Victorinox knives

Camping means you are out your house and bringing only the things that you can carry mostly important.  They should be handy and can easily be packed.  Useful materials are one of the requirements on carrying tools with you outside your home.  Nice and cool equipment that you can use for cutting materials, opening bottles and canned goods that you can bring along with you.  There are multi-tools that are available in the market that you need to have for outing or outdoor activities.  One of the known multi-tools is the swiss army knives that are manufactured by Victorinox.

Victorinox is from the combination of the name “Victoria” and the French word “inox” which is a French word that means stainless steel.  Victorinox’s and Wenger’s emblem is the white cross in a shield.  They create knives for the Swiss armies together with Wenger and eventually the knives that they are creating are called swiss knives.  Knives are not the only product that they are producing.  They also have bags and luggage, watches, writing tools and even clothing.

Swiss army knives are multi-function knives that are pocket sized.  It has a blade and has additional tools like can-opener and screwdriver.  It is inside the handle of the knife and is joined by a pivoted point. It has several combinations depending on the task and features that you want.  There are tools like corkscrew, bottle opener, scissors, saw, pliers, toothpick, tweezers, nail file, smaller blade, file and hook. It also has other technological tools like LED light, USB flash drive, and laser pointer.  There is also a swiss knife that could cater to students who wants to have a multi- purpose tool while studying or having trips.  It has ballpoint pen, magnifying glass, digital clock and even an mp3 player. You have ready pen that you can use for note taking.  There are still a lot of features that it has not all are stated here.  These tools are so handy and you can carry anywhere and can use anytime you need it.

Victorinox knives had established good reputation and name through out the decades.  If you want a tool that carries the entire tools that think you might be needing on the way while traveling or multi-functional tool that can be perform your everyday need then Victorinox swiss army knives are out there in the market ready for you.

Utensils

There are quite a few traditional utensils that have been used in cooking for thousands of years in China. Some of them are still seen in most of families, some can only be seen in rural areas, or may be disappearing in the modern world. But to cook authentic Chinese food that always tastes like grandma's, some of the utensils simply cannot be replaced by what you see in American stores.

Chinese Wok

Deep pan with round bottom used in several ways. Comes in iron, stainless and stainless with layer of copper on the bottom. Iron heats most evenly, but should be seasoned before using or food will stick.

To season: Fill pan with water. Add soap and soda and bring to boil. Pour off water, wipe dry. Place pan over strong heat. Add oil and rotate till pan is coated. Pour off excess oil. Place pan over weak fire and wipe with dry cloth.

To clean: After using pan, wash while still hot. Wipe and place over heat to dry completely.

Knife

Heavy and wide. All purpose - for paring, cutting, slicing, chopping and carving.

Iron Palette

Comes in square or round front. Rounded ones are easier to use with Chinese wok. Use for frying, sautéing and basting.

Iron Spoon

Use back side for mixing food with minimum breakage.

Steamer

Used for steaming buns, chicken, meat, fish. Place over Chinese wok filled with boiling water. Buy one size smaller than wok. There are new styles of steamers on the market made of different materials. But Chinese believe that the traditional steamer works the best.

Slotted Spoon

Used for deep frying and boiling to get rid of excess oil or water.

Wire Sieve

With handle. Used for boiling noodles, dumplings, etc.

Steamers for Pastries

Small in size - about 15cm (6") in diameter. Used in same method as large steamer. Serve hot pastries in steamers. Typical foods served are small meat buns (small steamer meat buns, or Xiao Long Bao Zi), steamed meat dumplings (Shao Mai), etc.

Moulds for cookies

Made from wood with various carved designs. No longer popular in the modern society since people tend to buy cookies off the shelf. Some may still use the moulds for major holidays, or just Chinese New Year.

Bamboo Brush

Used for washing hot wok. Guess only people in some rural areas still use this type of brush. More people use regular washing cloth found on market.

Rolling Pin

Used for preparing noodles, dumpling skins, Chinese pancakes, and more. With the busy daily life nowadays, most of time people choose to buy ready to cook fresh noodles and dumpling skins from the small vendors seen on the street to save us time. Choose ones made from sturdy wood.

Steak Knives

Having a nice set of knives in your kitchen is a good investment.  It could always be a big help having them handy every time you will have a steak party or just preparing your everyday meals.  A steak knife is one of the expensive knives we have there out in the market.  Making sure that we can use them for long term is what any housekeeper wants.  How can we make sure that these knives will last long which they supposed to be?

Taking simple caring and precaution will surely make your knives last long.  Not just your steak knives but any other knives that you want to store for quite sometime.  Unable to take good care of them could affect the quality of your food or could prolong your preparation time since it isn’t functioning well.  Thus, in the future it might give up and ask you to purchase for a new knife in the market.  There are three simple guides that you can follow.  Make use of these tips for you to save some money instead of buying new set of knives.

