Household Goodies

Long post ahead with lots of photos. First Household Goodies post to share some neat stuff I found over the past couple of years, since hubby and I moved into our permanent home.

***Disclaimer: I'm *not affiliated* with any of these brands or vendors. Just sharing the goodies I enjoy is all.

I'd mentioned Heartfelt SF in my latest Tea Time post, an SF locally owned gift shop our friends N. and A. introduced us to where I source my most favorite Earl Grey Lavender tea ever. Turns out they have a bunch of great kitchen stuff too. One time I was browsing their online shop and found these two adorable sets of pinch bowls and couldn't resist.

Look how cute these are! Hubby and I have found ourselves reaching for them constantly, to put our tea bag, to rest our tea spoon, dipping sauces, etc.

Each bowl is just the perfect size. I've found that they're pretty helpful with cooking ingredients too, a plate for garlic, ginger, salt, pepper, what-have-you.

Here's the other set, not in kitty shapes and faces but just as adorable with dots and geometric prints.

This kitty stress ball was a total impulse buy, because the product page advertised how it's indestructible. Nope, a total lie. This thing didn't last a week with my then-two year-old. Boo. Hiss.

Here's another one of my attempts to wean our household off of some more plastic: silicone ziplock bags :) These two boxes are from two different brands, both Korean I believe. I'm not going to bother naming the brand, because there are so. many. copycats on the web it's not even funny. While we're at it I must point out one annoying irony: these are supposedly environmentally friendly products but, with few exceptions, all arrived packaged in, what do you know, plastic. Urgh.

I don't know who made the original silicone ziplock bags. Quite frankly, unlike the original air-drying racks for makeup brushes, I don't give a rat's ass who made the original ziplock bags. Why? Just my own humble opinions here, but I think the more competitors for environmentally friendly products, the better. I've seen some well-marketed brands when I was doing my research for these bags, and their silicone ziplock bags were stupidly expensive--some $17-25/bag! Prices like that offend me because being environmentally friendly should *not* be a luxury. Now mind you I'm not saying cheapest is best, but I refuse to pay luxury prices to be environmentally friendly. Don't forget to do your due diligence and vet those Amazon ratings--www.fakespot.com has been super reliable for me. Yes, fake reviews are rampant on Amazon!

So, these silicone ziplock bags. They're awesome. They're leak-proof once sealed. With the exception of the plastic closure-bar, they're dishwasher-safe, freezer-safe, microwave-safe, and you can even boil veggies in them. Most sets come in two sizes, the regular sandwich size (blue) and the larger half-gallon size (white). We use the regular sandwich bags for a multitude of things (veggies, fruits, etc.) and the half-gallon bags for bread. Yes, bread. Each half-gallon bag can hold a whole baby boule. Sourdough and French are the family favorite, so we usually buy 4 loafs of bread, freeze them, and toast them straight from the freezer. They usually last us for about 1-2 months. Dirty bags go into the dishwasher. We haven't needed a plastic ziplock bag since.

This set isn't any different than the set above. It just comes with a bonus "stand" in case we want to use these bag to freeze liquids like broth, soups, etc.

After a while, we realized we needed more half-gallon bags as well as a few smaller "snack" bags. This particular brand below, Homelux Theory, sells different sized bags in sets of 4, and they arrived in canvas cases with zippers and not plastic bags. Yes, mindful packaging does score major brownie points with me.  

The small snack bags has been super useful as we reach for them constantly. Over all, these silicone ziplock bags have been such a hit in our household that I sent them as gifts to our family and friends also.

Just as the above silicone ziplock bags rid our household of the plastic version, these silicone food covers rid our household of plastic saran wraps. Like the ziplock bags above, they come in sets of different sizes, are affordable, and with a gazillion of different competing brands all over the web. There are actually two different types of covers: lids and stretch-covers. I'll start with the set that actually came with both. Yes, I was quite annoyed that both sets arrived in plastic bags.


Again I won't name brands but you can probably see it in the photos below anyway. This set included 7 lids and 5 stretch covers.

Honestly, the lids aren't as useful as the stretch covers. Actually, we haven't touched any of the lids at all. I'm sure there's a purpose to these lids, but for me their use is brief at best. I'm supposed to put a lid on, say a bowl, and press down to expel air and create an air-tight seal right on top of the food. I haven't found this to work. At all. The best I could do was to toss a lid on top of a pan or pot of freshly cooked food to keep in the heat, but then my pan or pot already has its own lid for that very purpose. In my household, it's the stretch covers that are the everyday work horses.

These are super stretchy silicone covers that I pull over the top of a vessel, any vessel as you'll see demonstrated below. There's a trick to this though: both the stretch cover and rim of the vessel must be dry and clean for the silicone to stick. Otherwise it'll slip right off. But once on, again I'll have a leak-proof, freezer-safe, dishwasher-safe, and microwave-safe cover for my storage and leftovers. Granted, I haven't needed to freeze anything with these--I prefer the silicone ziplock bags for this purpose. And I actually hand-wash these stretch covers too rather than tossing them into the dishwasher. But boy are they handy, and we haven't touched another piece of plastic saran wrap since.

