Cheese, please!

This is what reading foodie blogs does, you see; it points up your every ignorance and inadequacy in all things kitcheny. At first, I lapped up the tips and tricks and knife skills demonstrations along with the recipes - that's the stuff I came for, after all. But this last week has been full of food-storage revelations.

First there was that clear-out of the pantry cupboard that unearthed canned goods that were on the Ark.

And then I learned that I had been storing my potatoes and onions wrong. All my adult life.

And then yesterday I learned that I'm storing my cheese wrong, too. Mind you, so is everyone else I know. And everyone I buy it from. But, dude. There's a special paper for cheese storage. Who knew? I've only ever seen paper-wrapped cheese in specialty cheese shops. In England. Where apparently they have a better class of cheese-eater.

In this corner...!

Did you know you're not supposed to store your potatoes and onions together? Neither did I! I learned that this week, from one of the food blogs I've started following. And of course I can't find the article now. Though the internet is replete with references to this very kitchen tip, so if you don't believe me, just look it up.

I told my Beloved this, and he just looked at me and said, "Why not? Do they fight?"

See why I married him?

Which makes the real story - they make each other sprout - kind of boring, really. But still true. I immediately separated my onions and my spuds, and I shall hope for unsprouted, firm spuds and tearjerkers for the rest of my life.

Shiny. Want.

This new resolve to cook more is making me shop more. For food, yes, but also for kitcheny things. Like, last week I had to get new canisters in which to store the lentils, couscous, and quinoa I bought. (IKEA is marvelous for these things. I love my DROPPAR series canisters. [My local IKEA has more of the line available than the website does.])

What with cooking two recipes from the same cookbook on Sunday night and wrestling to keep it out of the mess but in a readable place, and the thinkage associated with "where would I put an iPad to keep it accessible but safe while I cooked", it occurred to me that there was a single solution for both print cookbooks and iPads, and it didn't necessarily involve installing anything on anything or buying parts or assembling things. Shopping, yes. Handymanning, no.

I speak, of course, of the cookbook stand. The right cookbook stand holds your book open, holds it up off the counter so it doesn't get (terribly) wet or dirty, possibly even protects the open pages, and possibly even looks good doing it.

I've had a few of the wrong kind of cookbook stand in my life. The beanbag lap desk, for instance. Good for height and adjustability. Bad for resistance to spills of anything other than water. Thank goodness the lap desk was a fifty-cent garage sale find.

Or the acrylic cookbook stand, which turns out to be a boring old piece of impossible-to-store, too-ugly-to-display plastic whose base limits its usefulness to a limited range of cookbook sizes. It's no match for your Encyclopedia of Cooking, I can tell you firsthand. Also, you can't turn the page without taking the book out to do it. Which is OK if your whole recipe is on a single page, but not all of my cookbooks are like that. Also, if you, for instance. Forget that it's on top of your fridge because that's the only place you could find big enough to stash it, and knock it to the floor from a height of six feet? It will break. Or at least a piece will break off it. And if you store it on your fridge, you'll have to clean it every time you use it, because the plastic attracts dust like candy does fat kids.


The cookbook stand I want is the kind you could put your hardcover Joy of Cooking on and leave it there, because it's solid and strong and nice to look at. It's got a pedestal base for minimal footprint, and it elevates the cookbook at least a couple of inches off whatever surface it's on. It doesn't melt or burn, and wipes off with a damp cloth. It's made of cast iron and looks a lot like this one, from Robert Welch.co.uk. The store is in Chipping Campden, the village my sister-in-law lives in, and we drop in for a drool every time we're in the UK. The Beloved is going to the UK in September; I could get him to pick one up. Except that it does weigh several pounds, and might be a strain on the luggage allowance. And, you know, it's only May right now.

I did find this one on Amazon.com, which is quite similar in some ways and is about two-thirds the price (allowing for the GBP/USD/CAD exchange rates, and not factoring in shipping). And it's pretty. And it has those weight things to keep the right page in the cookbook. It's not angle-adjustable like the Robert Welch, and I'm not sure how important that is.

I think either of these items would hold a single recipe card, a magazine, any softcover cookbook, pretty much any hardcover cookbook no matter how thick, and an iPad with equal flair and aplomb.

What do you use to keep your cookbooks/mags/iPad safe while you're working from a recipe? Or do you even bother?