The Cuisinart Mini-Prep 3-cup food processor is close to a perfect solution for space conscious chefs looking for a desktop processor. I am a diabetic with high blood pressure, so my diet is of major concern. I am constantly making everything from low-gluten breads to high-fiber snacks to salsas and so forth. I live in a mobile home, so space is an issue. After messing with blenders and bigger food processors, I went looking for something smaller for daily use.

It is inexpensive at about $40, simple to use, and works fine in either chop or grind mode. It doesn't take up much counter space and has worked monotonously well for the six-months I've owned it. It gets daily use making salsas and other fruit and vegetable concoctions, and has been dead reliable. For size, convenience and price, it has been an ideal product for me.

There's a new way of cooking. When food is simmered in a sealed pouch at low temperatures for long periods of time the food flavors are surprisingly enhanced. Meats in particular benefit from this type of preparation, called sous vide in French. I found fish and veggies made by this method to be amazingly tasty, with a unique texture and bursting with savories. Meats are stunningly moist without being overdone or underdone. This method is neither roasting, stewing, or searing. It's a whole new method of cooking that brings a new set of flavors, textures, and treats.

But lower cooking temperatures require more exactitude, and the food pouches need to have their air removed to ensure even cooking, so the equipment to cook this way has been expensive and confined to fancy restaurants. Naturally, amateurs quickly figured out home versions, while appliance makers started selling cheaper residential gadgets.

But know-how was still in short supply. I found this cookbook the best one to start out with. Low temperature or sous vide cooking requires a whole new set of recipes. Cooking times are so different you need charts to determine duration and temperature, which this book provides. This guide explains the principles extremely well and they assume you'll be using homemade or home grade equipment. Basically what you need is a water bath that can maintain its temperature to within a few degrees over several hours or more. Dedicated units have bubblers and thermostats to keep very even water temperatures. And an ordinary FoodSaver freezer vacuum unit will produce airless watertight pouches of food.

However there is an extremely easy and cheap way to try out sous vide cooking for the first time without buying any equipment at all. You are limited in what you can do, but you'll get an idea of what the process can do. All you need is a cooler, a kitchen thermometer, and a vacuum packed hunk of food from the grocery store.

As as example, we took some frozen vacuum packed fish from Trader Joes. First you defrost it.

Then you fill up the cooler halfway or so with water heated on the stove to the appropriate low temperature (found in the book or online). In the case of fish it's probably not much above the maximum temperature coming out of your water heater. Let the food steep in the water for the required time. (It can be up to hours for meat.) You may need to add some hot water if your thermometer shows the water cooling. Unwrap the finished fish and add sauce.

If you like the results you can build your own bath, or purchase a home unit, and use this book to guide your exploration.

Yogurt, bread, beer, kimchi, wine, cheese, miso, kraut, and vinegar are among the many foods produced with the aid of microorganisms. Those are living beasties of a type that we ordinarily try to remove from what we eat. This cookbook is full of fermentation recipes. It presents a unified theory of "live-culture foods," a way of connecting their different methods in order to understand why fermentation is a Good Thing, and why there should be more of it.

Fermentation is fairly easy to do. It can self-correct many beginner's errors. It is definitely a slow-food process, but at the same time, a low-effort process since the bugs do most of the work. The recipes here are starter ones, broad in scope, easy to do, just to get you going. The appendix contains a good roundup of sources for a large variety of live cultures. You can find deeper more complex recipes in specific books, but here in one slim volume is a great introduction to how to ferment. At least once, you should make your own yogurt, bread, beer, kimchi, wine, cheese, miso, kraut, and vinegar. Find what you do well and make more of it.

More importantly, ferment something new.

I've been making my own yogurt for the past couple of years. Not only is it much tastier than store-bought yogurt, but it's also much cheaper. At my local supermarket, an 8-ounce container of yogurt costs $1. That adds up to $16 per gallon. At the same supermarket, one gallon of low-fat organic milk costs $4.

Since I'm a believer in the power of probiotics (i.e. bacteria is good for your immune system), I usually eat three cups of home-made yogurt a day. That translates to a savings of $2.25 per day, or $67.50 per month -- which means my $89 Waring Pro YM350 yogurt maker paid for itself in just a few months. Even if you don't eat as much yogurt as I do, I recommend you try making it yourself. It's so easy, and even fun.

