CUTCO CUTLERY REVIEW

 

CUTCO CUTLERY

REVIEW

     We are going to be reviewing some CUTCO Cutlery. Some have referred to CUTCO as an MLM scam, but it is not. CUTCO sells their product line like Kirby Vacuum Cleaners does...via direct sale.

     Accordingly, their product line is expensive, but it is worth it? Without the guarantee, no: with the guarantee, yes. We purchased and tested a CUTCO manual can opener----their knives have been thoroughly reviewed and are generally considered to be the Rolls Royce of cutlery.

     The CUTCO warranty is a multi-generational lifetime warranty, which justifies their high up front cost. You can use the can opener until you die and pass it down to your kids and grandkids and the can opener, as will their other products, still be under warranty. ( CUTCO has been around since 1949)

     The can opener we purchased was a sturdy plastic composite. It was comfortable to use and some thought went into the design. 

     

     The gearing allows one to open a can with just a few turns of the handle. The mechanism appears to be a bit oversized and this is an indicator of quality. We have had no issues with it thus far, and if it breaks it is covered by the lifetime warranty.

     The handle is reinforced for sturdiness and we fully expect to get several decades of use out of it without any issues. The current cost of the can opener is just over $60.00. Without the warranty, I would pay a max of $30.00 for it but the less expensive hand can openers we have purchased in the past have not lasted more than two years. The multi-generational warranty on this product makes it a good value and the children who inherit CUTCO products will be getting an extremely good value.

     We can highly recommend this product.

 

 

 If you like vegetable juice, we can offer a new option for you. Dei Fratelli is a regional brand but you can apparently get this on Amazon. 

This vegetable juice is considerably thicker and has more taste than traditional vegetable juices. Of course, now that we are promoting it, the company will probably make it thinner and less zingy tasting in order to "maintain shareholder value" or otherwise maintain profit. We hope that never becomes a reality as this is a superior juice in every respect. 

One suggestion is that for folks who have a glass of juice daily, a 56 oz. container would be nice since you could have 7 eight ounce glasses and that would cover you for the week. single serve bottles would also be nice.

Again, we highly recommend this juice.

Chow Daddy Recommends: Albanese's Gourmet Pasta Sauce

OK, finally had a chance to try the sauce. We put it on a shrimp and scallop angel hair pasta dish. We used the sauce as is and did find it to be a mild sauce with a fresh taste.

The sauce can be easily personalized to suit individual tastes and different proteins. It also has a slow simmered texture and is a good sauce to have on hand if friends show up on short notice and you do not have several hours to cook a sauce.

I'm not a big wine connoisseur but we have a local winery here in NW Ohio called Mon Ami. Their Pink Catawba would be an excellent pairing with this sauce, especially with a seafood dish.

We enjoyed the sauce and the meal. Two thumbs up!

Note: Manufacturers of our recommended products can use all or an excerpt of our recommendation in their advertising without charge and may place on their food label "Recommended by Chow Daddy" without charge or royalty.

Small Town America

Please visit the following link and add to it as you travel through small town America.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SmalltownAmerica/

Ground Beef, Ginger and Teriyaki Egg Rolls

OK, so, you are running out of different ways to cook ground beef. Try this one.

You Need:

A deep fryer filled to the max fill line with oil or deep frying pan with  1 1/2-2 inches of oil in it.

2 lbs. ground beef.

1 pkg. of large Won Ton wrappers

Pickled Ginger, about 3 ounces.

Ground Ginger powder, about 2 tablespoons.

Sesame Seed Oil, about a half teaspoon.

1 bottle of thick Teriyaki sauce. (Kikkoman makes a good Teriyaki baste sauce).

1 small dish of water.

Brown and drain the ground beef. Add the pickled Ginger, ground Ginger and sesame Seed oil to the ground beef and stir. Then add about three tablespoons of the thick Teriyaki sauce to the ground beef and stir. Use just enough to moisten the beef, but do not soak it in sauce. The rest of the Teriyaki sauce can be used for dipping the egg roll in.

Heat up your deep fryer to between 350 and 375 degrees F. (If using a frying pan with oil, do not turn your stove on past medium.)