This particular set came with 7 different sizes. The biggest one will fit over a dinner plate, and the smallest one will fit over any glass, cup, or mug. These have been so awesome and we use so many of them that I went and bought 8 more sets (from yet a different brand) and gave 2 sets to my mum. It took a while for her to get used to them but she's fully onboard now and has been raving about them since.

Leak-proof over a glass of blue Gatorade.

Over a rice bowl with blueberries and a larger cereal bowl full of grapes.

See how messy and ugly plastic saran wrap can get? Not so with these stretch covers.

Have a big noodle-soup bowl, or too lazy to put leftover rice away? No problem. One of those sizes is bound to fit over the rice cooker pot itself.

Too lazy to cut up big fruits? Cover it for later!

Have a half-eaten yogurt or apple sauce container? How about a half-eaten sandwich or piece of cheese? Cover them all! And yes, they do stack quite nicely in the fridge ^.^

My final move was to eliminate the need for plastic produce bags when we're at the grocery stores. Again to be honest, this actually takes some advanced planning, and by that I mean going over the list of grocery, estimate the need for and grab however many fabric produce bags before entering the store. There are two types of bags, regular bags for bulk foods like grains, nuts, seeds, etc., and mesh bags for produce. I bought one set with both, and two more sets of just regular and mesh bags.

I'll start with the best: this Colony Co. set with both regular and mesh bags. Out of the 3 sets we have from 3 different brands, I recommend this Colony Co. brand as their bags are by far the best ones we own in terms of quality fabric (i.e. not thin or flimsy), well-made with sturdy construction, and stainless steel closure. Of course, the conscientious cardboard packaging scored extra points with me as well. All three sets were similarly priced and their Amazon ratings were fully vetted. 

Here are the 4 regular bags for bulk foods. Look at the seams carefully. See how nice and neat they are? The tare weight are attached on the outside of the bags.

Here are the 6 mesh produce bags. Again, nice and clean, double-reinforced seams. So far, all of these bags have washed and dried well. That said, I hang-dry and not machine-dry them, and they dry rather quickly either way.

Here's a different set with just mesh produce bags, with thinner fabric and flimsy construction. They did have stainless steel closure and came in a nice fabric storage bag, but all were wrapped in a plastic bag. Ha. I firmly prefer the Colony mesh bags over these.

Look at this seam, versus that of a Colony mesh bag. You can actually see how thinner fabric is as well in comparison to the Colony mesh bag.

This third set contains only regular bags for bulk foods, again with thin fabric and flimsy construction. These have wood-bead closure and they did arrive in a plastic bag. In fact, this set seems to be the most cheaply made out of all 3 sets. Needless to say, I firmly prefer the Colony bags over these as well. 

Look at this seam, versus that of a Colony bulk foods bag. Anyway, I sent a few sets of the Colony Co. bags to family and friends and everyone liked them too, especially my mum.

This set of Baggu reusable bags was a gift from J., my galpal from hubby and my days in Tokyo.To be honest, these Baggus are merely "hip" (read: pricey) versions of the good ol' Envirosax. I mentioned in my most recent Tea Time post that we've been using reusable grocery bags since moving to New Jersey in the summer of 2006. Yep, those reusable grocery bags are none other than Envirosax. We've been using them for 14+ years and those very first sets we bought back in 2006 are still going strong. Of course, we've accumulated more bags since, about half a dozen 5-bag sets because they've been scattered every which way with my mum and sister borrowing a few here and there. But yes, we're still using them.  

So how do these Baggus compare? They're ok, I guess. They're a thicker polyester and seem sturdier, yes. However, they also come folded into a little square storage bag which I'm prone to lose, versus the Envirosax gets rolled and buttoned up and that's that.

Last but not least, this Lucky Iron Fish is more of a health product, but it's a pretty neat household and kitchen item all the same. It's an iron supplement I cook with.

As you may know, some folks have iron-deficiency, and that group includes expectant women. Yep, me ^.^" However, taking iron supplement isn't fun at all, because it causes horrible constipation, as if the pregnancy itself doesn't already contribute to constipation (blame the hormones). I can't recall how I learned of the Lucky Iron Fish, but basically I cook with it and it releases just enough iron into the dish that can be easily absorbed with less constipation trouble.

The problem is that I haven't been using this enough, because I haven't been cooking everyday. But if you do, you might find it useful. It's super easy to use and I do wish I could cook more with it, but I drop it in whatever I could, soups, stews, dessert soups, saucy stir fries, etc. We have an electric water heater that's constantly full 24/7, otherwise I'd boil it in my kettle and use that water for tea too!