Here's how...

1. Pour 4-6 cups of low fat milk into a microwave-proof glass bowl, and heat it until the milk begins to boil. (Boiling changes the milk's composition so it will solidify when mixed with the starter culture.) If a skin forms on top of the milk, that's a good sign you boiled it long enough.

2. Let the milk cool to the point where you can tolerate holding your hand against the bowl. Remove and discard the milk skin. Add one tablespoon of your previous batch of yogurt (or plain store-bought yogurt if you're just starting out), and mix together with a whisk. Do NOT add more starter yogurt to the mix in an attempt to speed up the process. Paradoxically, it will only slow down the fermentation (I've read that too much starter crowds out the bacteria from doing its job).

3. Pour the yogurt into 8- or 16-ounce containers. Do NOT put on the lids yet. If you have an older-style oven with a pilot light, you can stick the glass jars in there and allow the warm oven to act as an incubator. Otherwise, use the yogurt maker or a seed-starter warming pad to ferment the milk into yogurt.

4. Wait 8-10 hours, then screw the lids onto the jars and place them in the refrigerator.

Tip: I like to mix my yogurt with nuts, blueberries, and honey from my beehive. My kids love yogurt, banana, and berry smoothies.

Most parents would agree that the venerable banana is a staple of the toddler diet. Unfortunately, they tend to not to fare very well when tossed into a diaper bag filled with wipes, water bottles, and the other dizzying array of items that have to be hauled around everywhere with your little ones. The Banana Guard makes this problem go away completely.

We were given one of these shortly after our daughter was born, and two years later, it goes everywhere with us. The sturdy, BPA-free container protects bananas in even the most overstuffed of diaper bags, and there's something particularly ingenious about the size and shape: I've yet to encounter a banana that didn't fit.

The ventilation holes help keep the banana fresh, and while the locks can be opened fairly easily, they won't accidentally pop open if the bag is tossed about, or if the guard is discovered by a curious toddler.

Of course, this isn't just for kids. When I eat bananas on the go the Banana Guard is the answer. The $15 price tag is perhaps a little steep, but the guard is definitely built to last and in the long run probably costs less than all the bananas you might lose otherwise.

These small servings of spice are individually wrapped to preserve freshness. Each packet is about a teaspoonful. They are fantastic for spices you may use only occasionally, say nutmeg, cardamon, cumin, etc. Even a tightly capped bottle of spice will loose potency compared to these sealed envelopes with an extended shelf live of many years. While this method does increase litter compared to bulk spices, the actual volume of extra packing you would use in a year is negligible -- maybe equivalent to large plastic bag. In exchange for this and a higher price per ounce, you get organic spice with remarkable freshness, always at the ready. Because of their intense flavor we've started using them for some spices we use regularly. (I am surprised the creators don't offer a single box "spice rack" with a sample of each spice.) The tiny packets are also great for camping.

My particular enthusiasm is home-roasted coffee and Sweet Maria's is my go-to supplier. Not only do they offer everything you need to roast your own coffee at home, but they also carry a great range of products from inexpensive entry-level roasters to top-of-the-line home roasters. (I've been using the Hottop roaster for many years now and am very satisfied).

The best thing about Sweet Maria's is that it is also a great source of information about coffee, roasting, brewing, and drinking. I've been a coffee nut for quite a few years now and have learned a fair bit about the subject. As far as I can tell, everything on the Sweet Maria's site is either correct or clearly marked as opinion. What more could you want?

Ever since I encountered fingerling potatoes in European restaurants I wanted to grow some of my own. I find these small fat-finger-shaped tubers have a nuttier, richer taste than regular potatoes. Potato Garden in Colorado is a mail order source that sells a dozen varieties of fingerlings and it's been fun trying various breeds. Potato Garden also introduced me to scores of strains in "main" potatoes. And they offer an exotic variety of live starters for other root crops, such as garlic, onions, and sun chokes. Their catalog provides enough basic info about growing and storing roots that it serves as a one-stop short course. For spring delivery you need to order early.

