FYI

If you’re someone who cooks with recipes, it’s likely that at one point you’ve come across a recipe that states explicitly to use a nonreactive bowl to mix something or a pot to cook a sauce. Did you hop on Google? Did you continue to use the one mixing bowl or stockpot you own and hope for the best?

If you’ve ever stayed in an extended-stay hotel or an Airbnb, you know not to expect much from the kitchen. Even if the decor is charming, the space probably won’t even have a full set of measuring cups, let alone a mandoline. And the knives? Don’t even try.

I first learned of the concept of a garbage bowl when I was about 10 years old, from my favorite cooking show at the time.

During the summer, I often end up as the designated cook for a group of people I'm vacationing with. Maybe it's a beach house on the Jersey Shore we escaped to for the weekend, or a quick jaunt upstate to escape the relentless heat of the city. I love cooking, I love vacation, and it's usually no problem. Except that no matter what the situation, I can almost guarantee that the knives you encounter at a vacation home or condo are dull.

Like groundhogs, we finally have emerged from the lingering winter. It is time to celebrate with the best type of drink: cold. Since it’s no longer freezing, we cannot reach sufficiently low temperatures simply by leaving our beverages outside for a while. We could turn to the refrigerator but that would take forever, and besides, we want our drinks to stay cold. What we need is ice.