Having clean knives will not just keep sanitation but it could also help your other kitchen ware clean.  Leaving your knives unclean could call cockroaches and ants and even rats to enter your kitchen and household.  That is not a funny thing.  It will affect all your kitchen wares if that happened.  Not just that, some knives have wooden handle and other have wooden racks.  Wet and dirty knives could grow molds on a wooden knife rack and handle.  Cleaning it and drying before keeping your knife will help store its sharpness and durability.

After cleaning it storing would be next to that.  Storing your knives in a right way will make your knives keep its serration and sharpness.  Unorganized kitchen with no particular storage for each and every kitchen ware is a big problem.  When you keep your serrated steak knife in a wrong storage, it might dislocate its serrated blade and it won’t function the way it should be. 

Lastly, using the knife to where it is really intended to be used would avoid your blade from frequent sharpening.  Never use you steak knife for cutting bones of a meat.  It will give you embossed part on the edge of your blade that will affect the way you slice your steak.

Sippy Cups

Babies at the age of 5-8 months are starting to eat solid foods.  Water that time very needed and it will be better if it already in a cup than in a bottle.  It is also a time for a baby to practice her or his independence in drinking any time she or he wants.  It is still hard for a baby to grasp the cup and to avoid spills of water.  Holding a cup with water takes stronger muscles and motor skills for a baby to able to lift it up or tilt it to his or her mouth. The result would be water on your floors that can be risky.  Having spilled water on the floor is dangerous since you might slip on it while holding your baby. Safety should always be a priority if you have a baby even if without. 

A sippy cup can be introduced to babies starting to change from bottle feeding or breast feeding to cups.  They are cups with lid and spout.  There are sippy cups that are still like nipples which is suitable for younger age to slowly train them. There are also sippy cups with hard spout and not so big holes.  The babies still need to suck in water because it has small holes that will not come out easily.  Once the cup was tossed and turned upside down, still it will not spill water.  Babies are experimentalist at those ages.  They try to do things that are new to them.  If they will use the regular cups they will surely turn it upside down to see how the water will flow down.  Having this lidded cup will help you avoid mess. 

Long time use of sippy cups have disadvantage too.  It might affect the speech of your children.  It is just same problem when a child practice sucking his or her thumb and have it as a habit.  Prolonged bottle drinking is just the same.  It pushes the tongue and the teeth that cause misplacement.  They have hard spout but still it will keep the mouth open and lips apart.  It lets the baby breathe through their mouth. Having sippy cups for just 1-2 months is not harmful to at least you can prepare your baby in using a cup.  Experts suggest using straw instead of sippiy cups to ensure the speech ability of your child.    

   

Silicone Spatulas

There are different kinds of spatulas that you can use for cooking.  They have their unique aspects that you can take advantage of.  We have the metal spatulas, wooden spatulas and rubber spatulas.  Metal spatulas are good in durability but can damage non-stick cookware because of its hard and sharp surface.  Wood spatulas are made to avoid scratching your non-stick pans but using wood spatulas more often than not don’t last that long.  So rubber spatulas are invented.  Using rubber on heated pans can melt and damage the pan too when melted rubber stick to the pan.  It is good thing to know that there is a newly develop spatulas that are made of silicone materials.

Silicone spatulas are non-stick like rubbers.  It won’t melt if you’re going to dip in boiling water or use it directly on a heated pan.  It has great resistance on heat.  The softness of the material, like the rubber will let your non-stick pan functional without having it scraped and damaged.  Ensuring your kitchenware don’t spoil other kitchenware is good housekeeping way.  If you are also looking for spatulas that are durable and can last long then it’s better to have silicone spatulas as your choice.

Silicone spatulas are the right tool for this mixing wet mixtures and dry mixtures especially in baking.  Since it’s flexible and durable it can be use for mixing mixtures and scrapping mixing bowl for the leftovers.  It will surely get even the last few drops in your mixing bowl.

Owning one or two silicone spatulas are enough for you to enjoy hassle free baking and cooking.  They don’t have a huge selection of sizes but that is just fine because you won’t need a set anyways.  They aren’t like measuring spoons or cups that needs to have every single measure to be present and have to be in a set.

Cleaning them won’t be a hideous task for a cook.  Warm water and soap will take out the grease and dirt in your spatula. Using your fingers in rubbing your spatulas will be better rather than using rough sponge.  It might embed scratches on your spatulas.  Don’t soak your spatulas in water.  Spatulas’ handles are not durable at it may seems.  If there will come a time that you need to purchase a new silicone spatula more or less it is because of your broken handle.