This salt and pepper shaker is spill- and moisture-proof and small. Great for camping or the kitchen table. I discovered it on my friends’ dinner table on a trip to Boston, friends who are eminently practical people.

I'm not much on black pepper, so mine is loaded with crushed habaneros pepper on the right side and a 50/50 mix of Morton's and sea salt on the left.

Veganomicon is the best vegan (no meat or dairy) cookbook out there. It's reputation is based on the quantity and variety of its recipes, and the complexity and deliciousness of the resulting dishes. There are more than 250 recipes, presented with wit and lighthearted punk-rock irreverence, as well unpretentious and helpful instructions. These vegan dishes don't only try to mimic meat-based meals; they are just good food. Our household doesn't adhere to a vegan diet, yet we've found some of these recipes great eye-openers as to how tasty and accessible homemade vegan food can be.

-- Elon Schoenholz

When I went vegan, I was 14 years-old (14 years later, I still am). At the time, my parents made me sell them on the idea of maintaining my health sans animal products. At first the task seemed incredibly daunting. Once I found Simply Vegan, I had all the answers.

This book is perfect for beginning vegans because it has specific sections on how to be a healthy vegan, as opposed to a "Fritos and Sprite" vegan. The text goes into various sources of proteins and minerals, and includes ready-to-go weekly shopping lists and daily meal lists. If you're getting into veganism, you can do it safely and intelligently with a minimal amount of work; just buy the stuff on the shopping list and cook it.

I won't say the recipes in this book are the best ever. They certainly can't hold a candle to much of Veganomicon. But if you know your way around a spice rack, they're pretty good. Either way, there's no better book I've found which covers the nutritive bases and really can set a new vegan on the right path to whole health. 14 years later, I'm still vegan and my folks are mostly vegan as well.

-- Ian Hall

As a practical guide to incorporating No-Knead Bread baking into daily life, regardless of your schedule, I highly recommend Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day and the follow-up Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day. I've been baking from the instructions in these books for some time now, and I hardly ever buy commercial bread. My young ones love the bread, especially warm from the oven, and there's something special about bringing your own fresh baked bread to a get-together.

Why Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day? Literally five minutes of effort. Throw the ingredients together, mix, pop the dough into a bucket and then into the fridge. After a couple hours of rising, I have enough for three big loaves. The dough keeps very well in the refrigerator for a couple weeks (and tastes noticeably better the longer it’s been sitting, though mine rarely makes it that long). When I want fresh bread I pull out a bit of dough, get the oven heated up and bake away. There are plenty of no-knead recipes about, but Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois perfected a process that works for me.

The main advantage I’ve gotten out of Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day is feeding the kids a bit more whole grain and some protein as well. I find the flavor richer, too (beer helps that a bunch, but also subtracts a few healthy points). I do prefer the texture of the white loaf, and for guests or as a host gift, I’d likely choose the original recipe. Of late, our everyday breadbox loaf comes from the Healthy book. Slices, toasted a bit, make a heavenly sandwich.

Bread is my favorite food, but I’m no baker. I hadn’t been one, at least, before a friend showed me the well-known New York Times video of Jim Lahey going through the remarkably simple steps of the no-knead approach to breadmaking. Mix the ingredients; let the resulting dough sit for 18 hours; fold; bake. That’s it. The resulting bread has a crunchy, thick crust, soft, chewy interior and excellent flavor.

No-knead bread is baking for nonbakers, perhaps also for skilled bakers too busy to bother with more labor-intensive approaches. This process requires so little effort but yields a beautiful, satisfying, delicious creation. It's really not much harder than making toast.

Since learning this technique, I’ve begun baking bread at least twice a week, finding the process as fun as it is a pleasure not having to buy inferior bread from the market. I’ve also used resources such as Breadtopia.com to refine my recipe and experiment with different ingredients. It’s given me the confidence to try more complex recipes.

Most, if not all, of the fundamental baking tools necessary for making no-knead bread will likely already be around your kitchen. If not, Breadtopia is one of many sources for the tools you’ll need to give it a try. I use a Lodge cast iron Dutch oven that’s been in the family for ages, a very cool tool. The web offers many resources regarding no-knead breadmaking, and I hope Cool Tools readers will share their favorites in the comments, but the NYT video is the best I’ve seen, especially as a starting point for novices, thanks to its utter simplicity.