Take a large Won Ton wrapper and place it on a plate so one of the corners is facing you. Take 2-3 tablespoons of the ground beef mixture and place it in the center of the Won Ton wrapper in a rectangular pattern. (East to West) Using your finger, stick it in the small dish of water and moisten the perimeter of the Won Ton wrapper. Pick up the corner of the wrapper closest to you and fold it over the meat mixture  tightly towards the opposing corner. Then fold the right corner of the wrapper to the left and the left corner to the right. Tuck in and roll the wrapper to the opposing corner. Place folded wrapper corner side down on a plate.

Place 4-6 egg rolls in your deep fryer and cook for three minutes, then carefully turn the egg roll over and cook it for another two or three minutes. Remove from fryer, let drain on paper towel. Give them a few minutes to cool down and enjoy something a little different than what you may be used to.

Couscous Cabbage Rolls

Use your favorite cabbage roll recipe, but instead of cooked rice, use cooked couscous instead. Also, when we put the rolls into a crock pot, we just pour V8 juice over them and it tastes great.

The couscous adds a bit more flavor than the rice. 

Taco Bell Copycat Steak Burrito

Here's an easy one. A couple of decades back, Taco Bell came out with a steak burrito that was made with steak, tater tots, cheddar cheese, a light sauce and sour cream. I can't remember the exact sauce, but a drizzle of olive oil works.

Steak should be rare to medium rare and you should cook the tots to the point they are crisp.

This makes a tasty burrito.

Chinese Buffet Seafood Bake

1-1.5  lb. imitation crab meat 

12 oz. small shrimp cooked, shelled, cleaned and rinsed
3/4 c. sour cream 
1 tbsp. lemon juice 
Pinch of garlic salt 
2 c. Cheddar cheese 
1 1/2  pkgs. cream cheese (softened)
3 tbsp. mayonnaise 
2 tsp. Worcestershire sauce 
1 medium onion, chopped and caramelized

3-4 stalks cleaned and chopped celery

Mix together in casserole dish. Save half of Cheddar cheese to sprinkle on top. Bake at 325-350 degrees Fahrenheit  for 30 minutes..

The ingredients for this will run you about $15. It will feed four or serve six. 

Burger Time

Spring has sprung, so, it's time to do some grillin'. 

If you have a hankerin' for a good burger, try this one out:

It's a 10oz pre-cooked weight ground beef patty on a Ciabatta bun with melted Muenster cheese, tomato, bacon, avocado slices, refrigerated Dill pickle slices and a light swipe of mayo.

The best part is if you can find most of these ingredients on sale, you can crank these puppies out for around $2.25/each. If you decide to go out to a mid-priced family restaurant for one , you'll pay $10.99 and up (at least in my area).

Crock Pot Hawaiian Ham

So you have some leftover ham shank/butt. Let's make a meal.

Get the crock pot out and if you want, spray the inside of the crock with non-stick cooking spray as it makes clean up a bit easier. I also add about a cup and a half of water to the crock. 

Put about three pounds of leftover ham in the crock. (Scale this recipe up as needed.) Then add a 20oz can of crushed pineapple. On top of this pour a 12-16oz bottle of Hawaiian marinade.

Set crock pot on low and cook for 7 hours. We serve this over steamed/cooked rice.

Total cost for this is between five and six dollars.

Egg Drop Soup

You can substitute corn starch for potato starch and you can use black pepper instead of white pepper. It's quick, inexpensive and most kids will eat it. 

You can kick it up a notch by adding fish, shrimp or chicken.

Collard Greens

Just a quick post. If you enjoy collard greens but are stuck up north and must make do with canned collards, the above brand is acceptable........at least to me. Just drain them and heat them in a pot with at least a third of a stick of butter. They taste better than cooked spinach. You can also kick them up a bit by adding a few chopped slices of flaccid cooked bacon along with the bacon grease. Simmer for ten minutes or so on med/med. high heat.

Spaghettable

The Spaghettable is a vegetable slicer that cuts vegetables into spaghetti-like strands. If your kids don't particularly like vegetables, give this device a try. The change in looks and texture of regular vegetables may be an enticement to get your kids to like veggies. This appliance costs around twenty dollars.

German Meat Pies: Kraut Kuchen

This might be a bit more than a novice will want to try, but, really it's not that difficult of a recipe. Kids generally like it, even with the sauerkraut.

You need:

2 cookie pans lined with aluminium foil and sprayed with non-stick cooking spray.

1 large  deep skillet.

