I was recently sent a box of Covermate Stretch to Fit Food Covers. The deal was for me to tell you about them if I liked them or found them to be useful.
How about this? I loved them and am wondering how I ever lived without them. So, yeah, I do believe I’ll tell you all about this ingenious way to deal with leftovers.
Picture it: You’ve covered the leftover Easter ham, Thanksgiving turkey, Christmas casserole, cupcakes, cookies, or buffalo wings with plastic wrap or foil. Each time you or a hungry loved one gets under the foil or wrap, it loses its grip a little bit more. It isn’t long before more of the leftovers are exposed than covered and all of your brilliant culinary craftsmanship goes right out the door. You swear up and down that the cupcakes were once moist, but watch as everyone washes down each bite with milk.
I’ve been using the Covermate Food Covers and the scenario above (or should I say the end to the scenario above) is what I love most about these stretch to fit covers. I also love that they’ll fit any shape of dish, plate, pan, or bowl.
Covermate covers allow you to easily cover plates and bowls of food. You simply stretch one of the clear covers over the dish and allow it to snap securely into place. Thanks to the brilliant built-in FlexBand™ technology, uncovering and re-covering are just as easy. So you won’t have to tell anyone that your cupcakes were once moist or that the wing’s weren’t dried out when you made them!
Another plus as spring and summer finally roll into the neighborhood – flies won’t be able to find a way into your food, after all they don’t care if the cupcakes are dry or not!
Covermates also keep your food fresher: They’re made from heavy-duty clear plastic material that is twice as thick as standard plastic wrap. A micro-sealed edge and FlexBand™ combine to form a tight hygienic seal around all dishware to keep food as fresh and fabulous as you want it to be.
I also just happen to love the way they look. SO chic.
My box is the Variety Pack which has had (told you I loved them!) 10 covers: 4 medium, 4 large, 2 extra large, and a bonus Small Can Cover – I used it on evaporated milk… washed it off and used it again on sweetened condensed milk. What is it with me and cans of milk?
If you head over to Covermate Covers.com, you can actually sign up for a free sample pack. Would it be tacky of me to do…. Oh, don’t look at me like that, I’m only sort of kidding. I will be checking my grocery store for these today, though. Oh, I almost forgot another favorite use: I always have a few bowls of dried fruit, candy, and nut combinations sitting around the house. I like to put covermate covers over them to keep our cat Alexa out of them – she loves to dig them out and swat them to the floor. I try reasoning with her, telling her how much cashews cost but she just doesn’t care.
Now Covermate has me and my cashews covered – and Alexa perplexed. Go grab your sample pack and look for these in your store!
by Joi on February 1, 2010
One of my beloved culinary gifts this past Christmas was from my daughter Brittany: Fajita Plate Set with Wood Tray and Hot Mit
. I’ve used it, and loved it, quite a few times since December 25. In fact, if it hasn’t totally been used to death by December 25, 2010, it’ll be a miracle. Love it! Before the meal (about 20 minutes before plating begins), I place the fajita iron skillet in a 400 degree oven for about 20 minutes. Then, when the meat and/or vegetables go onto the skillet, their moisture cause a heavenly sizzle that I’ve become somewhat infatuated with.
For supper tonight, I made steak fajitas and shrimp fajitas (indecision often leads to a varied meal and always leads to a large grocery bill). I also made guacamole, of course, and a tossed lettuce and cilantro salad. I made a dressing for the salad by using avocados, lime juice, salt, and sour cream.
I marinated the strips of skillet steak for an hour. I would have preferred skirt steak, but Kroger didn’t play along with that game plan, so I compromised a wee bit.
Here’s the marinade I used:
4 TBS vegetable oil
3 TBS freshly squeezed lime juice
dash of salt
dash of pepper
1 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp onion powder
I added sliced onions and whole garlic cloves to the ziploc bag along with the meat and marinade. In hindsight, I wish I’d added more garlic cloves – they wore the marinade beautifully PLUS garlic is ridiculously good for you. Oh yeah, should have added more.