We've been buying baby chicks by U.S. mail from Murray McMurray Hatchery for 30-plus years. We'll get a call from the postmaster, sometimes a bit flustered, because there's a box there with peeping chicks awaiting pick-up. We'll go get them and set them up with a light and feed and water, and lo and behold in three months we'll have laying hens.

Minimum order is 25, so the chicks can warm each other in transit. We raise all of them and when they are teenaged, give or sell to neighbors. Raising 25 is no sweat.

Why get chickens by mail and not from your local feed store? McMurray has been in business for 90 years and their birds are of excellent stock. Lots of varieties to choose from. We've had not only Rhode Island Reds, Partridge Rocks and Auracanas for steady egg production, but exotics such as Cochins and Polish, as well as meat birds. They've all been top quality.

Get Murray's hard copy catalog if you want to start a flock. Wonderful to look through. A few tips:
1. A dozen hens will give you plenty of eggs for you and your neighbors.
2. If you want fertile eggs, plan on ending up with one rooster for every dozen hens.
3. In more urban areas, get 4 or 5 hens, no rooster.

Once you have your own fresh eggs, you'll never want store eggs again.

LocalHarvest is a comprehensive one-stop resource for finding locally-grown food in the continental U.S. The site provides a customizable search feature on its homepage, and a simple zip code input provides you with a description and link to your closest Community Supported Agriculture option. Other search options include farmer's markets, grocery co-ops, and restaurants that serve food made with organic ingredients.

Here are the two best vegan (no meat or dairy) cookbooks as suggested by many Cool Tool readers. Thanks to readers Charlotte, Scott Carlson, Chris, Jared, Terri Alice, Ryan Freebern and Ian Hall.

Simply Vegan

Simply Vegan is perfect for beginning vegans because it has specific sections on how to be a healthy vegan, as opposed to a "Fritos and Sprite" vegan.

It goes into sources for proteins, minerals, has ready-to-go weekly shopping lists, and daily meal lists, so if you're getting into veganism you can do it safely and intelligently with a minimal amount of work (just buy the stuff on the shopping list and cook it). I went vegan at 14 (and have been vegan 14 years so far) and my parents made me sell them on the idea of being healthy sans animal products. At first the task seemed incredibly daunting, but once I found Simply Vegan I had all the answers. And these days my folks are mostly vegan as well.

I won't say the recipes in this book are the best ever - they certainly can't hold a candle to much of Veganomicon -- but if you know your way around some spices there's no better book that I've found which covers the nutritive bases and really can set a new vegan on the right path to whole health.

Veganomicon

Veganomicon is the best vegan cookbook out there. It's reputation is based on the quantity and variety of its recipes, and the complexity and deliciousness of the resulting dishes. There are more than 250 recipes, presented with wit and lighthearted punk-rock irreverence, as well unpretentious and helpful instructions. These vegan dishes don't only try to mimic meat-based meals; they are just good food. Our household doesn't adhere to a vegan diet, yet we've found some of these recipes great eye-openers as to how tasty and accessible homemade vegan food can be.

As the name suggests, the tiered tiffin carrier is comprised of stackable tiers of storage which can be laid out for all to enjoy. When you are done, you just stack 'em back up, lock the clasps, grab the handle and go. They are made out of a high quality stainless steel which makes them very sturdy yet quite light, and so easy to clean.

I am using the 4-tier tiffin, which holds enough food for my two kids, yet is small and light enough to carry everywhere. I also have a few 2-tiers which my kids take to school. Recently, I began taking my tiffins to pick-up my take-out orders. This beats using disposable items provided by the restaurant . My favorite take-out places are quite happy to oblige and love the concept.

Not all tiffins are the same. In my quest to find a stainless steel lunchbox, I tried a no-name brand tiffin sold through Amazon. It is poorly-designed, made from a poor quality stainless steel and it's massive. This new one I have is a perfect size (6.75 x 4.25 inches) and you can see the quality in the steel and workmanship. It's also less than half the price of fancier tiffins like the pyramid, which I'll admit looks pretty neat.

