I am always working on my cooking. I have been cooking since the age of 7 when I started making coffee for my parents, but after that I always watched and worked with my grandparents on holiday dinners and everyday cooking and retained as much as I could. I am also in a culinary 101 course of 5 classes to sharpen my cooking skills.

One of the things I want to get to use in my cooking is a new chefs knife. I have been using a set of Global knives to try them out and see how they feel in my hand. The one I like right now is a Global G-4 Oriental Cook knife. It has a good feel and balance and fits well in my hand. The other thing I like about this is the short bald for a cooks knife. It’s good to use for close work, a 6 inch or 8 inch chefs knife is sometime to big for me when I am cutting and dicing vegetables.

The other tool I want to get is an immersion blender. The one that cooks Illustrated rated as the number 1 is the KITCHENAID immersion blender.

I am sure there are other things I want to add to my kitchen arsenal, but those are the ones at the top of the list.

This is a quick follow up on my post about looking for a new supermarket. We checked out about 3 other supermarkets in the area. The Shop Rite on Pennington Circle, the Stop & Shop and the Shop Rite on Olden Ave.

The Shop Rite on the circle was small but had a good produce and meat section, but it was a little dirty. The Shop Rite on Olden Ave was big and way to busy. The main problem with this store was that people would come to a complete stop in the middle of the aisles and have conversation with firends ad I guess family and disregard anyone trying to get by.

The Stop & Shop is the final place we tried and have picked it as the new supermarket of the Bilancio family. It’s clean the prices are better then Acme and it seems no one ever goes there. :) Carolyn and I have been there at different times and there has never been a crowed…we get through shopping much faster then at Acme and the prices are much less. The produce section is good and the meat department has had the cuts I have needed and wanted for the things I am cooking.

I am always interested in other places to buy food in the Lawrence Township area so if you have a favorite place let me know.

We had a closet in the back room across from the washer and dryer that was crammed with junk and only 3 shelves that were screwed right into the walls. So a few weeks back after having most of the stuff fll out when I opened the doors I had had enough. I was also out of space in my kitchen for stuff..so my counters were covered in stuff that we didn’t have space to put it. So for a whopping $64.00 for 5 pieces of 12 x 6 pine and 4 of those metal hanger strips I was able to make a 5 shelf pantry for my food and booze. Check out the pictures here.

If you haven’t noticed and you really shouldn’t have. I changed from Movable Type blogging software to the Wordpress blog software. The main reason I changed over was because of the plugin made for Wordpress and the Gallery 2 software. It made it way easier to embed Gallery into Wordpress then into Movable Type. I also like how much easier it is to do maintenance on the blog and there are way more plugins for Wordpress then MT. So if you have any issues please let me know.

I am a person who likes a good used book sale or the book section of the Salvation Army or Goodwill.  I always look for books from the Travis McGee series by John D. MacDonald.     There are only 21 books in the series, but I am always on the lookout for them. I am looking for copies with the original cover art, but will take any copies.  So if you come across any please pick them up for me.

Thanks in advance….