  Gadgets  Décor

Home 17 – 60

Outside-in: Bring color into your home with window box flowers.  Photo by Colleen Ingerto. Read more on page 52.

timesunion.com/lifeathome | 17

 Home Life

Homebody W

hen I moved here, I was 19. I shipped two boxes of books, and boarded the plane with a suitcase and my tape collection. That was nearly 10 years ago. As I write this now, my dining room table is surrounded with the contents of our home’s closets. A 4-track and turntables sit on the chair beside me, my partner’s industrial toolbox filled with oil paints rests below my feet, and my kid’s books tower across the table in piles labeled ship, bring, and donate. In an hour a guy will stop by to give us a bid on schlepping this life we’ve built back to where we came from.

Where I live right now is intrinsic to who I am today. It is the place I moved to in order to shed an old self, a self I’d hauled through childhood and adolescence but couldn’t find the strength to carry into adulthood. I came here to let go, to be reborn; and now, a decade later, I am a vastly different person than the scrawny girl with a white-knuckled grip on her suitcase as she stepped off the plane. I met my partner here. I birthed my daughter here. I put myself through college here. I found friends of the truest kind, the kind I’d always hoped for but never quite found growing up. With a suitcase, some books, and a tape collec18 | Life@Home

tion to start from, I built and built and built until one day I realized I wasn’t hauling any self anymore, but instead standing tall, feeling the length of my spine.

What happens when a place cradles you, though, is that it becomes your home. Or, this was the thought that paced around my brain for weeks after we decided to leave.

The earth here, after all, is quite literally what I built a new self upon. If my young adult self was trapped and in desperate need of development, then this place was my incubator. For nearly a decade, this place has fortified my growth and witnessed my bloom. To say that I am sad to be leaving is a simplification. I am terrified that when we drive across the state line next month, I will crumple. I worry that, perhaps, it’s only this place that keeps me aligned.

That doesn’t feel like progress, though. It isn’t enough to thrive. It is time to inventory, time to see what I carry away from 10 years of making and remaking, to look in the mirror and see what belongs to this place and what, to my core, I’ve made mine. The only way to do that is to leave, though, and the best way to do it is to return in some ways to the life I left. By standing again in the spaces I once failed to navigate well, I

can truly measure the distance I’ve come.

The more I think about it, the more I understand that leaving is the best way to honor my experience of this place. If it has been a decade of learning to stand up, then the way to give thanks is to walk away.

After the initial excitement of moving subsided (new house! adventure! a fresh start!), I found myself choking up as I drove to work in the morning, bidding teary goodbyes to the buildings and such that have marked so many of my paths since I’ve lived here. This will still be here, I’d catch myself murmuring; home is a place you can return to. But then I thought harder on that. I felt something in my chest puff out and assert its presence. This place isn’t home. No, this place helped me come home. Home is inside me, wrapped warm around the rhythmic thumps and silences of my chest. For 10 years, this place invited me to look in. For 10 years, this place invited me to risk unfurling my own roots, to become my own home. In a few weeks, when we get in the car and pull from our driveway for the final time, I will smile at this house through grateful tears and know, that after 10 years here, I am always and already home. 

Photo: Patrick Heagney/GettyImages.

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 Window Shopping

Shop Smart Shop Local In each issue, Window Shopping highlights interesting and unique items available at area stores. This month we visit Artique Co-Op in Clifton Park.

Photos by Krishna Hill

Antique Book Stand Want to showcase that heavy old dictionary? This 1890s piece by Geo J. Flanagan is a good way to do it. Available from Creative Old Geezer. $295.

20 | Life@Home

Children’s Chair

Slumped Bottles

Make the kids feel extra special ­— give them their own little chair! This wooden piece is from DBC Crafts by Amy and David Cohen. $38.95.

These one-of-a-kind creations made from old beer and wine bottles can be used for window/wall hangings or serving dishes. Plus: three cheers for upcycling! Available from Creations by Marcelle. $26.95.

Featured store Artique Co-Op 1536 Crescent Road, Clifton Park 518-724-0750 · artiqueshopping.com This Clifton Park store features over 100 vendors in a warm and inviting atmosphere of three rooms full of merchandise. “Whether you are looking for hours of shopping entertainment or a quick gift, Artique has you covered.”

Antique Milk Can When is a milk can more than a milk can? When you paint it and make it a lovely accent piece. This decorative can is available from Albany-based Mary’s Marvels (Mary Holmes). $40.

Repurposed Suitcase How’s this for a cabinet and message center with character? Measures 25" x 14" x 6".

Available from Chicadee’s (Deanna Baker). $42.

Fruit Crate This sturdy, rustic old fruit crate can do double duty, acting as a storage bin and coffee table at the same time. Available from E-Barn Country Store. $25.

timesunion.com/lifeathome | 21

 Window Shopping continued from 21

Our Bloggers Shop

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To stay in our bloggers’ design loop 24/7, go to timesunion.com/lifeathome.

Are you a design and décor junkie? We’ve got your fix at timesunion.com/lifeathome. And check out this month’s picks from our local and national bloggers. There’s more where these came from!

House Things

By Brianna Snyder

This table’s turquoise legs made this cerused oak desk jump out at us while browsing the goods over at One Kings Lane, a website curating vintage pieces from around the world.

This vintage desk, though, with its brass handles and accents, is subtle, simple and interesting. It’s a oneof-a-kind piece that, we’re sure, will look elegant in any room. $1,999.

Visit onekingslane.com.

Home Décor@518

By Valerie DeLacruz

Want the look of a clean, crisp window treatment that looks like a softened shutter? Hunter Douglas (hunterdouglas.com) has introduced Vignette, modern Roman shades for a fresh, contemporary style. Twentyfirst-century upgrade? They can be raised and lowered mechanically — either individually or as a group — using Hunter Douglas’s PowerRise system. That’s right, you can use your iPhone or iPad app to remotely raise and lower the shades! Powered by batteries or plugged into a nearby outlet, no hard wiring is required.

22 | Life@Home

With over 100 fabric choices including light-filtering or roomdarkening, these gorgeous window treatments can be operated topdown or bottom-up, and roll neatly into their headrail and disappear when you want fully open windows.

Available at Classic Interiors (classicinteriors.cc) in Clifton Park, their designers will help you select the right fabric and option for your décor.

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Past

Meets

Present The Vadneys live life in Troy with a (re)purpose

By Janet Reynolds | Photos by Mark Samu

D

an and Joanne Vadney had lived in Troy for 12 years before a friend told them about this house being on the market. While some might have found its all-white walls daunting, Joanne, an interior designer, was delighted. “When I walked in and saw this clean palette,” she says, “I said, ‘This is perfect.’”

With three young children at the time, Joanne says being practical was the main driver in some of her design choices. “A lot of choices we made were for them,” she says. “We wanted them to be comfortable in our new home.”

Near the top of that decision was adding a porch to the house. “We like to be outdoors,” Joanne says, noting it was too buggy to enjoy their yard without a porch.

“It’s multiplied our house by two in terms of the living space.”

It’s also the perfect spot to incorporate many of the historic family elements so important to Joanne — both personally and because she’s a big fan of repurposing in home décor. continued on 26

timesunion.com/lifeathome | 25

Great idea! This lamp had its first life as a sconce in a church. A stained-glass company in Gloversville transformed it. continued from 25

The tone of the porch was set with the trunk that belonged to her grandfather. He shipped equipment all over the country, and this large trunk was just one of many used to send his company’s products around America.

Vadney repainted the antique wicker chairs — which like many other objects on the porch were once at her grandfather’s Big House on Lake George — to match the trunk color. “When I design, I try to find one piece and build around that,” she says.

Other elements from the Lake George house include pulleys and other dock

26 | Life@Home

ephemera once used to tie up the boats, and two rockers from the Lake George porch.

Joanne continued her repurposing design elements in other rooms in the house.

Take her daughter’s room for instance. The furniture was a mish-mosh of hand-medowns — the bed originally belonged to Joanne’s parents, who handed it down to Joanne and Dan when they married, who handed it down to their daughter. It was solid maple but the dresser was originally a mahoghany buffet and the mirror was from another family member and another wood as well. continued on 28

timesunion.com/lifeathomeâ&#x20AC;&#x2021; |â&#x20AC;&#x2021; 27

continued from 26

To tie these disparate elements together, Joanne decided to paint the furniture.

She put on the base coats and then hired Debbie McFarland of Valley Mills to hand-paint the furniture. The walls, which echoed the fairy theme, were painted by Virginia Fisher, a decorative painter based in Troy. “I feathered it out with vines and flowers,” Joanne says.

28 | Life@Home

Joanne transformed her son’s room into one with an Adirondack theme after he left for college. The nightstands were from the Lake George house.

Joanne made the window treatments from birch branches from a tree that Dan took down in their front yard, pieces of an old blanket tied with rawhide string once used to lace up baseball gloves. “As Dan was cutting, I said, ‘Let me see if

What little girl doesn’t want her own personal fairy? 

30 | Life@Home

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I can find straight pieces,’” Joanne recalls.

The Vadneys’ willingness to get their hands dirty and tackle just about any home improvement is clear in their backyard as well. They do all their own gardening. Dan built the stone

walls in the backyard. And that water feature? Yup, they built it themselves even though they’d never made one before.