Self-heating meal packs give you hot meals without a stove. Developed by the US military for battlefield use, these 1,200 calorie food packages, known as Meals Ready to Eat (MRE), are also widely used by firefighters and emergency workers out in the field. In theory you could live off two per day.

Each meal comes in a complete package of two appetizers, main course, powdered drink, and desert. The main course is contained in a sealed pouch that you insert into another pouch that chemically reacts to produce an intense heat. The meal inside gets steaming hot, surprisingly hot.

There are 6 standard menus, like spaghetti or beef stew. The taste is okay. If you were hungry enough you might think it good. We've never had trouble finishing a meal. Sometimes just the fact they are steaming hot hits the spot. The other stuff in the meal pack is pretty much generic and always edible. Each of the seven parts in each meal is individually vacuum packed so there is a pile of litter generated. Also, all the food is ready-to-eat and hydrated; together with massive packaging, these are heavy dudes. Not ideal for backpacking, but one overnight wouldn't hurt.

Self-heating meals are great as easy car camping food. We've used them when we arrive late and are too lazy to set a stove up. Or at events like Burning Man when cooking is the last thing you want to do. I've used them canoeing, too, where weight is not an issue.

These self-heating MREs have an official shelf life of 3 years so that can be stockpiled in your pantry and rotated out as backup emergency rations. I have stuffed two meals for each person in our household into our go-bag.

Until recently all MREs were manufactured solely for military use. You could find wayward MREs on eBay; they may have been past their expiration date, or resold through gray markets, or missing their heater envelopes. Now the makers of MREs are selling directly to the public. The minimum order is a carton of 12, two units of each 6 varieties. They go for about $5 per meal. The brands are pretty indistinguishable. I've been using the A-Pack Ready Meals and am a happy camper.

Since I started using this bento-style lunchbox to take meals to work, I've become much more particular about what I eat. Never one to spend much time in the kitchen, I tend to eat too much junk food. Now that I present my meals in an appealing way, I'm eating better. The Mr. Bento Lunch Jar has good presentation capabilities, but I found it difficult to fill up in such a way I did not have way too much food or a lot of unused space. The Laptop Lunchbox is the perfect size: I carry a little under 600 calories, just enough to get through a work day (sandwich, nuts, apples, carrots, hummus). Unlike the Mr. Bento, this lunchbox doesn't keep things hot, but the containers are microwave-safe.

The box is 9" x 7" x 2" and holds four main containers, two that are 4.5" x 3" x 1.75" (volume each: ~1 cup) and two that are 2" x 3" x 1.75" (volume each: ~1/2 cup). There's also a small dip container that is 1.5"x1"x1.5", which goes into one of the other containers. Only the dip container and one of the larger containers has a lid, so you have to use mostly non-liquid foods. The lid of the outer box rests nearly flush with the tops of the inner containers, so small items don't fly around even if you hold the lunchbox sideways. I usually leave out one large container and put a sandwich there instead (cut in thirds, it fits better and looks quite nice on display). It's somewhat marketed for kids. I've seen reviews from users who send one with their 2-year-old's to daycare -- a bit surprising considering how much it holds -- but the site sells more adult-appropriate bags and additional containers. They also offer an insulated Bento Sleeve with Ice Pack, which I would consider if I didn't have a fridge in my office.

Having been pushed into the prepare-my-own-food mindset, I'm actually starting to cook more for other meals. I even bought a rice cooker and immersion blender. It's been somewhat life-changing. I'm not the only one: There's a Flickr pool for Laptop Lunches.

I have Mushrooms Demystified and I just joined a local group so I can find my own mushrooms to start, but this DVD set my wife got me is all about growing mushrooms and is easier to get to grips with. It is two DVDs that start out from very simple (growing oysters/lions mains in a fish tank) to hunting in the forest and isolating your own strain. There's also a great section on how to grow oysters in a laundry basket. Everything in these DVDs is all done step by step, so it's easy to follow and understand -- very hands-on with lots of little hints and tips.