1 rolling pin.

One 16 ounce box of  Pillsbury Hot Roll Mix or equivalent.

About 2 1/2 pounds of ground beef. (80/20 or 73/27--the numbers indicate the percentage of meat to fat.)

One large onion. ( Peeled, cored and chopped)

One stick of melted butter and a basting brush.

One 32 ounce jar of sauerkraut. Drained

A couple of tablespoons of flour.

A good appetite.

Brown the ground beef and chopped onion in the skillet, drain most of the fat. Add the sauerkraut and stir until thoroughly warm/hot.

Follow the hot roll mix box instructions for how to make the dough. (You will not need the 13 x 9 in baking pan. Do not preheat the oven to 350 degrees yet.)

After letting the dough sit for 5 minutes, as directed. Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Then roll out the dough on a large counter top that you've lightly sprinkled some flour on and cut into about 24 squares. 

Add the ground beef, onion and kraut mix and fold the dough over until it covers the mixture. Place fold side down on the aluminium foil You want as thin a layer of dough as possible. Place about 12 pies on each cookie sheet and place in the 200 degree oven for 30 minutes.

Remove trays from oven and increase temp to 350 degrees. Baste the top of the pies with the melted butter. Once preheated, place one pan of pies on the second oven rack from the top or the center rack. Cook for another 15-18 minutes. Then remove and add the second pan.

Enjoy a savory, tangy dinner.

Pulled Pork and Balsamic/Brown Sugar Sauce Deliciousness

First things first. Get yourself a 4-5 pound pork loin which, at the time this is being written, can be had for $1.99-$2.99/lb. on sale. 

Get your large crock pot out. Unwrap the pork loin and use a steak knife or similar knife to carefully stab about 6-8 holes all the way through the pork loin. This creates a capillary action that draws the juice back up through the meat and gives it extra flavor. 

Add two ot three cups of water to the crock pot and place the perforated pork loin fat side down in the crock pot. Sprinkle a couple of tablespoons of dried sage on top of the pork and cook on low for around six hours. You can make a gravy out of the liquid in the crock pot. 

To make the brown sugar and balsamic sauce you need:

1/4 cup of your favorite balsamic vinegar.

1/4 cup of brown sugar, tightly packed.

1/2 cup of water.

2-3 tablespoons of Kikkoman soy sauce---it seems to work best for this recipe.

1 heaping tablespoon of corn starch.

Add the water and other ingredients to a saucepan. Stir. Bring mixture to a boil, stirring constantly but lightly. If it does not thicken after a minute or two of boiling, that's OK, just remove it from the heat. Remove from heat after it thickens too.

You can make a gravy from the crock liquid and serve the pork loin with the gravy and mashed potatoes or rice. 

Save some of the pork loin to make sandwiches with. Take a bun and add pulled pork. Drizzle the brown sugar and balsamic sauce over the meat and add a good dollip of cold slaw. This makes a sandwich that is beyond delicious and is almost as addicting as good sushi.

Home Canned Salsa

What you need:

Four (4) Five gallon buckets of fresh, homegrown tomatoes. (Buckets filled to about 3 inches from the top)

Two packages of mild canning salsa mix. Available in the canning section of most large supermarkets. (You can add another package or two if you wish)

Five ounces of Chili Powder.

Three ounces of Dried Garlic Powder.

Four pounds of large White Onions.

Twenty-five Jalapeno Peppers, mostly seeded.

Quarter pound of seeded Serrano Peppers--Optional

Add more peppers, such as Habanero, if you want a hot salsa.

This yields approximately 27 quarts of salsa. You may want to split the recipe in half unless you have two large soup pots.

Spaghetti Squash and Diced Tomato Casserole

The wife had a hankering for spaghetti squash and came up with this recipe. She also cooks many of the recipes on this blog and comes up with numerous yummy meals for us to try.

You'll need:

One 2-3 lb. spaghetti squash.

Two cans of diced tomatoes, drained.

Dried Parmesan cheese.

About a tbsp of dried Italian seasoning.

2-4 tbsp of melted butter.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Carefully cut the squash in half and scrape out the seeds with a teaspoon. Taking a casserole dish that's large enough to hold the squash halves, add about a half inch of water to the dish and place the squash face down in the water. Place on the middle oven rack and bake for about two hours.(Check about every half hour and add extra water if the water appears to be evaporating excessively.)