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 Designed Defined

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall

By Lucianna Samu | Photo by Mark Samu

T

he hunt for the perfect finishing touch to complement a renovation project often begins while the project itself is still in the planning phase.

Then, over the weeks or months — sometimes many months — it takes to finish a room, or many rooms, an endless stream of deliveries will arrive.

I stack the carefully packed arrivals inside closet spaces, or entire rooms designated for storage, always far away from the daily construction chaos. Inquisitive onlookers may get to peek inside a box now and then, but the official unpacking day waits.

“Installation Day” is a lot like Christmas, only better because every perfect item to be unpacked matches, fits, shines, isn’t broken, and is dust-free. From the mountains of crushed cardboard, packing tape and bubble wrap, everything is placed in the freshly minted room where it belongs.

I always unpack the mirrors first; nothing inspires even the most jaded and oblivious helpers to join in the oohing and aahing than a really beautiful mirror.

It’s easy to take a mirror for granted in a modern world where mass-produced low

32 | Life@Home

cost valuables are everywhere. Less than two centuries ago, even a small mirror was not only as highly prized as a country estate, but it cost as much. Today, antique mirrors are highly sought after and precious indeed, valued for the quality of the glass and mirror itself, as well as the fine furniture grade or carved or gilt frames that surround it. Mirrors rendered nearly uselessly obscured by the scowl of age and a condition known as “foxing,” which renders the mirror hazy and misty, account for

some of the most distinctive must-haves for the mirror connoisseur.

Every mirror, including those we can buy today for less than $25, shares a historic lineage with the Venetian craftsmen of Murano, Italy. It was there that the fine art of mirror production was such a closely-held secret it took the coercion of legions of Napoleon’s France to not only steal the mirror makers themselves but elevate the craft to achieve the still unsurpassed splendor of the great Hall of Mirrors of Versailles.

T

he mirror of the moment is a round convex mirror.

While any mirror can cause a room to appear both larger and brighter, a convex mirror creates an extraordinary complexity by virtue of its shape and perspective. In the Federal style, convex mirrors surrounded by finely crafted wood and gilt frames take on an extra air of importance by virtue of the symbolic American Eagle so often part of the carved frame.

Whether modern or historic in style, convex mirrors look smart above the mantel and in a more classic arrangement hung low over a sofa and set between a pair of window. I personally avoid placing convex mirrors along a stair wall, believing it’s best not to alter one’s perception of space while traversing a stair. These mirrors will distort a viewer’s depth perception and their view of themselves, so plan accordingly, knowing a vantage point that offers a very long view is the most effective use for this particular type of mirror.

In a bedroom, starburst or sunburst mirrors make a powerful statement. Generally round in shape, the form of the sunburst can be made of carved wood, unusual configurations of undulating metal forms, more mirror or a combination of artful materials. I’ve outfitted conventional rectangular mirrors with a small convex starburst glued onto the center point of the rectangle. This mirror set atop a mirror arrangement is always a favorite as the two competing mirrored surfaces — one flat, one convex — add yet another layer of dimension and

interest to the look.

The mainstay of bedroom mirrors is not a wall-hung mirror but rather a full-length standing floor mirror. Simply left to lean on the wall, this approach is a more modern interpretation of the Cheval mirror. Sometimes called a dressing mirror, a Cheval mirror is fixed to a stand, and the mirror will pivot to and fro or stand straight within the standing surround. These mirrors are lovely in a large bedroom, filling out a lonesome corner while making a full-length wardrobe check a snap.

Mirrors added to architectural salvage are a favorite design standard of mine. A favorite remains an antique wooden brick mold, which creates an interesting rhythm if not a quandary for those who wish to check their lipstick.

Old window frames, old doors with interesting panel details, and — another trend — elaborately ornate frames painted in unexpected colors are other inexpensive means to achieve the same treasured ornamentation the Venetians set out to make with their specialized carved mercury backed glass.

As is always true in good design, the simplest approach executed with care can make an impressive statement. I created some of my most interesting mirror installations by hanging three or five of the very same mirror in a precise repetitive line. For this to work, you’ll need a helper with good measuring skill and an interest in your result. Did I mention offering up a sneak peek on accessory delivery day? 

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 Problem Solved

Piecing it

Back Together Making old chairs new

Top Tip: If you’ve never refurbished a chair before,

Desrosiers recommends starting with one that is squareshaped one rather than circular because of the angles. Also glue the chair together all at the same time, using clamps. If you try to put a chair back together in sections, it’s harder to line up everything. “Glue it all at once and clamp it,” she says.

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Problem When Karyl-Lynn Desrosiers, owner of Playing on the Furniture in Troy, found these old chairs, they were “in multiple pieces,” she says. “One was ‘repaired’ with like a square piece of metal [that] screwed on like a popsicle stick.” Springs popped out of the lovely needlework cushions.

Solved Desrosiers stripped the chairs of the worn and torn seat cushions, added new webbing and foam to the seats and covered them with a flowery pattern that recalled the original stitching. She used clamps and screws and “wood filler” to fill in the gaps where the wood had been broken or worn away, and painted them to hide the repairs. “That’s the nice thing about painting them,” Desrosiers says.

“You can hide how you fix them.” 

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Pots & Pans

By Laurie Lynn Fischer

Poisoning from lead pots contributed to Rome’s fall, one theory says. Which modern cookware is best for your health and cuisine?

Here’s what the experts say.

STICKY SITUATION They star in late-night TV ads, but is that greenware green in the figurative sense? The jury’s still out on new nonstick surfaces, says the Environmental Working Group.

Companies “stopped using Teflon and similar chemicals in non-stick pans … but little is known about the newer 36 | Life@Home

chemicals, so EWG still recommends stainless-steel or cast-iron cookware,” notes the consumer watchdog organization. EWG cites recent study results linking cancer with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) — a chemical in Teflon, other nonstick surfaces and everything from microwave popcorn bags to grease-proof pizza boxes. PFOAs pollute groundwater in nine states, including New York, and they’re found in 99 percent of humans, even fetuses, according to the EWG. “DuPont, the only current American maker of PFOA, has committed to phase out manufacture, purchase and use of the chemical by 2015,” EWG reports.

Safety aside, nonstick surfaces can be delicate. Judy Lapides of Rensselaer Coun-

ty says she adores her ceramic greenware, but keeps ruining and replacing it.

“Most restaurants don’t use nonstick pans because they’d go through so many,” says David Brough, dean of Schenectady County Community College’s School of Hotel, Culinary Arts and Tourism. “Once you damage the coating, you’ve defeated the purpose. The coating could get into your food.”

Nonstick cookware is best for eggs, he says. It lets you use less fat, which is more nutritious, he says.

As a precaution, keep nonstick pans out of the dishwasher. Don’t use high heat or leave them on the burner empty and avoid metal cooking or cleaning implements. continued on 38

Photos by GettyImages. Hanging pots, Jason Lowe; Pans Illustrationg, lumpynoodles.

The best cookware for your kitchen

Roland’s environmentally friendly Goodbye Detergent Original Spaghetti Scrub: Made with recycled corn cobs, this nifty scrubber looks like pasta, cleans soaplessly, and has the flexibility to reach tricky spots.

THE RIGHT TOOL FOR THE RIGHT MEAL Just as the wrong glass can botch a cocktail, the wrong pan can wreck a recipe, Brough says. “It’s the most common mistake I see,” he says. Cook two boneless chicken breasts in a 14-inch-wide pan and the

liquid will evaporate, he says. Five pounds of pasta will clump if it’s boiled in a pot that’s only large enough for one, he says.

“Each pan is designed to cook certain things,” he says.

Sautee pan

Sauce pan

Stock pot

Rondeau (braiser) pan

Wok

Sauce pan

Cylindrical with one long handle

Good for heating soup, they’re short to discourage burning, Brough says.

Dutch oven

Thick-walled and cylindrical, with a tight-fitting lid

Great for pot roast; lets you cover food that’s taller than the side of the pan.

Roasting pan

Wide, shallow and lidless

Allow food to cook evenly in the oven, Brough says.

Stock pot

Tall and cylindrical with two handles

“They’re designed to cook liquids,” says Brough.

Rondeau (braiser) pan

Have twin handles, but they’re shorter and wider than stock pots

They let you cook thick things such as stew, without scorching the bottom, Brough says. “You can cover it with foil and finish it in the oven,” he says.

Flared

The large surface area facilitates reduction, says Weiser.

Sautee pan

Have sloped sides, allowing chefs to flip food using wrist action

Covered, they retain moisture for things like chops or stew, Brough says.

Frying pan

Have cylindrical sides.

Ideal for high-heat foods such as bacon and burgers. “With sautéing, the pan cooks the food; with pan frying, the fat cooks the food,” Brough says.

Large with sloped sides and double handles

Preserves nutrients by cooking things fast, says Weiser. “It’s the most versatile pan in the world,” says Brough. “You can stir-fry, steam, boil or deep-fry.”

Saucier

Wok

timesunion.com/lifeathome | 37

Photo courtesy Amazon.

Cleaning up

A pan for all seasons

MATERIAL MATTERS Enamel Le Creuset and stainless-steel All-Clad are customer favorites at Different Drummer’s Kitchen in Stuyvesant Plaza, according to Manager Michele Weiser.