The first DVD is great for novices or kids, but the second DVD moves in to agar work, which is more for the professional. I have been growing oyster mushrooms, but the DVD shows how I can move up production so I'm not just growing a couple of meals at a time. I had no prior experience with mycology, but my wife and I have a small garden and we're trying to see how much we can produce to save on bills. After watching this DVD, I think this could help people start their own small business. I've actually looked into growing for local farmers markets for a bit of extra cash.

Whether I'm hiking or commuting to the office, this sturdy plastic sheath never fails. The two ends connect in the middle, where a slight turn locks the unit in place. Even when the bunker winds up at the bottom of my bag, the two pieces stay united. The straw-like section gives only slightly, so curvier bananas are harder to fit; really long bananas are a tight squeeze, too. However, in time, you learn to spot bundles in the market that will fit just right. I use my bunker no less than three times a week. Based on all the smooshed bananas I used to toss out, this contraption has already paid for itself dozens of times over.

Like the rice cooker, the electric dispensing pot is an appliance that EVERY Japanese household has. Its function is simple: It heats and dispenses hot water at just-below-boiling, as much or as little as you want. Perfect for a cup of tea or a cup of noodles. There's even a "Keep Warm" feature for maintaining the water temp at 208F, 195F, or 175F for a set amount of time.

We picked up Zojirushi's 3.0-liter US version when we moved back from Japan. It's performed flawlessly for well over a decade. Lots of nice little touches: The "MagSafe" magnetic power cord featured in Apple's laptop computers? Zojirushi did it first; makes it easy to move the pot to the tap to fill it up.

As a former cook in four restaurants, I've found these simple tongs to be an indispensable utensil day in and day out. Stirring, cooking and tossing pasta, flipping steaks, and grabbing anything hot including pans. They become an extension of your hands. I continue to use them in my own kitchen. I often see a lot of inferior, cheap and just plain useless tongs included with BBQ sets. They are usually too long or poorly designed to be effective. Get these: Williams-Sonoma Stainless-Steel Locking Tongs, or a pair of OXO Stainless-Steel Locking Tongs.

-- Alan Hachey

I learned how indispensable a decent pair of tongs can be around the campfire while working as a river and ocean kayak guide. We cooked as much of the meals as possible on a grill over the fire to conserve fuel on multi-day trips. I still cook this way whenever possible and use these OXO Stainless Steel Locking Tongs to not only move food around on the grill, but also to move hot coals or briquettes! These tongs lock closed for easy storage and have a 'hook hole' for hanging up. The non-slip rubber grip has held up for years in the dishwasher. Available in 9-inch, 12-inch, and 16-inch models. For obvious reasons, I would suggest the 16-inch ones for outdoor cooking. Buy one of these for that unfortunate soul still using -- gasp! -- a fork at the barbecue.

-- Lewis Duffy

I love love boiled eggs. After several batches of edible, but less-than-perfect eggs, I was reminded of a nifty gadget my mom used to keep around. This little chunk of lucite reacts to heat the way eggs do, allowing you to cook a perfect hard-, medium- or soft-boiled egg. It works great, whether you subscribe to the "boil then add the eggs" method or if you prefer adding the eggs, then bringing the water to a boil.

My wife's grandmother seems to effortlessly make dozens of wonderful apple pies. And yet, she has poor hand strength due to advanced rheumatoid arthritis. Finally, we convinced her to pass along the secret behind her pie-making success: She uses one machine to peel/slice/core her apples.

Simply poke the three prongs into the base of an apple and turn the crank. Before you know it, a lovely spiral of apple skin will unfurl before you, leaving a perfectly cored and peeled apple that can be quickly cut into quarters and thrown into a pie.

As soon as you see the device in action, it's obvious just how elegant the mechanism is. It's safe for children to use, once the apple is situated on the prongs. Best of all, it makes prepping apples so simple you'll wish you had one years ago. There's a version that clamps to a kitchen bench, but I find the models with a vacuum base are the same price and are far easier to set up and use.

I'm not usually a big fan of single-use tools, but this is by far the only tool for this job. We had a party where I needed to core and slice three cases of pineapples, and what could have taken all day took but a few hours. No skill is needed. You just cut off the top of the pineapple and screw down the corer. Once you are at the bottom, pull out the meat and you're done. The pineapple is evenly-sliced and you are left with a usable hull (for serving fruity drinks in, of course). I have seen these on sale for as little as $7.

