In our household, you can almost always tell who something belongs to just by looking at it. Especially with luggage. Tazim's is the pristine and unscuffed bag that's still new and gleaming looking. Mine's the one that looks like it was run-over by a garbage truck, then thrown under a train. At least, that always used to be the case. About a year ago, we stumbled across Waterfield designs, a company that makes travel cases and bags down in San Francisco. They caught our eye for their local ...
Studio Nostalgia
One of the downsides of leading a life devoted to travel and culture is dooming yourself to nomadism. As Tazim and I prepare to move on from our temporary Calgary digs, we've been doing a lot of thinking about all of the places we used to call home. When we went to Vancouver to look for a place to call our own seven years ago, we quickly became discouraged. In a city of renters where the vacancy rate is chronically low—landlords stage elaborate games designed to weed out all but the strongest ...
A Flat Pan – Deserted Island Kitchen item #6
We eat flatbread at least once a day—crispy many layered parathas, crépes stuffed with fruit or made savoury, and delicious whole wheat chapati are some of our favourite things to eat. Our favourite thing to cook any of these things on is a flat cast-iron or carbon-steel griddle. Cooking in a walled skillet, it's hard to get your spatula under what you're cooking—and things also hold on to too much moisture, which means they may cook unevenly. We bought our first flat pan when Tazim and I ...
WMF 6.5 l Pressure Cooker — Deserted Island Kitchen #5
We've written about pressure cookers before. Perhaps a little obsessively—check out this series. So it's probably not a surprise that a pressure cooker is something that we'd drag with us, even all the way to a deserted island. In fact, we carry one everywhere, we even have a smaller version that we take camping—they're great for cooking at altitude. It's our go-to pot for everything from soup to chickpea curry. Because pressure-cookers are a closed system, they're an extremely fast and ...
A “Fuzzy Logic” Rice Cooker – Deserted Island Kitchen #4
Though over the years we've spoiled ourselves with conveniences—from stand mixer to mini-chopper, there aren't a lot of kitchen appliances we couldn't live without. But I don't know what we'd do without our "Fuzzy Logic" rice-cooker. We bought ours in Chinatown in 2001. 10 years, several countries, and 8 moves later, it's still churning out perfect rice. Right, you're looking at me funny—rice? seriously? What is there to rice? But if you've ever wondered at the fluffy, whole, every-grain ...
A Special Spatula – Deserted Island Kitchen #3
Looking in your average kitchen shop, one might be forgiven for thinking there are far too many utensils in this world. Perhaps the most prolifigate amongst these is the spatula or the turner—from cheap black plastic that melts a little every time you use it, to silicon implements that promise the moon but are too flexible to life and turn anything. We hunted through all those many thousands before we found this one which we quite like—the OXO Good Grips Large Flexible Turner (what a ...
Bodum Enamelled Cast Iron Wok – Deserted Island Kitchen Item #2
We bought our first cast-iron wok in Chinatown many a year ago. It was straight up pig-iron, came pre-rusted, and cost less than $10. Once we got it seasoned, it worked alright. Then one day a move from gas-burner top to stainless steel counter turned out to be too much of a shock, and it split with a thundering crack. We looked at the wreckage of a Thai curry, watching delicous red curry gravy pour all over the counter like magma, and vowed we wouldn't be quite so cheap in seeking it's ...
Wusthof Silverpoint Bird’s Beak Paring Knife — Our Deserted Island Kitchen #1
Do you ever ask yourself what you would take with you to a small deserted island? What about on a long holiday-or just visiting your family? I'm almost embarrassed to admit that we carry a few of our kitchen things with us, wherever we go-from India to New Zealand. We thought about this just today, unpacking after a stint house-sitting for a family member. Over the next few days, we'll share our deserted island kitchen. The ten things we just can't live without. Here's number one: The Wusthof ...
PlayStation Vita Review
If I wanted to, I could be writing this blog post from my Playstation Vita. It has a decent web browser, and a touch screen that works. At 5" it's smaller than the iPad, but enormous as compared to the iPhone—even my thick and clumsy fingers can comfortably type. If I really wanted I could also tweet, update Facebook, watch movies, listen to music, or take low resolution photographs. But none of these are good reasons to buy the Vita: It's all about the games. For the first time, a ...
Best of IKEA: Home Organization Products
In the last ten years, we've moved around a lot. Each time we pack up and go, a process of elimination ensues: this means that only the best things survive. Here's a collection of ten IKEA home organizational products, most of which we've been using for over 10 years! 1 SLOM Jars If you were vegan in the nineties in the mid-west, you bought stuff in bulk from weird stores with hippy-names, or oriental markets with labels written in Chinese. When you brought it all home it would pile up ...