“Enamel cleans up really easily, but it’s heavy,” she says. “Cooking oils and protein will create a patina and discolor a stainlesssteel pan,” she says. “It needs scouring.”

Copper boasts the best heating properties, but it’s expensive and needs polishing, she says, while glass is good for heating liquids on the stovetop or baking. “It’s made of sand, so it’s earth-friendly,” she says.

Anodyzed aluminum pans distribute heat evenly, but don’t work on induction ranges, according to healthworld.net.

Terrific for blackened fish and cornbread, cast iron heats evenly, though it’s heavy and can rust, says Brough. 

How to season a pan: Wash the pan. Use the least-saturated, highestheat oil possible. To oven-season cast iron, rub thinly with oil and bake for 20 to 30 minutes at 350 to 400 degrees to cure the metal.

Render a stainless-steel pan nonstick on the stovetop by pouring in oil, bringing to a smoking point, removing from heat, cooling and pouring out the oil. Rub with salt, using a cloth or paper towel and discard the salt. Wipe with a dry or oiled cloth.

“Now you can put a fat in the pan, break an egg and it will swirl around, just like in a nonstick pan,”

says Brough. Dishwashers make cast iron rust, so wash it with soap and water, he says. Depending how vigorously, you may have to reseal it.

Even if your pan comes preseasoned, oil it using a paper or cloth towel before each use, says Michele Weiser, Manager of Different Drummer’s Kitchen.

“The more experiences someone has, the more well-seasoned they become,” she says. “It’s the same thing with a pan. The more you use it, the more seasoned it gets.”

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continued from 36

Seasoning isn’t just what you sprinkle on for flavor. It’s also what you do to pans to keep food from sticking and prevent cast iron and carbon steel from rusting.

“You’re creating a barrier between the water and the porosity of the pan,” says David Brough, dean of the School of Hotel, Culinary Arts and Tourism at Schenectady County Community College.

Water Worries I

Is your H2O good to go?

By Laurie Lynn Fischer

pharmaceuticals properly, advises Peter Bayzon, a natural resource specialist with the Albany County Soil and Water Conservation District. The district gives county residents free well water analysis kits that test for pesticides, bacteria, nitrates, chlorine, copper, alkalinity, lead, nitrites, iron, pH and hardness.

Sodium, which is bad for high blood pressure, could taint well water near a salted road, and pH extremes can be “aggressive” on equipment, says fourth-generation well driller Clifton Richardson of Westerlo.

Well water quality tests are required to obtain building permits in Albany, Rensselaer and other municipalities, he says.

While New York State has no private well requirements, testing is needed for home loan approval, says Betty Sherman, a technician at St. Peter’s Partners Laboratory in Albany, whose routine well water analysis includes spectrum, color, odor, turbidity, conductance, pH, alkalinity, hardness, nitrate, iron/manganese, chloride, sulfate, sodium and fluoride.

Pollutants can leach into water around landfills, Sherman says. Water near orchards or agricultural areas might contain herbicides, pesticides and nitrates, which de-oxygenate blood, causing Blue Baby Syndrome, she says. Other potential contaminants include E. coli, which causes intestinal illness, and toxic heavy metals, such as lead and arsenic, she says.

Solution solutions The same remedies work for both well and public water problems. Whole home systems addressing water problems usually cost $2,000 to $3,000, while maintenance and filters cost about $140 per year, de Leon says.

• Reverse osmosis pushes molecules against a membrane to remove impurities and improve flavor.

40 | Life@Home

Sherman advises well owners to check their well water at least annually, especially if any development has occurred near your home. “Any new construction could stir up a lot of things,” she says. “You never know.”

WHAT’S IN YOUR PUBLIC WATER? “No matter where you live, the tap water is sure to contain some chemicals you don’t want to drink,” the Environmental Working Group reported this March.

Americans’ water commonly contains traces of pesticides, pharmaceuticals and chromium, but they’re largely unregulated and not routinely tested, according to the consumer watchdog organization.

Everything from bromate to gasoline additives turns up in public water. But not everything undesirable got there by accident. Many municipalities, for instance, regularly add fluoride and chlorine to their water supplies.

Some homeowners object to fluoridation and chlorination, however. Fluoride fights cavities, but too much is harmful, says Betty Sherman, a technician with St. Peter’s Hospital Environmental Laboratory.

If fluoride is in drinking water, children can overdo it by taking fluoride supplements, she says.

Chlorine is carcinogenic, but it disinfects, says Richard de Leon, owner of Advanced Water Systems of the Hudson Valley. In houses with public water, he most often installs filtration systems for chlo-

• Carbon filters address chlorine, sulfur or bacterial issues.

• Ultraviolet Light systems kill E. coli bacteria.

• In-line filters — the most common do-it-yourself filters — remove sediment. They’re changed quarterly.

• Multimedia filters strain suspended clay through stone and sand layers.

Photo: GettyImages. Water Pitcher, Creative Crop; Water Faucet, Brian Hagiwara.

t would have been a deal breaker. We wanted to buy an Albany County farmhouse but the well water teemed with bacteria. As it turns out, the inspector had sampled the 8-foot-deep dug well instead of the 400-foot-deep drilled well. So we moved in. Our water tastes metallic and feels slippery, as though the soap hasn’t rinsed off, but we’re used to it.

We’re not the only Capital Region homeowners with funky well water. Brian Hoffman of Berne filters his. “My neighbor dug a well and he blasted,” says Hoffman. “Now I have constant sediment. We had perfect water until they came along.”

Sharon Bonk’s well water smells of rotten eggs unless she lets the sulfur off-gas. “It deposits on my shower,” the West Sand Lake resident says. “It’s invisible, but you can feel it. I have to buy spring water or bottled water for company and for ice cubes.”

Their stories are common ones to well owners and raise the obvious question: Do you know what’s in your well water?

“Be aware of what’s upstream of your well” and dispose of pesticides and

rine, hardness and total dissolved solids.

The town of Bethlehem this March exceeded government standards for trihalomethanes, a byproduct of chlorination.

“

No matter where you live, the tap water is sure to contain some chemicals you don’t want to drink.”

— Environmental Working Group Bethlehem Public Works Administrator Joann Stannard confirmed. Trihalomethanes have been linked with cancer. They were in all samples taken at 201 water utilities “reaching 100 million Americans,” said a March 2013 posting on the Environmental Working Group’s website (ewg.com) Another posting concerned methane and natural gas fracking.

Thousands of pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCPs) are in surface water, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. New York this year launched a pilot project to test state waters for pharmaceuticals, says Department of Environmental Conservation spokesman Rick Georgeson.

The closest of five sampling sites to the Capital Region is the Hudson River at Poughkeepsie, he says.

Drugs, which “pass largely unaltered through our wastewater treatment plants,” can do everything from making male fish produce eggs to creating antibiotic-resistant bacteria, says DEC. In 1999-2000, a federal study found low levels of drugs such as

hormones, antibiotics, contraceptives and steroids in 80 percent of rivers and streams tested nationwide, notes DEC. Brian Collins, quality assurance officer at St. Peter’s Hospital Environmental Laboratory, knows of no consumer lab tests for PPCPs. “I think it’s going to be very expensive unless you’re looking for something in particular,” he says.

“The science will catch up and you will be seeing these regulations in the next 20 years,” predicts the City of Albany’s environmental laboratory director James M. Malkiewicz. 

Hard facts Hard water — the most common complaint among Capital Region homeowners — contains dissolved minerals that can stain, says Richard de Leon, owner of Advanced Water Systems of the Hudson Valley. Capital Region public water is harder in municipalities that rely on wells, such as Schenectady and Clifton Park, than those that rely on reservoirs, such as Albany and Troy, he says.

Households with hard water often use more soap, says Richardson.

Softeners — usually salts — save plumbing, fixtures and hot water heater coils from mineral deposits, he says.

timesunion.com/lifeathome | 41

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 Dollars and Sense

Pennywise for Life S chool is out for the summer, but there is no time like the present to teach your child about money. The earlier kids get savvy about saving and spending, the more likely they are to make good financial decisions as adults. Experts we spoke with say children can start learning about money as soon as they learn how to count. These age-appropriate concepts are bound to pay off.

FOR CHILDREN IN PRESCHOOL AND ELEMENTARY SCHOOL: 1. Money is earned by doing work “The greatest lesson is, what does it take to earn money?” says Kathleen Godfrey, president of Godfrey Financial Associates, Inc. She suggests chores in exchange for an allowance. Even young children can help set the table and make their beds.

2. It’s important to save money Make it easy. If you pay a one-dollar allowance, for example, hand it to your child in quarters so he or she 44 | Life@Home

By Ann Hughes

can simply set aside a portion. Nicolle Monast, manager of educational initiatives at Cap Com Federal Credit Union, says help children set a goal and save for a particular item. It’s much more valuable than buying it for them.

3. You’re never too young to budget “As soon as they can understand basic math concepts, you can help them set up a real simple budget,” says Godfrey.

Here’s an example: A family vacation is coming up and your son would like to bring $15 in spending money. He has $20 in the bank. Show him the math, and make sure he understands he will have $5 left.

4. There is a difference between needs and wants Lead by example. “If your kids always see you paying with credit cards, if they see you bringing home carloads of shopping bags each week, they’re going to get the sense that money is limitless,” Godfrey says.