Remove from oven and take out the squash and dump the water. Use a fork to scrape the spaghetti squash meat into the casserole dish. Even the squash out and drizzle the melted butter on top. Add the diced, drained tomatoes. Sprinkle the Italian seasoning on top of the tomatoes. Top with about a quarter inch of dried Parmesan cheese. Place back in the oven on the second rack from the top and cook for about 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

Our son is not a big veggie fan, but he enjoyed this dish. Cost for the squash, the two cans of diced tomatoes, butter, seasoning and Parm was about $6.00. Serves 4-6 people.

Non-Fried Chile Relleno

Kids may not like this dish, but it is a nice side and relatively easy since it isn't fried or otherwise coated with batter.

I used four large Poblano peppers. You'll also need about 12-16 ounces of the shredded cheese of your choice. I used Cheddar, but any type of pepper cheese or white Mexican cheese will do.

Also needed are:

An aluminium foil lined baking pan. Extra sheet of aluminium foil.

A casserole dish large enough to hold the stuffed peppers.

Some cooking spray or olive oil.

A steak knife.

Put an oven rack on the broiler level and turn your oven to broil. (You can wait until you have prepped your peppers if you wish.)

Core the stem out of your peppers and shake the loose seeds out--some will be left, you can scrape them off later.

Set timer for seven minutes. Place cored Poblanos on the foil lined baking pan/cookie pan. Put in oven and check after about two and a half to three minutes. The entire side of the pepper should be blistered with some charred patches. Turn peppers over and cook for another three minutes or so. The extra timer time allows for the time needed to turn the peppers. 

Remove the peppers and tightly cover them with the extra sheet of foil for about three minutes. This allows the peppers to steam and it makes it easier to remove the skin. Place oven rack on the second shelf and lower heat to 350 degrees.

The peppers will still be a bit hot, but use the steak knife to scrape the charred and blistered skin off the pepper. Do not worry if you can't remove all of it.

Carefully slit one side of the pepper and then open it so that it is flat. Scrape off the extra seeds if you wish:

Put a handful of cheese on top of the pepper and gently fold it over. Spray, liberally, the casserole dish with non-stick cooking spray and lay the stuffed pepper on its side. Repeat for the other peppers. Spray the tops of the peppers with cooking spray or drizzle some olive over over the peppers but make sure to smear the oil on the pepper exterior top surface.

Place back in the oven and cook for another 20-25 minutes until the cheese has melted.

You can also add sauteed onions to the cheese, but, of course, this will add extra time to the prep. This makes a nice side dish. The cost for the peppers, cheese and the amount of cooking spray and aluminium foil you will use for this is a bit over four dollars and this dish provides a good serving for four people.

Effective Grocery Shopping

               

Most of us go shopping, but how many of us really know how to shop?  Posts on this blog deal with saving money and while many folks hit the supermarket, not everyone may know how to budget shop.

When the money is coming in and there are no economic issues to worry about, most folks just buy whatever they want when they go shopping as opposed just getting the necessities. Budget shopping is an easy way to save some money (and, in some cases, some serious money).

Getting creative with meal preparation also helps. (See the previous post link to Ramen Noodles, for example)

Like anything else, there are always some grocery store scams to watch out for. One of the most common is the buy one get one free scam. I see it a lot with chicken. One week the chicken is $2.29/lb and the next week, during the buy one get one free sale, the chicken is $4.19/lb, so you still end up paying around $2.10/lb. Not a super great discount over the regular $2.29/lb. Sometimes though, buy one get one free deals ARE deals. Bring your calculator and you may score a bargain.

Another scam is the endcap scam. This is where a retailer will have, say, three items on an isle end cap and the top item and the bottom item are on sale and signed as such, while the middle item is regular price, so that you think the middle item must be on sale, while it is actually regular price.

I noticed another scam the other day while at the supermarket. There was a bin of frozen seafood and the sign over the bin said $7.95. My first thought was that the seafood was $7.95/lb, which would have been a good deal. However, upon closer inspection of the sign, the fine print indicated the price was for a bag of a different item entirely and was not a good price, even for the other item.

Another important tip when bargain shopping is to check the net weight of the item. For example, those plastic resealable coffee containers usually contain between 33 and 35 ounces of coffee. The much larger metal coffee tins only contain between 33.5 and 35 ounces of coffee, so the larger container is not the best value.