This thing makes a really good cup of coffee fast. It's well made, compact, and clean up is easy.

The AeroPress is 2.5 inch diameter syringe with a paper micro filter mounted across the bottom. It sits on top of a common coffee mug for brewing. You put in fine ground coffee measured with the included scoop. The scoop is about 1.5 times bigger than the ones you might get with regular a drip coffee maker. You put in hot water at the recommended 175 degrees which is cooler than other methods. You stir for 10 seconds and push the plunger in. Compressed air pushes the coffee out in 10 - 20 seconds. What you have in the cup is concentrated coffee. If you dilute it about 50/50 with hot water you get the strength of a regular cup of good coffee. It tastes great!

I have a French press, a vacuum brewer, various kinds of drip brewers, a good espresso machine, and I roast my own coffee. Since I got my AeroPress two months ago I favor it for all my coffee except espresso. It's not fair to call the AeroPress concentrate espresso as the manufacture does but that's a minor point.

For the closet beer geek in all of us, ProMash allows a brewer to virtually brew a recipe before ever setting foot in the home or professional brewery. It frees the user from the tedious "carry the 1" calculations that abound in the brewing process and helps you keep track of the history of a beer as it develops over time. Updates are provided yearly, free of charge to registered owners.

This is the smartest book in my kitchen. It's where I go whenever I have a question about what I am eating, or the science behind its preparation. Simply the best source for understanding food and how it works. Now in its updated second edition. Covers ingredients from all over the world and time. Awesome, encyclopedic.

Veterans of wild mushrooming quickly graduate to author David Arora's masterpiece, Mushrooms Demystified, which is the undisputed bible of mushroom knowledge in North America. Where All That the Rain Promises and More... is breezy and succinct, Demystified is encyclopedic and exhaustive. You take Rains out to the mushrooms in the woods; you bring the mysterious ones back to the heavy Demystifed tome at your kitchen table.

The best mushroom hunting book ever. Delivers amazing lore, practical tips, and the most concise (yet reliable) bullet points for identification of fruiting fungus. The seasons and species are biased to the west coast but this back-pocket-sized book is perfectly useable anywhere in the country. It's inspiring and delightful. Puts the fun back in fungi.

In our household, this is the book that has replaced Joy of Cooking as the first cookbook we reach for. It educates the ignorant, rewards the expert, and gratifies the harried with steady and sure knowledge about how to cook everything. By everything it means: wholesome everyday food. Its 2,000 recipes are unpretentious, yet diverse.

The spices of life. All of them, in subtle variations, from around the world. By mailorder.

New to bread-making, I've been looking for a great guide. I found and fell in love with Peter Reinhart's book. It has beautiful photographs, and has motivated me to experiment. I'm now one-third of the way through baking every formula in the book. His explanations are very clear. He includes enough theory, which allows me to make my own informed decisions about baking different styles of bread. It is not rocket science, but there are a lot of non-intuitive details he covers well. Needless to say, all this teaching has elevated the quality of my own breads. He also provides detailed recipes for each type of bread he describes, so those who are uninterested in the fundamentals can still bake quite easily. When I got the book, about the only thing my breads had going for them was that they were "homemade." Now I like my breads just as much or more than the expensive artisan-style breads I buy at my local bakeries.

-- Christopher R. Carlson

Some masters are great at craft, and some at teaching, and every once in a while a person like Peter Reinhart comes along who is grand master of both. This book is considered the best all around guide to making fancy and rustic artisan breads; some would say for making any bread, period. Grounded in theory and practice, it is superb teaching.

-- KK

People (collectively) will eat anything. But one mans' meat is another man's ugh. This color-rich volume features the strangest (to us) foods served in the world. It highlights two global trends: a hunger for increasingly exotic foods, and the worrisome increase in hunting bush meat from endangered and rare animals - at crisis levels in parts of Africa and Asia. None-the-less, the full variety of things-humans-eat, in all their strangeness, are captured in fine photography and readable history here. The author also provides sources and recipes for farm-raised exotic foods and meats. This guy, at least, has tried everything.