5. Your money can help others Now is the time for the first lesson in charity: It’s important to help, even in a

small way. Encourage your child to donate money to a cause and explain how it will benefit someone less fortunate.

FOR CHILDREN IN MIDDLE SCHOOL:

1. The basic needs are covered, but not the extras Babysitting or odd jobs may put more money in your child’s hands, and the list of “wants” will probably grow as well. Godfrey suggests asking your child to contribute to some of the nonessentials, such as a cell phone. “Then they’re going to assess, is it worth it?”

2. Budgeting is a must Monast recommends sitting down with your child and looking at what’s coming up in the weeks ahead. Help him or her figure out how much money is needed to go to the movies and eat out with friends after a sporting event.

3. Comparison shop The grocery store is a great place to point out how the cost of a specific item can vary. This will teach children the value of bargain hunting.

PHoto: dagmar heymans/GettyIMages.

Teaching your children about money

What if…

Bank it!

In a piggy bank.

At the very least, children need a safe place for those coins and dollar bills. Kathleen Godfrey, president of Godfrey Financial Associates, Inc., says until they understand that money has value, it can easily be misplaced.

In a savings account A recent survey by DoughMain found 63 percent of American children have savings accounts. Nicolle Monast, manager of educational initiatives at Cap Com Federal Credit Union, says it’s not only important to open an account but

4. Credit comes with pros and cons A credit card may be years away, but Godfrey suggests showing your child the fine print on a pre-approved credit card offer that comes in the mail. Teach him or her about the billing cycle, when a bill must be paid, and how interest quickly adds up if it’s not paid on time.

5. Don’t spend what you don’t have Show your child a checking account ledger, and explain why it’s so important to keep good records. Make sure he or she understands that while a bank may let a check or debit transaction go through if there isn’t enough money to cover it, there will be a fee … and it may be more than the original purchase.

FOR TEENS: 1. We all pay taxes Teens are often shocked when they open their first paycheck. Monast says explain the mandatory payroll taxes that are deducted and, when the time comes, help

to make regular deposits. She suggests bringing children to the credit union or bank to handle their own transactions. Also, Cap Com and many other financial institutions offer school banking programs.

Monast says participating makes it easy for kids to save something each week.

In a short-term CD If that birthday money is adding up and there is no immediate need for it, an 18- or 36-month certificate of deposit may be a good option. The interest rate will likely be slightly higher than the rate on a savings account.

your teen file a return. Earning less than $7,500 almost guarantees a tax refund.

2. Bad choices cost money Car insurance is a good example. “All you have to do is show them, here is what it costs today, here is what it costs after you get a speeding ticket,” Godfrey says.

3. College is a huge investment Godfrey advocates cost sharing. “If they’ve got some skin in the game, it’s almost always a more meaningful experience,” she says.

4. Take baby steps with a credit card Monast suggests starting with a credit card limit as low as $500. “Purchase something, one or two things a month, and then pay it off right away,” she says. This will help teens establish good credit.

5. Good credit is important “It’s important for renting an apartment, getting car insurance, even getting a job,” says Godfrey. “Overdrawing a checking account, paying credit card bills late. Those are things that are going to follow them for many years.” 

Ann Hughes is a journalist who still remembers the sound her coins made when rattling around in her hippo bank.

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 Living Green

Food for Thought

How ending food waste can help the environment — and your wallet

I

t’s summertime, and many of us are visiting farmers markets to create lovely, tasty meals with foods produced locally. After your family has enjoyed dinner, take a look at your leftovers.

Have you prepared too much food by overestimating portion size? Will you be using leftovers as ingredients for another meal, or are you wasting food?

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, American households spend an average of $1,036 per year on food that is wasted; that’s a whopping total of $2.5 billion across the country.

46 | Life@Home

Food is wasted when we: yy Buy more than needed yy Cook too large a quantity of food yy Store food incorrectly yy Toss out leftovers The EPA has found that the people who waste the most food are: yy Young consumers age 18 to 24 yy Households with incomes more than $100,000 per year yy Families with children Where does wasted food end up? More

food reaches landfills and incinerators than any other single material in municipal solid waste. In 2010 alone, more than 34 million tons of food waste was generated, with only three percent diverted from landfills and incinerators for composting.

The environmental impact of food disposal is significant. The breakdown of food and other organic waste in landfills produces methane, a greenhouse gas 21 times more damaging to the environment than carbon dioxide. Landfills are the largest human-related source of methane in the United States, accounting for 34 percent of all methane emissions.

Photo: Henrik Sorensen/GettyImages.

By Cari Scribner

“WE CARE ABOUT YOUR GARDEN

AS MUCH AS YOU DO!”

Take heart; grassroots organizations are springing up locally, across the nation and around the world to help remedy these startling statistics.

Consider the following: The co-founders of Food Tank, Ellen Gustafson and Danielle Nierenberg, hope to bridge domestic and global food issues by highlighting how hunger, obesity, climate change, unemployment, and other problems can be solved by more research and investment in agriculture.

Food Tank highlights successful initiatives in agriculture, featuring innovative ideas that are already working on the ground, in cities, in kitchens, in fields and in laboratories. One of these initiatives is the Change Dinner Campaign, which urges families to use locally produced foods as centerpieces to their meals, involve family and friends in meal preparation, and educate children about the importance of eliminating food waste. You can support Food Tank by logging onto foodtank. org and subscribing to their weekly online newsletter, and by connecting with the organization via social networks. Or make a donation of $50 a year to become a founding member of the nonprofit, with all funds used to promote Food Tank’s research and outreach.

Slow Food Saratoga, a local branch of Slow Food USA, urges people to find alternatives to fast food. Slow Food is a global grassroots movement that supports ethical food practices, with a commitment to community and the environment. Slow Food Saratoga participants are working toward a world where all people have food that is good for them and the planet.

The group also aims to unite our community through local food and growers. Slow Food Saratoga partners with local farms producing everything from mushrooms to apples and Angus beef, promoting growers who supply healthy foods as an alternative to the fast food lifestyle. Check out slowfoodsaratoga.com for listings of events such as local Slow Food dinners to meet others who want to make a difference in how and what we eat. Consider making a donation to Slow Food Saratoga for local outreach and also international projects such as the Gardens in Africa Initiative, organized with a goal to create food gardens with every Terra Madre community across Africa.

The Love Food Hate Waste organization, initiated in Australia and England, helps families avoid food waste, save time and money, and reduce their environmental impact. They fulfill this mission by showing families how to plan ahead, shop smarter, portion food more accurately at mealtime, and store food effectively. The group offers easy-to-use menu plans and shopping lists online to use as guidelines. They also feature recipes for leftovers in particular, such as leftover turkey pie, spiced leftover chicken curry, and multi-fruit smoothies. The website includes a suggested list of pantry staples that you can use to whip up dinner without running to the grocery store. Find out more by visiting the website at lovefoodhatewaste.com, where you can review recipes, sign up for e-mail newsletters and bulletins, like the organization on Facebook, and follow their updated on Twitter. 

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 Refurnished Living

Giving T-shirts New Life

By Alison Grieveson

You know you have a drawer full of T-shirts. Some that are old and sentimental that you just can’t part with. What to do with all these colorful pieces of fabric? A few suggestions: This T-shirt mini sphere pillow  ($60) is sure to add a dash of sass to your sofa! Visit beehivestyle.com.

Take your favorite T-shirt and turn  it into a work of art using embroidery hoops available at your local sewing shop or in Granny’s embroidery basket.

Scissors and a sewing machine are w all you need to transform old T-shirts into colorful grocery bags. Tip: Make sure not to cut your holes too big, especially the handle.

Your Mom Designs creates y wonderful kid-centric accessories made from crocheted recycled T-shirt material. I love these stacking/nesting bowls ($30); my son would have a ball with them too! The largest bowl is 6” in diameter. Visit etsy.com/ shop/yourmomdesigns. 



Make this in 10 minutes!

Kim and her mother at the Etsy shop  OHZIE create a number of personal and home accessories from recycled T-shirts. One of my favorites is this 36" multi-colored rug ($240).

Visit etsy.com/shop/ohzie.



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Alison Grieveson is a graphic designer who enjoys exploring the greener side of the design and decorating industries.

For more green tips, check out RefurnishedLiving.com.

48 | Life@Home

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 Garden Path

Happiness is a

Healthy Hosta W

Astilbe with hosta ‘Sun Power’

Tips for keeping hosta predators at bay

Story and photos by Colleen Plimpton

hether you know America’s favorite perennial as plantain lily, funkia or hosta, in early summer these gorgeous herbaceous perennials reach their zenith. They come in sizes from monster to mini, but all are among the easiest plants to grow, display, divide and share. The colors range from the familiar green or wavy variegated to sophisticated chartreuse, adventurous tri-tones, yellow, gold, glaucous blue, and those with striped, flecked and marbled leaves.

Drought-tolerant once established, hosta come in thousands of cultivars with more 50 | Life@Home

arriving every year. Not only are the leaves lovely, but the trumpet-shaped flowers often attract hummingbirds. And while most types appreciate light shade, by choosing carefully it’s feasible for the gardener to grow hosta in conditions ranging from almost full sun to almost total shade. They want a rich soil, generously amended with compost. They play nicely with shrubs such as leucothoe, hydrangea and fothergilla and perennials in the fern, tiarella, heuchera and woodland phlox families. With the advances made in hosta breeding since tissue culturing began, this popular perennial deserves the limelight.

