You know Jelly Belly?  The company that makes those scrumptious little jelly beans that come in the most amazing flavors ever?  Well it seems that they make an ice shaver machine too and the brand new one is now available!

Let me start by telling you that me and snow machines go back along way – over 30 years actually – back to when I was a freckle-faced five year old who couldn’t wait to open my birthday gifts.

If you could peek into my family photo album you would see how elated I was when I opened a brand spanking new Snoopy Snow Cone Maker.   The picture is priceless.

Now as much as love retro kitchen gadgets (and that old Snoopy snow machine) this new Jelly Belly Dual Electric Ice Shaver has quite possibly won me over.  I love the old fashioned ice cream parlor look that it has and the fact that it shaves the ice right into the traditional cone shaped cups.  Kids will love this!

What is really great about these snow maker machines is the minimal amount of ingredients you need to make a special summer treat.  All you need is ice cubes and some flavored syrup and voila – happy kids, chilly treat and a few more points toward Mom of the year!

The Jelly Belly Ice Shaver is now available at Amazon.com – just in time for summer.

If there are two things in this world that I absolutely love (besides my husband and kids of course because they aren’t so bad either) it is pizza and cast iron cookware.

One is a big part of my traditional Friday night routine – accompanied of course by a cold Pepsi, a movie on the TV and three little pizza smeared faces curled up around me.  The other is a big part of my cooking endeavors on almost every other night of the week.

So when I stumbled on this pre-seasoned cast iron pizza pan from Lodge Pro Logic, I heard the angels sing.  It was like a match made in heaven!

My mouth is watering…..

This 14” cast iron pan is just what every pizza lover needs in her arsenal.  It comes pre-seasoned – although I would suspect that re-seasoning it in the traditional way would only add to the flavor of your pizza.  I’m thinking a few Sunday breakfasts with a pound or two of bacon sizzling on top would do the trick.

And although I love the size of this pan, the curved handles and the fact that it retains heat like nobody’s business, the thing  I love most about this type of pizza pan is the authenticity it offers to home cooks.  Using this pan would be like creating your very own pizzeria right in your own kitchen.

Yummy homemade pizza with a perfect golden brown crust that is soft and chewy with just the right amount of crispiness – is there anything better in life than that?

Oh no my mouth is watering again……

The only other recommendation I can make about enjoying pizza at home is to go the extra mile and make your own dough.  Use your Panasonic Bread Maker or the Best Food Processor you can get your hands on to do it.  You “knead” to make your own dough… promise me you will!

You know those exquisite Christmas trees you see at the holidays?  The ones with the perfectly coordinated ornaments and dainty ribbons wrapped just so around the branches?  The ones with just the right number of lights and a beautiful star sitting atop like a golden crown?   I see them too – just not in my living room!

No, the Christmas tree at my house is usually misshapen, leaning slightly to one side and without fail, seems to always have a burnt out light bulb right in the front.  It also does not have perfectly coordinated ornaments.  It has baked clay hand prints that are so heavy they almost pull the branches right down to the ground, pipe cleaner reindeer that I have to re-shape after a long year in storage and one-of-a-kind paper snowflakes.  Needless to say, my tree is more sentimental than sensational.

But when I saw these copper kitchen ornaments from Williams-Sonoma I thought they would be a wonderful way to combine the sentimentality that I love about my tree with a more polished sophisticated look – at least on a few branches.   They would represent me and my love of both cooking and kitchen gadgets – a little piece of me on my tree.

These cute ornaments are actually miniature versions of classic French cookware ( I wonder if Julia Child decorated her tree with things like this?) and come as a set of three with a tiny 2“kettle, skillet and colander tied on a red ribbon.  They would look so beautiful when the lights reflected off of them.

So on my tree this year, if you look really closely in amongst the hand painted wooden Santa Claus’ and the crumbling year-old popcorn strings, you may just catch a glimpse of a shiny copper ornament peeking out so perfectly polished and pretty.

A salad spinner is one of those essential kitchen gadgets that belong in every Mom’s kitchen.  Even the kids love it when salad is on the menu because it means they get to take turns drying the lettuce.   In fact, the salad spinner was inspired by a favorite childhood toy – the spinning top – so it is no wonder that kids find this little gadget so intriguing.

The Good Grips Salad Spinner by OXO is one of my favorite models because it is made for one-handed operation – perfect for busy Mom’s who are usually trying to do a million things all at once. Continue Reading