{"id":3607,"date":"2015-07-09T07:59:01","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T13:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/?p=3607"},"modified":"2016-11-03T22:40:20","modified_gmt":"2016-11-03T20:40:20","slug":"another-labour-saving-device-for-the-kitchen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/another-labour-saving-device-for-the-kitchen\/","title":{"rendered":"Another Labour Saving Device For the Kitchen"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last summer, after receiving a huge pile of zucchini from my neighbour Caroline, I needed to find a non-chocolate cake way of using it all up. I decided to try using it as a substitute for pasta and succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. I am almost embarrassed to admit how much zucchini I eat in an average week now. In Mexico, I used chayote as a substitute. Zucchini is pretty much a free food and has loads of fiber and vitamin A since I keep the skin on.<\/p>\n

Making the ‘noodles’ was very labour intensive. I would use a vegetable peeler to cut strips lengthwise and then scissors to further divide the strips lengthwise, with the end result being zucchini pieces about the size of a fettuccine noodle. I like to prep four zucchinis at one time as that gives me three meals and making the noodles took me about 30 minutes.<\/p>\n

I really wanted a mandoline<\/a>, which would greatly reduce my zucchini prep time. My mother has had one as long as I can remember and I know how versatile they can be. You should see her shred a cabbage with one! So I’ve actually wanted a mandoline for years, but couldn’t justify the $50ish price point for a good one, not even when I’m churning out industrial-sized loads of zucchini noodles.<\/p>\n

So imagine my delight when I decided to do just one last tour of the thrift store last week and found this:<\/p>\n

\"IMGP2224\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s a mini mandoline with all the attachments! The box was sealed with lots of tape and marked just $2, so I bought it without checking out the contents. Those of you on Facebook know that when I finally opened the box, I found $7.50 in it, as well as $0.10 worth of Canadian Tire money!!!!!!!!!!<\/p>\n

This mandoline comes from Regal, a catalogue company like Avon. My friend Donna is a Regal rep, so I’ve seen some of their products and know that they are good quality. In fact, she got me a nut chopper<\/a> from them several years ago that is still working very well despite all the paces I’ve put it through. So I knew that I’d scored a mandoline that was going to serve me very well for a long time. I should add that it has clearly never been used!!!<\/p>\n

All the pieces fit into a neat little box:<\/p>\n

\"IMGP2225\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There are all sorts of attachments for doing different things like juicing, grating, shredding, and more:<\/p>\n

\"IMGP2223\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Using the device was intuitive. My only complaint is that the handle bit with prongs to stick into the food doesn’t really hold the zucchini that well. I would just hold the zucchini until I had a nub left and then use the handle. It took me only about five minutes to turn my four zucchinis into little coins:<\/p>\n

\"IMGP2222\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I could probably use the peeler attachment to make the noodles I can twirl around on a fork, but I thought these would be a nice change.<\/p>\n

Next step, salt them very generously, add a weight (plate plus a couple of tins), and let the water drain out of them for several hours. Then, rinse, weight again for a bit, then toss in a hot pan with lots of garlic!<\/p>\n

I am going to get a lot of use out of my new gadget and can’t wait to use it on all that lovely Mexican produce that shows up right at my door!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last summer, after receiving a huge pile of zucchini from my neighbour Caroline, I needed to find a non-chocolate cake way of using it all up. I decided to try using it as a substitute for pasta and succeeded beyond my wildest expectations. I am almost embarrassed to admit how much zucchini I eat in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[632,4,6,635,807,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-canada","category-haven","category-homemaking","category-north-america","category-saskatchewan","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3607\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.raecrothers.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}