Hostas do have one downside. Too many of us have had the unhappy occurrence of strolling into the garden in the early morning, mug of coffee in hand, only to see our beautiful hosta leaves chomped to smithereens. Too many of us have watched in vain for our precious hosta cultivars to emerge in spring, only to discover that the meadow voles have had their way with them over the winter. And then there are slugs, those slimy creatures that gnaw ragged holes in our precious plants.

Here’s what to do to combat the critters and enhance your hosta-growing experience:

DEER: If you don’t have a big dog or a big fence, you’ll need a large container of deer repellent. Regular readers of this column know I favor my egg-and-hot-sauce mixture to preserve my plants, but any deer repellent will work. The secret is to apply it regularly, so that Bambi knows your yard doesn’t taste good. If the deer have already visited, lightly fertilize the shorn plants and get on a weekly schedule with repellent. Pay special attention to the emerging foliage in spring.

SLUGS: Not all hosta attract this slimy mollusk. Those with thicker leaves, such as Sum and Substance are more immune, while thin-leaved cousins such as Stiletto are slug candy. Keep a list in your garden diary (you do have a garden diary, right?) of which cultivars are affected and therefore need to be protected with organic slug bait. These are formulated with iron phosphate, and harm only the slugs, which consume the pellets and crawl away to die.

If your hosta were ravaged last season it’s necessary to apply organic slug bait early in spring. Slugs lay eggs that can overwinter in soil or garden debris, so it’s essential that the bait go down before damage commences. These new, organic baits have such cute names as Sluggo and Escar-Go. They degrade into the soil, but not before dispatching marauding mollusks.

Other methods of controlling slugs are salting, scissoring, using beer traps or placing copper collars around susceptible plants. (Copper gives slugs a mild electric shock.) Bait works best in my garden.

VOLES: If you’ve had the brutal experi-

‘Sagae’ hosta

ence of coming out to the garden in spring and finding plants vanished over the winter, or dying plants minus most of their roots, your garden is most likely a haven for meadow voles. Other evidence is round, quarter-sized holes with no excavated dirt, and convoluted trails over the garden surface. Granulated vole repellents such as MoleMax can be purchased at garden centers, and mouse traps can be effective.

However, the best repellent I’ve found is used kitty litter stuffed down holes. The voles are convinced that Tabby has moved in and they therefore move out.

Now that you know how to keep predators away, try visiting hosta gardens. It’s a terrific way to view cultivars you may wish to add to your collection and it’s fun to chat with other hosta fans. A local, inspiring hosta garden is

Some of my favorite hosta are: Sagae: This semi-upright, flowing-vase-shaped cultivar won Hosta of the Year in 2000 and has textured blue-green leaves with a wide creamy border. It’s slug-resistant and bears pale lavender flowers. Stands 3 feet by 5 feet at maturity.

Krossa Regal: This boldly upright hosta lives up to its name in its stance: frosty, blue-green wavy leaves and orchid-colored flowers on 5-foot scapes. Its distinctive bearing makes it a cornerstone of any hosta garden.

Striptease: Named 2005 Hosta of the Year, Striptease has dark green leaves with a char-

that of Meg and Jim Dalton of Middle Grove.

They grow a spectacular garden of 1,900 different hosta cultivars on their serene landscape of winding paths, mature trees, statuary, and trickling water. As hybridizers they have raised thousands of seedlings and registered 12, with more on the way. They specialize in hosta with rippled, narrow foliage and white backs. Their spectacular collection is interspersed with well-tended viburnum, dogwood, peonies, boxwood and various groundcovers. The garden is a treat for the senses, and lucky us! Meg and Jim welcome visitors to their hosta haven. Contact them at jmd62687@gmail.com.  Garden communicator Colleen Plimpton lectures, teaches, coaches and writes about gardening. Sign up for her newsletter and vie her blog at colleenplimpton.com

treuse center, and a bold white line zigzagging between the center and the border. Fast growing.

Orange Marmalade: This one’s on my wish list, and I’ve reserved a space for it in my White Pine Garden. (You’d think that with 75 different hosta cultivars I’d no longer have a wish list, but the darn things are addictive.)

Paul’s Glory: I grow this in honor of one of my gardening mentors. It was acclaimed Hosta of the Year in 1999 for good reason.

The wide leaf centers are yellow in spring, with a broad margin of blue-green. It tolerates more sun than many hosta and with its rumpled leaves, slugs do not find it palatable.

‘Gold Standard’ hosta with heuchera timesunion.com/lifeathome | 51

Make your stone stand out 

with flowers whose colors contrast while still complementing their surroundings. The sedum and Angelina stonecrop here work well.

52 | Life@Home

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Getting

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F

or Shelley Burgio of Niskayuna, part of the appeal of the new pool in her backyard was the chance to create another garden. “I’ve always loved flowers, color and plants,” she says. “I love the cottage garden look.”

The key to creating the relaxed, natural look so familiar to country English gardens, she says, is to start with a plan — and then be prepared not to fol-

low it exactly: “Start with a plan and then ignore it,” she says.

Burgio works hard to have something blooming in her gardens all the time. That drives many of her plant choices. “I just do what I love,” she says.

Her top advice? Don’t be afraid to take the leap. After all, you can always move plants around and try other combinations. “People get crippled by fear of starting.” see more gardening tipa on 54

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54 | Life@Home

 Window boxes can ensure your home has color all summer long. “I love to throw in perennials with the shrubs. I love my window boxes. Every year I say they’re so much work and then I do them again.”

Pick up colors  from the front yard and use them in the backyard for continuity.

 Container gardens: the gardener’s friend for gardens that are just starting out. They’re the perfect way to add color and interest while the rest of the garden develops. timesunion.com/lifeathome | 55

Save the date!

November 7, 2013 5:30 - 7:00pm

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Join our regional business community for a cocktail party to celebrate years of honoring excellent women and a unique opportunity to reconnect with old friends and learn where their life journey has taken them. This will be a fun and memorable evening as we come together to celebrate the many, wonderful women we have in our community. Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t miss this opportunity, who knows how many years before we can all get together again! For more information, please contact the Albany-Colonie Regional Chamber at 518.431.1400.

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10 Ways To Use … Nail Polish

By Melissa Fiorenza

H

ow many times have you bought an “in” color, worn it once, and forgotten about it — leaving it to collect dust in the back of your bathroom closet? Good news: Whatever your impulse purchase — mint green, jungle red or a clear top coat — it wasn’t for nothing. Prettying up your fingers and toes only scratches the surface of what nail polish can pull off.

1

Fake a pair of Louboutins

Using a colored opaque formula, paint the sole of your heels to give them a fashionable makeover. We took this tip from cosmopolitan.com, which adds that you should let it dry before applying a second coat, if necessary.

2

Seal envelopes

Sending out a mass mailing of thank you cards? Save your saliva and skip the messy water treatment — a dab of clear polish will do just the trick.

3

Smudge-proof labels

From instructables.com: “Prevent ink from running on your labels. Coat the labels that identify your garden plants, or the labels that distinguish your shampoo bottles with clear nail polish.”

4

Tighten screws

5

Stop a stocking run

Photo: sozaijiten/Datacraft/Gettyimages.

Loose screws can be made more reliable with a touch of clear polish.

This may be the most wellknown additional use for polish, but it’s so great, it bears repeating!

If you’ve got a run in your stocking, put a little polish on both ends to keep that tear from spreading.

6

Make things easier to see

7

Prevent tarnish on costume jewelry

8

Mark the toxic stuff

9

Color code your keys

“Still use [nail polish] to mark my toothbrush and the Talk button on the phone (so my old eyes can see it),” says Denise on Facebook.

A great idea from rd.com: “To keep your fake jewelry and your skin sparkling clean, brush clear nail polish onto the back of each piece and allow it to dry before wearing.”

Got little ones running around?

Using a bold color, make an “X” on anything poisonous or dangerous for kids, so they know to stay away.

Honeydew for home. White for work. Pink for parents’ house.

Crème for car. You get the idea.

10

Renew your accessories

If you’re bored of an old necklace or pair of earrings, make them like new by changing up the colors with, yup, nail polish. 

Did you know?

A burst of cold air from the hairdryer will help set and dry polish stat.

Want to join in the 10 Ways fun? Stay tuned to our Facebook page for upcoming questions: facebook.com/lifeathomemagazine. timesunion.com/lifeathome | 57

Life@Home is packed with inspiration to help you make your house a home.

HealthyLife magazine brings you stories and advice geared at living a balanced life, and nourishment of your mind, body, and spirit.

Capital Region Women@Work is the in-print component of an innovative network of local women in managerial and executive positions.

VOW: Your Wedding. Your Way. is the secret to creating your fairytale wedding using local resources.

If you are interested in receiving free home delivery of any of our magazines, please (518) 454-5768 or email magcirculation@timesunion.com.

