Not Your Mother's Tagine

Oops. I meant not your mother's cuisine (unless she happens to be Moroccan, that is). For many, the term tagine musters up mystery, desert dunes, endless blue skies, and exotic spices in some souk. And yes, it's exotic to most American palates, but it's also about the easiest dinner party dish ever.

Now, while you can use any heavy deep skillet with a lid to made a simply fabulous tagine, there's something pretty magical about using the actual instrument of stewing perfection. This tagine, for instance, is made by the venerable Emile Henry. It's a super heavy earthen ware cooking vessel that can handle stovetop or oven with equal aplomb (and the wonderful conical shape allows for ideal moisture circulation, because a dry tagine is a crime). Plus, it's such a fashionable saffron yellow hue. Make a little pilaf or couscous, and you're ready to serve. Easy!

This would make a great wedding gift. Find it at www.cooking.com. They'll all scream for tagine.

For sure fire tagineing, try my non-controversial recipe below.

Toad Tagine

Feeds four

3 large boneless skinless chicken breast halves, each cut in half

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon turmeric

1 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon coriander

5 teaspoons olive oil

2 chopped garlic cloves

Juice of two lemons

plenty of salt

Combine all of these things in a large zip lock bag to marinate overnight, or for at least 8 hours.

The next day...

3 medium onions, sliced

1/2 cup pitted green olives

1 preserved lemon, skin only, rinsed and chopped finely

1/2 cup chicken broth

Chicken in the bag

reserved marinade from chicken in the bag

Olive oil

Over high heat, brown the chicken in the tagine. Set aside. Heat olive oil and add onions, cook until translucent. Add marinade, olives, broth and chicken to tagine. Cover, turn to heat to low, and cook for one hour. After the hour has passed, add chopped preserved lemon. Cook another 20 minutes or so (enough to prepare your pilaf or couscous), and serve.

You probably won't need salt, since the olives and preserved lemon are both salty.

How Now, Kitchen Cow

As weather warms and larger gatherings begin, the need to create a stash of suitable "hostess" gifts increases. Hostess gifts are good practice, and far better than showing up at a party with a bunch of flowers (the cutting, vase-procuring, and arranging of which inspires the "hostess curse" heard round the kitchen).

The key to this gift category is simplicity; there's no reason to go bonkers and show up with an espresso machine. Something smaller will always suffice, particularly if it displays usefulness and wit. Enter these cow tea towels, made by the venerable classic company Marimekko. First off, who doesn't need another tea towel, particularly in this age of the "don't buy paper towels, they destroy the world" mentality. Second, these cows look, well, concerned, as they should unless they dwell in a vegetarian's kitchen. Perhaps they're skeptical about their future, perhaps it's the quality of the cook's cuisine.

At $19 each, these towels aren't inexpensive, but they boast high quality. High enough, in fact, that you might want to snag one of these bovine beauties for yourself. Order at www.finnstyle.com. And give it a moo.

A Puzzling Lunch

It's reaching the time of year when parents everywhere wonder: why do I have to make lunch again? I just did this yesterday. Add in the ungrateful childish complaints from the peanut gallery and you have an unhappy culinary situation indeed.

These gadgets might bring a temporary stay to the whining. Each of these extra wide sandwich cutters divides the ordinary lunch into extraordinary shapes. Lunch becomes a puzzle, thus rendering it more palatable for picky eaters. It creatively partitions everything from pb&j to grilled cheese, although I wouldn't recommend attempting it on a ciabatta. Then again, if your child is interested in ciabatta themed sandwiches, you probably don't need to transform the brown bag into a game, anyway.

And don't limit it to lunch! I foresee fascinating french toast in your future. Find these cutters at www.spoonsisters.com. It's the reinvention of the sandwich, if the Earl of Sandwich had been a Mensa member.

Don't Fear the Romper! Explore it at Find A Tadpole!

Introducing the romper, a clothing item that would make you look like an ass, but might turn out to be your daughter's summer staple. Check it out at Find A Tadpole.

Find A Tadpole Features Hard to Get Tegu Blocks!

Building blocks for success? The Toad's not sure. But, Tegu blocks are definitely a great toy. See them at Find A Tadpole.

Flashlight Installation

Recent earthquakes give me pause, at least in terms of household preparedness. After all, how does one turn off the gas to avoid blowing up? Should I always keep a pair of shoes close to the bed for glass shard avoidance? And, if the catastrophe occurs at night, where is the goddamn flashlight?

This latest item actually won't help you at all if the power goes out during a natural disaster, but its very presence in one's home might be a handy reminder to prepare, prepare, prepare. These are pure white porcelain facsimiles of flashlights, wired just like hanging lamps. They dangle handily from your ceiling (really, they'd be very witty inside a closet), shining non-emergency light whenever the switch is flipped. I like them hanging in a group, perhaps in a boy's room or a crafting area. So pretty, so elegant, so streamlined, and so beside the point of a flashlight, since you can't carry the thing anyway and it's wired up to the grid. Makes me giggle.

Each of these suckers is reasonably priced at around $45, which is quite a bargain for original lighting. Order them from www.thecuriousityshoppeonline.com. And maybe, in the next entry, I'll offer you a real flashlight instead of the performance art variety.

Bigger is Better

Sometimes, bigger really is better. For example, when you're squinting over some ancient proof sheet of your past, going blind staring at miniscule images. Wow, I thought, a magnifying glass would sure come in handy.

Of course, the only magnifying glass I might have had on hand would've been some flimsy plastic thing from my daughter's bug catching kit. Hardly suitable. So the Toad went on a magnification search. Check these babies out: two magnifiers that mimic placid water droplets. They'd look elegant lying around a coffee table atop an important coffee table book. One could imagine them filling out a spring themed table setting in some creative capacity. They would make a lovely gift for some giftee with a penchant for decorative, yet useful objects. Just don't hand these over as a birthday gift; the implication of failing eyesight with age will not delight.

These magnificent magnifiers are $42 for a set of two. Available at www.mothology.com. Warning: don't let your kids get a hold on these, or there will be singed bug life all over your driveway (in that case, bigger is deader).