After an hour, I cooked the meat, onions, and too few garlic cloves on my George Foreman grill (which needs to be replaced with a new one, by the way). When the steak strips were just the way I wanted them, I transferred the whole shebang to a dish and covered it with Reynold’s 100 % Recycled Aluminum Foil (GREAT STUFF! 4 Stars out of 4 Stars). I put it on the stove to keep it warm.
I thawed some beautiful big, juicy, tailless cocktail shrimp and tossed it with lime juice and a little bit of seasoning – Mrs. Dash Extra Spicy Seasoning Blend. When the laid back Mrs. Dash gets all spicy, it’s a beautiful thing. The shrimp cooked really fast, so I didn’t leave its side for a minute. Again, with the Reynold’s 100 % Recycled Aluminum Foil (again, I love this environmentally friendly foil).
Finally, I sauteed an onion and three beautiful bell peppers in a few tablespoons of vegetable oil – one red, one yellow, and one green. I didn’t allow them to get too tender, as I always want them to show up to the party sort of crispy tender. While they were making the kitchen smell like a Mexican kitchen in Heaven, I warmed the flour tortilla shells in the oven – - – - wrapped in what? Yep. See why it’s so important to me that this foil is 100 % recycled – I use the heck out of it!
I carefully… oh so carefully….. removed the fajita skillet as well as a larger iron skillet that was impersonating a fajita skillet from the oven. Then I put the shrimp and some of the pepper and onion blend onto the fajita skillet. Sizzzzzle! Then, I did the same with the steak strips and the rest of the pepper mixture – I poured them into the large iron skillet. Sizzzzzle!!!!!
While we’re at it, something else you’ll want to invest in before you make another Mexican-inspired meal is a Tortilla Warmer
(pictures above). They’re perfect for keeping your tortillas perfectly warm and soft. Before Britt hooked me up with all of these wonderfully perfect accessories, I just assumed soft, warm tortillas were something you could only get in a true, authentic Mexican restaurant. Ha! I can have them anytime I want now in my own kitchen. For some reason… the type of reason only Alton Brown could explain… tortillas keep their personality much more intact with a tortilla warmer than they do with anything else.
If you don’t have a fajita skillet or a tortilla warmer, please repent and see the error of your ways. Furthermore, you must try the Reynold’s 100% Recycled Aluminum Foil – it’s brilliant!
by Joi on January 25, 2010
Tonight for supper I made fish, shrimp cocktails, boiled baby carrots in a buttery dill and rosemary sauce, and steamed vegetables. I arranged a combination of red peppers, squash, wax beans, mushroom caps, red onion slices, and celery into each layer of my beloved bamboo steamer and steamed the vegetables until they were a tender crisp.
I added some bay leaves to the water in the pot below and the entire kitchen smelled amazing. Fortunately, the vegetables tasted just as good as my nose told me they would.
If you don’t have a bamboo steamer yet, I urge you to buy one this week. I have two electric steamers and 1 bamboo steamer. I haven’t used either of the electric ones since the bamboo steamer moved in. It’s love! Steaming vegetables is a wonderfully healthy way to cook…. and oh so classy.
The Iron Chef America 12-in. Bamboo Bamboo Steamer
at the top of the post is from Cooking.com.
Features:
Iron Chef is an innovative cooking competition from from Japan. Originally produced by Fuji TV, Iron Chef combined the excitement of a one on one sports competition with gourmet cooking. The title Iron Chef comes from the original Japanese title, Ironmen of Cooking. The bamboo steamer is made from all natural bamboo with an authentic handmade Chinese design. The double-woven lid allows the steam to hover in the top while the bottom keeps the vegetables from soaking in water. One of the healthiest methods of cooking, steaming allows for the foods natural oils and flavors to be released so that no oils are needed.
