The food journalist on her great-great grandmother’s rolling pin, great herb and smoked pepper mixes and her bible for everyday cooking
OBJECTS
Waffle iron »
“I use this quite a bit. I’ll make a bunch of waffles and freeze them for the kids, then heat them up in the toaster oven.” – Addie
Outdoor cast-iron dutch oven »
“I love cast-iron cookware. I have a skillet that lives on my stove, and a big cast-iron Dutch oven for outdoor cooking that I’ll take camping with me, and a red one that’ll probably just start to live on my stove too. You can use it in the stove or in the oven.”
Pot and pan protectors »
“These stop your pots and pans from chipping and scratching when stacked on top of one another.”
Addie’s great-great-grandmother’s knife and rolling pin
“There are two pieces of kitchen equipment that I’m really excited about getting my hands on: a knife and a rolling pin that my great-great-grandmother brought over from Sweden when they emigrated here in the 1890s. My grandmother still uses them. The knife has a weird serration and the rolling pin is really heavy-duty and gigantic. You just don’t find these things anymore.”
INGREDIENTS
Ana’s herbs mix »
“Ana’s are a local company who do a great herb mix. You can put it with anything and it’ll taste good.” – Addie
Springdale Farms smoked pepper mix »
“It’s pretty spicy, it’s great. I love spicy food – and I think my kids are coming around to it.”
Cilantro (coriander) and kale
“Probably the two omnipresent ingredients in my kitchen.”
H-E-B original cola with cane sugar »
“They make a coca cola with cane sugar as opposed to high-fructose corn syrup – everybody here calls it Mexican Coke. We all love it. H-E-B’s store brand version is the best.”
BOOKS
How to Cook Everything, Mark Bittman »
“This is my cooking bible. I cover a lot of cookbooks for the Statesman and I love flicking through them, but when it comes to my everyday cooking this is the book that I use. It’s been around for 13 or 14 years.” – Addie
How to Cook Everything Fast, Mark Bittman »
“He just came out with this, which is a little different. This is the one I’m telling people to buy most of the time.”
Good Eats, Alton Brown »
Spin-off from a show on the Food Network Cooking Channel. “I like the science they go into, so I’ll use this book if I’m looking to cook roast meat or a stew or something.”
EatYourBooks, www.eatyourbooks.com
“This is a great resource if you have a lot of cookbooks: you give the website a list of all your cookbooks and it uses the indexes to tell you where a particular recipe is. So if you want to make lasagna and don’t want to flip through your whole collection, just type in “lasagna” and it’ll tell you which books have it and what page it’s on.”