Another problem with groceries is the huge price increases coupled with smaller packages. Although we make home made chicken tenders for our son, because you can get boneless and skinless chicken breast on sale in our area for $1.78-$1.89 a pound, we used to also buy the bags of premade chicken nuggets at the grocery store. They used to be $5.99 for a 32 ounce bag, which works out to three dollars a pound; not cheap, but not horrendously expensive either. The situation now is that bagged nuggets are coming in 24-28 ounce packages and cost between $8.99-$9.99/bag. No way is $5-$6 a pound for ground up chicken meat and floor sweepings coated in thick batter a good value, yet, the stores still sell many bags of them. ('cause folks do not do their homework)

Frozen vegetables are also coming in smaller packages now. The 16 ounce packages of some frozen veggies, such as corn and peas, are now being shipped in 12 ounce packages which are selling for the same amount as the 16 ounce packages were. Check your net weights.

                                

One value that I came across Sunday were the 64 oz bags of Kroger PSST brand Crunchy Breaded Fish Sticks. They were selling for $6.99/bag. This translates to about $1.75/lb. Sure it was just minced whitefish, but $1.75/lb for any type of seafood is a good value.

The fish sticks are pretty versatile. You can take a home made cream soup base, add chopped potatoes and corn, cut up some of the fish sticks and voila, a budget fish chowder. You can also chop them up and make cheap fish tacos, or pile them on a hamburger bun with ketchup or tartar sauce.........cheap eats.

If you do not make your own chicken stock/soup, the Mrs. Grass chicken soup mix, pictured in the photo at the top of the post, can save you some money. We always like to keep some chicken soup around in case someone in our family gets sick. In our area, you can find Mrs. Grass, or a similar product, for anywhere from $1.75-$1.99/box. Each box has two packs of soup that each make four cups of soup, so you get a total yield of eight cups of soup. The non-condensed chicken soup usually comes in a 15-19 ounce can and can generally be found for between $1.50-$2.49, so you get an additional six cups of soup using the dried mix as you do buying the premade. The energy cost is about the same since you have to heat both soups.

                              

One food that folks usually do not associate with budget food is sushi. If you make your own sushi and sushi rolls, you can eat classy and cheap. California roll, for instance, just takes some faux crab sticks, sliced in half lengthwise, some avocado, some cucumber or carrots, rice and sea vegetable wrapper. You can make home made California rolls for around 40-60 cents each. You can also do some cheap Nigiri sushi. Just take your hand pressed sushi rice and top with thin smoked salmon slices that you bought on sale, or top with thin slices of vegetable or cooked butterflied shrimp that was also purchased on sale or was on manager's special.

Another thing to do is to buy cheap tough cuts of meat and cook them in a pressure cooker for a half hour or so until they are tender. You can pressure cook the cuts in broth and it will enfuse some flavor.

You can sometimes find basic ethnic staple foods in specialty markets for less than you can in supermarkets that have specialty food sections. It also pays to cook from scratch, but as this is not for everyone and you may have some time constraints on cooking, bargain shopping premade foods is still a way to save money.

Anther scam is the margarine scam and you can read about it HERE.

One thing I also noticed with certain brands of shredded Mozzarella cheese is that some brands do not melt to the stringy gooeyness that I like. I checked the ingredient list and lo and behold:

Potato starch, when used in quantities that make it a filler, will cause your cheese to not melt very well. Keep this in mind when buying cheese for, say, pizza or lasagna.

If y'all find any other grocery scams out there just email me and I'll update this post.

Low Carb Delicious Cheesy Snack

Well, I've been giving the Atkins Diet a try and so far, so good. I enjoy this "snack" and thought it worth sharing.

Grab a non-stick toaster oven tray or small casserole dish. Add 1 can (14-16oz) of drained diced tomatoes. Spread them out on the tray. Sprinkle on some garlic salt and a teaspoon or so of dried Basil leaves or you can use fresh ones. On top of this add about 6-8 ounces of shredded mozzarella cheese and sprinkle on some more dried Basil.

Cook in a toaster oven on 400 degrees for about 12 minutes or place in a preheated regular oven on the second rack from the top for a minute or two longer. This should satisfy your cheese craving and it will cost you about $2.70.