Know what’s going on 24/7 and be part of our community, both on- and offline. Connect with us on all our social platforms, so you never miss a beat!

timesunion.com/magazines • Get online access to exclusive content not found in print • Read our blogs • Sign up for our regular seminars and events

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Tech Tips 

Summer App-titude Must-have apps for these slow summer days

By Brianna Snyder

L

ots of things can be done in the oh-so-hot summertime, and though sweat and heat and the glare of the sun often keep us off our phones (for once), we’ve got a few reasons why you should pick your smartphone (or tablet!) up again. We’ve rounded up a few apps to help occupy your summer days. Take a look.

SWIM PLACES (IPHONE, DROID; FREE) If you’re not lucky enough to have a pool — or if you have a pool but crave the open water — Swim Places can help you find the closest bodies of water near you for swimming. You can narrow down the choices by lake, quarry, pool or pond, see what other activities are allowed there (boating? jetskiing?) and get directions instantly.

STAR WALK (IPHONE, $2.99) AND STAR CHART (DROID, $2.99) When the sun goes down, get a blanket and lie back for some stargazing. Using the Star Walk app (for iPhone) or Star Chart (for Droid), you can access more than 200,000 constellations,

stars and galaxies. Just hold your phone up to the sky and the app matches the star patterns to known constellations and their histories.

SPOTIFY (IPHONE, DROID; $9.99) Something about the warm weather makes us want to turn the music up. The superb Spotify app is great for streaming any music anywhere. Spotify’s database is as large as any of its rival services (Rdio, Pandora), but its playlist mixing and radio features make it the perfect accompaniment to a lazy summer day of reading or swimming. (Pro tip: If you put your phone inside an empty glass, the sound is magnified, creating instant mini-speakers!)

LOCAVORE (IPHONE; FREE) Want to eat fresh, local food but not sure what’s at its peak? Locavore tells you what’s in season, how long it’s going to be in season, and offers recipes too for in-season foods. It’s the perfect app for visiting the farmers market.

WEBER GRILLS APP (IPHONE; FREE) If your grilling repertoire stops at burgers and dogs with the errant chicken and fish thrown in, you’ll want to fire up this Weber Grills app for recipes, grilling tips, grocery lists, favorites and tutorials to enhance your summer grilling experience.

You’ll be a pro by the end of August.

MY UV ALERT (IPHONE, DROID; FREE) We’re aware now more than ever of the dangers of sun overexposure. We want to get tans but we don’t want to get skin cancer. Coppertone’s MyUVAlert is an app that’ll tell you when the sun’s at its most damaging and when it’s safest to go lie out in the grass or on the beach. It also includes sunscreen product reviews and sunscreen reapplication reminders so you don’t forget to re-up on the SPF 50.  Have summer app recommendations of your own? Visit us at facebook.com/lifeathomemagazine and share with us!

timesunion.com/lifeathome | 59

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’Tis the season for fresh veggies. Photo by Paul Barrett. Read more on page 73.  timesunion.com/lifeathome | 61

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Help Me ...

Clean My Siding

By Jennifer Gish

I

f your sage green siding has turned into sage grunge, you don’t have to spend a couple hundred dollars getting it cleaned by a professional. You don’t even have to rent a pressure washer if it’s just a matter of some dust and maybe even a little mildew. Think of the exterior of your house like the exterior of your car: a simple scrub down — no waxing necessary — will make your home shine. Just follow these tips:

Photo: Arthur Carlo Franco/GettyImages.

With great power comes potentially damaged siding: “If the siding is relatively modern and properly installed, you can pressure-wash it with a conventional pressure washer,” says Greg Jackson, president of Bennett Contracting in Albany. “One of the things you need to be careful of is there are pressure washers for different purposes, and they have various pressure settings. You should read the instruction booklet and find what the proper setting is because one setting is to remove paint.

You can actually dissolve the wood or the metal right off the building.” The Vinyl Siding Institute recommends that you don’t spray upward, so that the stream is shooting underneath the siding, because it puts moisture where you don’t want it.

You can stand the pressure?: Pressure washers can be rented at a local hardware or home improvement store. Small ones can also be purchased for about $150, Bennett says.

Or go low-tech: There’s an entire category

Use some elbow grease: That fake wood

of cleaning products tailored to different types of home exteriors that dispense right from your garden hose, says Jon Phillips, owner of Phillips Hardware, which has seven locations in the Capital Region.

The bottles of cleaning solution have a spray nozzle and attach to the end of your hose. They’re relatively inexpensive at $12 to $14, he says, and some of them are formulated to clean masonry and wood, too. Jackson and the Vinyl Siding Institute also recommend using everyday cleaning products, such as dish detergent, Simple Green or Armor All.

grain commonly used on vinyl sitting can be a real dirt-catcher, Jackson says. If you have that type of vinyl, you’re probably going to have to use a soft-bristle brush and a ladder to get the surface clean. Phillips suggests buying products you can use for other purposes later, such as a squeegee you’d use for cars or your home’s windows, or a soft-bristle brush hooked onto a telescoping handle.

Mold and mildew?: The Vinyl Siding Institute says all-purpose household cleaners such as Fantastik or Windex can tackle small areas of mold or mildew. A diluted vinegar solution (30 percent vinegar to 70 percent water) can handle larger areas.

Tar from the driveway on your vinyl?: The institute recommends using a gentle scouring product, such as Soft Scrub, to remove it.

Spot-test first, just in case: “A word of caution,” Jackson says. “If you’re going to use anything besides a mild detergent, you should probably find a little spot behind a bush and test it before you slather it on next to the front door.” This allows you to check for a chemical reaction in an inconspicuous spot. You don’t need to wait all day to see what’s going to happen. You should know after a few minutes.

Don’t trade a clean house for a cast: “You start playing around with the hose or anything else, usually it’s recommended you have someone standing there holding the ladder,” Phillips says.

While you’re so close, inspect: Fix a damaged surface before you clean it. “With painted siding, if the paint is loose or you can see bubbles under the paint, you need to prime it and touch up the paint,” Jackson says. If moisture from your cleaning gets under bubbling or chipped paint, it can damage your siding.

There’s no set cleaning schedule: “It’s totally cosmetic. Some people get a lot of dirt on their houses and other people don’t,” Jackson says. “Some people care.

Some people don’t. Some people’s houses are located in spots where the rain does a pretty good job.” Dirty siding doesn’t have a shorter lifespan, he says; it just doesn’t look as good.  Jennifer Gish is features editor at the Times Union. timesunion.com/lifeathome | 63

TAKE YOUR CAREER IN THE

RIGHT DIRECTION

times union

Wednesday, July 24 路 10am-4pm ALBANY MARRIOTT, 189 WOLF ROAD FREE CAREER SERVICES & WORKSHOPS Visit timesunion.com/jobfair to see an updated list of participating companies.

To reserve your booth, contact your Times Union Job Fair representative, or call Erin Rosa at (518)454-5493 or e-mail erosa@timesunion.com.

Kitchen Crumbs 

Tasty Tidbits

to brighten up your cooking

By Caroline Barrett

Looking for fresh, local food?

With more than 7,000 farmers markets in the United States, and over 20 in the Capital Region, chances are good there is one close to you. To find a market in your area, search localharvest.org.

Not sure what to do with summer’s bounty? This beautiful guide, arranged by regions in the U.S., can absolutely inspire. Recipes from the Northeast include mushroom soup au gratin and garlicky Brussels sprouts amandine.

Edible: A Celebration of Local Foods by Tracey Ryder and Carole Topalian

“

I won’t eat anything green.”

— Kurt Cobain

Ph

ot

o oc

ute

sy

a Am

zo

n.

Photo coutesy Amazon.

Cookbook Time 

 Get sporked

Broccoli, a plant in the cabbage family, is half plant, half flower.

Pack it up and take your dining outside, before our grassy hills are covered in a blanket of snow. Every picnic basket should have a set of sporks: handy, reusable, half spoon, half fork utensils.

Visit amazon.com for a variety of sporks, from plastic to titanium.

Photo by Paul Barrett.

Did You Know?

 For adults only Why should kids have all the fun?

Make this refreshing, cool shaved lemon ice with lemon and vodka.

• 3 cups water • 2 cups sugar • 2 cups vodka • juice & zest from 2 lemons • lemon slices, for garnish Combine the water and sugar in a small saucepan. Heat over a medium low flame until the sugar has just melted. Remove from heat and cool. Stir in the vodka, lemon juice and zest. Pour into a long, shallow plastic container with a tightfitting lid. Freeze. Use a large metal spoon to scrape servings into pretty glasses and garnish each with a lemon slice.

timesunion.com/lifeathome | 65

 Dish

66 | Life@Home

At home with

Ian Brower

Every Tuesday and Wednesday

To Go Family Meals starting at $29.95* Two great options and the perfect choice for a family of 4 to 5. Ready for easy pick up at Glen Sanders Mansion.

By Steve Barnes | Photos by Paul Barrett

“Pickles are my favorite food,” says Ian K. Brower, who is the executive chef of Capital City Gastropub in Albany.

The tart and sweet snap of just about any pickled vegetable — especially dense ones like turnip, radish, kohlrabi, carrot, cauliflower — add a perfect cool, crunchy complement to a dish or whole meal.

They can play the heavy role in a salad or lighten the richness of cheese and charcuterie by cutting through the fat. And depending on whether they’re sweet or spicy, pickles can be used as a contrasting element to other parts of lunch or dinner. Even meats like duck and pork, which traditionally are paired with a fruit component, do well with pickles. At the

gastropub, for example, Brower serves a salad of pickled radish and parsley alongside grilled pork tenderloin with smoked turnip purée.