It's a goofy cliche to say outdoor cooking stirs in men some sort of cellular caveman memory about fire and roasting Mastodon shanks or whatever. But given how firmly the obsession has taken hold of me, there may be something there. I grill at least three times a week, from as early in the spring as possible until I have to start scraping ice just to get cooking. People kept telling me I had to get Steven Raichlen's How To Grill, so to kick off this year's grilling season, I bought it. Now I know why people rave. It's not only the best grilling book I've seen, but it's probably one of the best cookbooks in print. Beautifully designed with great recipes, step-by-step photos and useful marginalia. Warning: Raichlen puts butter or oil on everything, even steak. Beyond meat, there are lots of recipes for grilled veggies and even grilled deserts.

There is not a better introduction to the universe of homebrewing than the Complete Joy of Homebrewing by Charles Papazian. It covers history, equipment, ingredients, chemistry, beer styles, and methods, while appendices cover various topics from recipe formulation to meadmaking. I've used this guide quite extensively in my first batches of home brew beer and I still consult it on occasion, especially as inspiration for experimentation. It also contains enough on advanced topics to lead in the right directions when I want to learn more.

Other introductory books to brewing are published but this one is the ideal integration of simplicity and thoroughness. Experienced brewers may find the book rather "incomplete" on advanced issues, but online resources and brewclubs are better sources of advance information than most books.

Papazian's passion for beer brewing will pique the interest of any brewer, regardless of expertise and experience. His enthusiasm has even pushed commercial brewers to experiment with new procedures and ingredients. For instance in a passing comment in the 2nd edition Papazian mentioned maple beers and now maple beers are brewed at several brewpubs.

What is perhaps most important about the book is the philosophy behind it. Papazian's recurrent admonition is to "Relax, Don't Worry, Have a Homebrew." We can't control everything in home brewing. It represents a whole perspective on beer, the universe, and everything.

What's so virgin about virgin olive oil? Is tapioca born as little round balls, or can you get it in another form? At the dinner table, our questions are endless. Yet, the ingredient lists on the side of packages are wholly inadequate. Most cookbooks don't know much about origins either. This humongous, library-belonging, scholar-written, two-volume encyclopedia fills our hunger for more information. No recipes, only superbly reliable research on food, food crops, and food preparation. Eat smarter.

This wonderful guide introduces the world of artisan chocolates. Not candies, but the rich and little-known variations of dark cacao produced by one of the oddest trees alive. Just as wines and coffee vary, cacao grown in different regions of the world have unique taste and smell, as do diverse genetic strains of the cacao bean. Global taste is beginning to move away from the mono-blend of bland Hershey's to the wonderful diversity of local chocolate flavors. Cacao is a little understood plant, with weird habits, and a photogenic nature. This handsome book, filled with glorious color pictures, is actually a how-to book: how to find and appreciate the new tastes (plural) of chocolate. We've used it to plan chocolate tasting parties, find tours of cacao makers, and orient us on the quest for new varieties of the most loved spice in the world. Even if you hated chocolate, the culture of cacao is sufficiently amazing to warrant this book.

Maybe it's just me, but when I cook I keep getting derailed at the bookshelf. Lists of ingredients cry out for explanation: what *is* couscous really, or semolina wheat, or ladyfish? What about gum arabic, marshmallow, or cream of tartar? Where do these stuffs come from, not just long ago, but now, and why are they in my dish? And please tell me again what's so extra about "extra virgin" olive oil -- I mean it is or isn't, yes?

I've longed for a single source of answers to my endless gastronomic questions and after years of scouring libraries and bookstores, I've found my guru. The Penguin Companion to Food is a 1,000-page behemoth of concise information about several thousand types of food and ingredients. It lets me cook smart, guiding substitutions, and illuminating the logic of a recipe. And eat smart too. In a global market, cuisine varieties are booming; here's a who's who.

It's no secret that fish stocks of many species have been over-harvested to the point of extinction, but whenever I'm ordering fish at a restaurant I can't remember what's good fish and what's bad fish. I now rely on this very handy business-sized card which lives in my wallet; I yank it out with the menu. Tells me which fish species to avoid (severely overfished), which are okay, and which are borderline. You can get these cards at some aquariums and zoos or download the most up-to-date PDF file and print your own.