Pickles need not be complicated or time-consuming, Brower says. Although fermented pickles take days to make and traditional canned pickles require specialized equipment, quick pickles need nothing more than a saucepan to boil the pickling brine and a bowl to hold the cut vegetables that will be pickled. Simply pour the hot liquid over the vegetables. By the time they’re cool, they’re ready to eat. continued on 69

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Dish 

Sweet Pickles 2 pounds of vegetables of choice (radish, turnip, asparagus, carrot, even apple) 3 cups water 3 cups sugar 3 cups cider vinegar (white- or redwine vinegar will do in a pinch) Method:

continued from 67

more

ONLINE

Want to se how to make this sweet pickles recipe?

Watch our exclusive video at timesunion.com/lifeathome or scan the QR code at the left to link directly to our Life@Home videos on YouTube.

Brower, 30, grew up in Troy, where he returned with his wife, Sarah, after two years in Burlington, Vt. Seeking adventure, he’d taken the Burlington job on a quick whim: apply online late at night, interview on the phone the next day and in-person later in the week, start the new gig. But the couple, homesick for their native Capital Region, returned home, and Brower started at the gastropub in January 2012.

The rustic simplicity of the restaurant suits Brower’s sensibility for elemental, direct food. He likes big flavors, smoked or grilled, and unfussy preparations and presentations. He serves hush puppies with sweet-and-sour molasses, peas and goat cheese on toast with a fried egg, a pizza with nothing more than house-made mozzarella and herbs. And always pickles somewhere, even if just as a snack for the chef. 

Clean and cut your vegetables and place them in clean, heat-resistant containers. (Mason jars work well, or a deep bowl; the important part is that the vegetables will be able to be submerged in the brine.)

Add vinegar, water and sugar to a pot with a big pinch of salt.

Turn heat to medium high and give the brine a good stir When the brine comes to a boil, take it off the heat and ladle the hot brine over the vegetables.

Cover the jar(s) with lids. If using a bowl, weigh down vegetables with a plate to submerge them in the brine.

Refrigerate the pickles. Let sit for 24 hours and enjoy. The pickles will hold up for a month or more in the fridge.

timesunion.com/lifeathome | 69

 The Vineyard

A Change of Taste Story and photo by Alistair Highet

N

o grape varietal has such a broad, eclectic range of expressions — the talent of a truly great actor in a way — than Sauvignon Blanc.

The grape is said to have originated in Southwest France, and so mysterious are its origins that the name might have derived from the word “sauvage,” or wild, suggesting that these green, melon-colored grapes may have been a gift of nature. In Bordeaux, it is the foundation of the white wines of the region such as Graves and Entre-Deux-Mers, where it is blended with other grapes to make the dry, clean, brisk, peachy wines of the region. However, when left on the vine and allowed to be shrunken by a powdery mildew, the “noble rot,” and then blended with Semillon, it is used to make Sauternes — the world’s greatest and most treasured sweet wine, liquid golden honey in a glass.

If that weren’t enough, at some point in the 18th century, the vine was paired with Cabernet Franc to make Cabernet Sauvignon — the great red wine grape of Bordeaux.

Move the grape along to the Loire valley and you get Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume, where the Benedictine monks La-ChariteSur-Loire began to cultivate the grape in the Middle Ages. While there is micro-variation, the grape in the Loire, thanks to the chalky and flinty soils, creates wines of piercing acidity, hints of flint (thanks, in some cases, to charred barreling), and high, soaring lime notes. To my taste, these are the most reliably satisfying white wines in the world.

If that weren’t enough, Sauvignon Blanc was shipped off to Chile where it thrives, making delightfully rounded, pleasant, ripe wines that go with everything.

New Zealand is where the grape really took off, particularly in the 1990s when everyone discovered the Sauvignon Blancs of the Marlborough region. It is sunny there but cool, allowing the grape to grow long before ripening, where it develops a rich balance of sugar and acidity, resulting in startling wines with astonishing fruitful-

70 | Life@Home

Rethinking California Sauvignon Blanc

ness. These are often the most reliable white wines on a restaurant’s “wine by the glass” menu.

So this is a grape that can travel anywhere it seems, and provided that it has enough sun and enough coolness to ripen, it seems to express its terroir like a songbird: In New Zealand, it is color and exoticism; in the Loire, it is the soaring, austere, aspirational “Agnus Dei” note in a medieval church.

What about California? I’ve had a bias against these wines for some reason. They seemed like neither this nor that — neither acidic and sharp like a Sancerre or colorful like a wine from New Zealand. I’ve changed my mind. The original California experiment with the grape began with Robert Mondavi in 1968, and he started to call it Fume Blanc — not a term you see much anymore.

Originally, these wines were grassy in an unpleasant way, and from what I have tasted —if you want to buy in bulk, stick with Chile.

But recently I tried a handful of California Sauvignon Blancs from Sonoma. In general, I found the style to be balanced — good zip and acidity, minerality and mineral waters finish, with occasional flourishes of melon and peach fruit, but all quite tastefully handled. And you can’t beat the price.  Alistair Highet is a former editor, restaurant manager, and vinedresser, and has written about wine for over 20 years.

County Sauvignon Blanch, 2011 ($13) Liked the wine a lot and was a steal at the price, with lime, a bit buttery in a nice way with white peach notes and clean, mountain spring minerality. Very good.

Duckhorn Decoy Sonoma County Sauvignon Blanc, 2011 ($20) Super wine, a bit richer than the others. Green and pale in the glass,

with zip and a grapefruit nip with bright citrus flavors that sweeten to mandarin orange and white peach.

A soft, ripe mouthfeel but strong, structured acidity. Very good.

Kenwood Sonom Simi, Sonoma County Sauvignon Blanc, 2011 ($17) The addition of a little bit of Viognier may bring something to the complexity here. A cold, piercing, lemon steel acidity opens

up to more floral qualities with lime and green apple flavors, and pear and white flowers on the nose. Very good.

Rodney Strong, Charlotte’s Home, Sonoma County Sauvignon Blanc, 2012 ($15) From the Russian River Valley in the north of Sonoma this was green and fresh, with lemon and kiwi flavors, with restrained herbs and evergreen on the nose. Delightful.

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Table@Home 

Summer’s Bounty

Fresh local veggies from the farmers market

By Caroline Barrett | Photos by Paul Barrett

F

or Paul and me, weekends are not what they used to be. People told me it would be this way, but I didn’t believe it until it happened. Gone are the long, restful nights and days spent tooling around the garden and house. Rare are the afternoons where our family lingers over a game or a jigsaw puzzle.

Our time is now divided between carpools and soccer fields. One of us wakes at dawn to get Lucy to the boathouse by 6:30.

I call him from the lacrosse game to be sure he picked up all four kids in the soccer carpool and made it to the game. We’ve gotten good at this tag-teaming, switching kids and cars and almost always getting everyone to the right place at the right time.

And then, just like that, all is quiet. The seasons are over and weekends are weekends again. I’m not coordinating with eight other parents and driving all over the Capital Region at 5 o’clock. No more pre-dawn waking on Sunday mornings. No long, hot afternoons spent on sunny sidelines, cheering for our kids.

And while I encourage it, support it, buy cleats with a smile and write check after check, I am blissfully happy when it’s over.

I have my family back. Now, we can do the stuff I like to do. We can take Agnes for walks. Play games together. Read. And my all-time favorite — go to the farmers market together on a Saturday morning. continued on 74 timesunion.com/lifeathome | 73

 Table@Home

continued from 73

Make Your Own Pasta with tons of summer veggies olive oil 1 red bell pepper 1 eggplant, sliced into 1/3” thick rounds and sprinkled with salt 1 large, sweet onion, sliced thick 1 zucchini, sliced in thick diagonals 1 big, ripe tomato pesto olives fresh mozzarella, cubed handfuls of fresh herbs: basil, chives and tarragon freshly cooked hot pasta, tossed in olive oil

74 | Life@Home

method Light a grill to medium heat. Brush the pepper, eggplant, zucchini and onion with the oil. Grill the veggies, watching carefully and turning often.

When the eggplant, zucchini and onions are soft and have dark brown grill marks, remove them.

Cook the pepper, turning, until it’s completely black; then place in a paper bag. Roll up the top and let sit for 10 minutes. Remove and peel the outer skin. Cut into strips and place on a plate, along with the other vegetables, cheese, olives, pesto and herbs.

Put out the pasta toppings alongside a big bowl of hot pasta and let everyone help themselves.

This is met with varying degrees of enthusiasm, but I don’t care. Nothing, not even a summer rain, can spoil my good mood on a quiet Saturday morning.

We are lucky enough to live within walking distance of our local market, the Saturday Delmar Farmers Market. So on the much-cherished summer mornings when there is nowhere to run off to, we laze around the house and then head to market.

Elliot rides a bike. Zoe holds my hand and talks the entire mile to the market. Paul sips his coffee and strolls along, happy to be with his family and feel the sun. Lucy holds Agnes’s leash. We bring her even though dogs are not allowed. The mournful look on her face as we pack up the shopping bag is simply too much. One of us will sit with her under the shade of an old oak tree, far enough away to satisfy the market

manager. We take turns sitting with Agnes, giving her tiny bits of cheese and watching the people come and go.

The rest of us wander from stall to stall, buying cheese and fruit and veggies and bread.

There are many more things to round out the shopping experience: pickles, yogurt, flowers, meat and even fresh, wonderful fish. We walk and eat, see our friends and fill the shopping bags and then the basket.

Elliot, with sugar from a donut smeared across his face, is my best helper. My daughters tend to wander off together to look at the cats for adoption or go in search of lemonade. Paul prefers the shade of the tree and Agnes’s company.

But Elliot stays with me. He acts all excited over a beautiful eggplant or a shiny red pepper.

It’s pretty cool. This is the kid who loves his bicycle and soccer and video games. But not vegetables. There is something about the farmers market, though, that creates food excitement for everyone. Even 9-year-old boys get excited about the veggies there.

I do pretty much the same thing every week at the farmers market: I buy too much. I start with the salad greens and buy a big bag of mesclun. Then spinach and chard. I see shallots and garlic and tiny, sweet onions. I buy them all. We move on to peppers, cucumbers and beans. Of course, no trip to the

”

market is complete without tomatoes. And how we love tomatoes. In the summer we have a love affair with tomatoes and do not discriminate against any. I buy a pint of the small, sweet yellow sun golds, then move on to the giant deeply red heirlooms.

At this point in our shopping trip, I am nearly out of money.

So I hit up my husband for what he can dig from his pockets, and go back for the strawberries, peaches and goat cheese.

With only three dollars left, I buy a loaf of bread, and we head for home. Our shopping trips are quite fruitful and the wagon is a heavy pull home.

With so many fresh vegetables in the house on a Saturday, I often put together a spread where people can make their own plate, using plenty of what we purchased earlier. This dinner can be customized to include whatever you find at the farmers market. I used what I purchased, plus olives and fresh herbs from the garden.

We set up a buffet line outside in the late-day sun. I pour wine, icy cold waters and we sit and relax, savoring both the food and the long summer day.

I know these days will not last.

Before long, we will be back to routines and practices and carpools. I will do it all happily, perhaps because I spent so many warm summer days savoring the food we shopped for and cooked together. 

let’s stay in touch

“

There is something about the farmers market, though, that creates food excitement for everyone. Even 9-year-old boys get excited about the veggies there.

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 Food Trends

Playing Spice up your next cookout with this homemade condiment

By John Adamian

78 | Life@Home

things with the sauce. Ketchup, for instance, is central to Taiwanese refried rice.

Whatever your feelings about ketchup, you’re probably fairly cemented in your ways, and it’s likely a difficult challenge to think of ketchup as a new versatile taste, to approach it as any other ingredient in the kitchen. For many, the super sweet and sticky sauce is just too overpowering.

One way to taste ketchup with fresh

taste buds, however, is to try making it yourself. It’s very easy, and you can vary it a million ways. Once you start toying with different ingredients — adding a little more of a different kind of vinegar, or tweaking it with more paprika or hot pepper, or maybe mixing in some mustard seeds — you can see that ketchup isn’t that much different from chutney or salsa or sriracha.

As it happens, ketchup has plenty in common with those sauces, particularly in its hot-sour-funky potential, and its multicultural origins. Ketchup, the word and the sauce, evidently comes from China. And its Chinese name ke-tsiap refers to fermented fish sauce. How it came to be a sweet tomato paste that typifies American eating habits is a story of commerce and colonial-

Photos: GettyImages. Bottle, melhi; Ketchup, Christian Rummel; French Fries, Foodcollection RF.

K

etchup would seem to be a reliable culinary class/taste litmus test. Many elitists think it’s a measure of good sense: People who use it a lot don’t have any.

Some boutique burger places don’t even have it on hand, and plenty of snooty hot dog stands scoff at those who wish to sully a frankfurter with tomato ketchup. Still, many restaurants tout their “house-made” artisanal ketchup. These days, as with any once-vilified culinary item — corndogs, poutine, Twinkies — you can find some contrarian taste-maker who’s championed the much-maligned product, even attempting to rehabilitate its reputation.

But ketchup’s different. It’s not as if it needs a PR campaign, at least not in America.

It’s the ubiquitous condiment.

Many recall when ketchup was proposed for consideration as a “vegetable” in the nation’s school cafeterias. There may be people who make meatloaf without ketchup, but I’ve never met them. And many a solid barbecue sauce has ketchup as its base. Then there’s cocktail sauce, which generally calls for ketchup.

People from around the world — those who don’t hate the stuff, at least — have figured out how to do some interesting

ism. Dutch and English traders acquired a taste for the stuff when bartering with Chinese merchants in Indonesia during the 17th and 18th century, the story goes.

And soon Europeanized recipes for ke-tsiap were showing up in American cookbooks and elsewhere, adding twists such as shallots and mushrooms as the central ingredients. Fish sauce is sweet and tangy, and fans of the stuff know that it adds zing to all kinds of dishes. But if you break a bottle of fish sauce out at your next cookout, odds are it will go untouched.

B

ut since it is high season for backyard barbecues, you can trot out some homemade ketchups as a way of squirting a little zip into the standard routine of burgers and hot dogs.

The ketchup that we’ve come to know from dunking our french fries in it is made with tomato paste, vinegar, sugar and spices.

You cook it down until it gets to that nice gloppy consistency. You can make chunky ketchups, or ketchups with fresh tomatoes, but I mostly went for something that was loosely recognizable as a relative of what oozes out of a Heinz bottle.

I started with something that looked a little like tomato soup and then let it get thicker and thicker on the stove, over an hour or so at a simmer. Then I split that up into three batches, one sort of plain, one with mustard seeds, black pepper and malt vinegar added, and another with chipotle pepper sauce and cider vinegar added. All three are tangy and sweet, maybe not as sweet as the ketchup you buy at the store. (I used brown sugar and a little molasses as the sweetener, recipes that try to approximate the flavor of store-

bought ketchup tend to use corn syrup). I like the ketchups that spotlight the flavor of the tomato paste and the puckery stab of vinegar. But tasting these concoctions does make it clear how conditioned many of our palates have become to the sort of numbing warmth of the corn syrup sweetness in most ketchups. If the experiment of making your own ketchup nudges you to think twice about what flavors you want ketchup to actually deliver, then the effort is probably a worthwhile one.

Since ketchup and mustard are sort of like the Yankees and Red Sox of the condiment cosmos, mixing the two might seem like an unacceptable violation of the order of things, but I found that my batch of

ketchup with mustard seeds and malt vinegar was a success. It wasn’t so much that it tasted anything like mustard, though there was perhaps a little more of that vapory bite and edge to it. The real appeal was the suggestion of texture and crunch that the mustard seeds provided. This could make for an interesting meat loaf. And it certainly would be at home on a hot dog.

My chipotle ketchup had its own charms.

The smoky flavor and layer of pepper complicated the tastes, bringing in hints of bacon and heat. As someone who routinely splashes vinegar hot sauce on my french fries and fried fish, the chipotle ketchup will make a nice condiment for fried potatoes, particularly sweet potato fries.

One added possible benefit of making your own ketchup: you can use tomatoes that aren’t packaged in cans with a BPA lining, and you can store it in glass jars, if plastics leaching into your tomato products have become something you worry about. If nothing else, your homemade tomato ketchup will make for interesting conversation at your next neighborhood barbecue. 

Homemade Ketchup 2 (6-ounce) cans tomato paste 1/2 cup white vinegar 4 tablespoons brown sugar 1 tablespoon garlic powder 1 tablespoon onion powder 1/4 teaspoon allspice 1 teaspoon salt 2 teaspoons molasses 2 1/2 cups water method Stir together and simmer for two hours or until thick. Add to and augment the recipe according to taste.

timesunion.com/lifeathome | 79

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body. mind. spirit.

My Space 

W

e all have favorite spots, places where we feel most comfortable or at home.

Sometimes it’s a favorite chair or nook in a room; other times it’s outside the house. Wherever it is, it is where we are most at home.

Story and photo by Suzanne Kawola

WHO: Lisa Ferretti — Co-Director, Center for Excellence in Aging & Community Wellness

FAVORITE SPACE: Washington Park, Albany Lisa Ferretti got to know Washington Park when she began working in downtown Albany. A mother of five and a trained social worker, Ferretti is naturally interested in people, making her role as co-director at the Center for Excellence in Aging and Community Wellness, which helps Capital Region seniors maintain quality of life, suits her so well.

WHY: “I started walking through the park on nice days. What’s great about city parks is that they are for everybody.

They’re the place where everyone and everything belongs. And, to me, that’s really important.”

Ferretti walks daily in the park, sometimes alone and sometimes with her colleagues. And what she really loves is the people. “I see people walking their dogs. I see joggers in the park. I see people of all races and ethnicities and it’s wonderful.

[It’s] what community is all about. … We’re all here, we’re all sharing this space and we all belong. I love the park because it is a symbol of that.

“There’s no judgment in the park. It’s a cool place. It really does represent what’s important to me … and what I want to see in the world.”  timesunion.com/lifeathome | 81

 Photo Finish

Pretty in purple. Photo by Colleen Ingerto. Read more on page 52. 

82 | Life@Home

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