SkyMall Monday: Baggy Rack

by Mike Barish on

Living alone has its perks. You get to be as messy as you’d like, you always get to decide what to watch on television and pants pretty much become optional at all times. There are, however, downsides. It can get lonely. There’s no one around to help you when you realize just a little too late that there’s no more toilet paper. And cooking for one is a real pain in the buttocks. Thankfully, here at SkyMall Monday headquarters, I live with my girlfriend and two dog butlers. We can cook proper meals, go into the bathroom with confidence and always have someone with whom to play UNO. What should the lonely among us do when they need an extra set of hands? Mail order brides are expensive, Craiglist roommates usually end up being psychos who clip their toenails in your bed and training your dogs to be butlers takes ages (believe me, I know). Thankfully, SkyMall knows that solo dwellers could use some help. They know that there’s nothing wrong with living alone. They don’t judge. They know that you live alone by choice. They understand that it’s not because no one could possibly love you. They think it’s totally cool that you have six cats who vote for their feline president every fours years. Heck, they even appreciate all that President Jinglebottoms H. Furrykins IV has done in his first term in office. But they want to help, as well. That’s why they carry the Baggy Rack.There’s nothing worse than bagging up leftovers (except for genocide, child molestation, dropping your ice cream cone and several trillion other things). The bags don’t stay open, you get sauce all over your hands and inevitably, you just give up and throw the food against the wall in a fit of anger. Several hours later, after writing about the incident in your diary, you return to the kitchen to tackle quite a mess. Who has time for that? That’s why you need to have a device that will hold those bags open for you.

Think that it’s easy to hold those tiny bags open all by yourself? Never have leftovers because you can down an entire DiGiorno‘s by yourself? Well, maybe you should pop a Gas-X and read the product description:

Every kitchen should have this practical rack that keeps plastic bags upright so they’re easy to fill. No more spilling food all over the counter! Great for sauce, soup, cereal, berries, leftovers...Doubles as a bag dryer.

Sauce is a food product. Soup is a food product. Cereal and berries are food products (that, coincidentally, go great together). Leftovers is a generic category that could encompass anything. From steak to jelly bean gravy, anything can be a leftover. That means that the Baggy Rack is great for everything. Including being a bag dryer. Because we all should be rinsing and reusing our bags once we’re done with all that jelly bean gravy.

Living alone doesn’t have to be difficult. All you need are some dolls, some peanut butter and the Baggy Rack. You’ll never feel lonely again.

Check out all of the previous SkyMall Monday posts HERE.

Eating whale in Greenland

by Andrew Evans on


Don’t hate me but I ate whale meat. More than once and from more than one species (cringe).

I didn’t do it for the sake of boasting–I’ve eaten whale before in other countries. I did it because when you get invited over for dinner at somebody’s house in Greenland and they serve you whale, you just eat it and smile and say, “Qujanaq”(thank you).

As a guest in Greenland, I was first served a tender whale steak smothered in caramelized onions, and honestly-it was good. I still felt uneasy about eating it, though–I was indoctrinated by the Save the Whales campaigns of the 1980s and still believe that commercial whaling is fundamentally unnecessary.

Perhaps more disturbing was seeing humpback whale on a plate, which I also tasted and felt guilty about. Hunting humpbacks is banned by the International Whaling Commission (IWC), and the species is still listed as endangered under the United States’ Endangered Species Act. However, the IWC does include an “aboriginal subsistence whaling” clause that recognizes tradition and allows indigenous hunting communities to take enough for their own consumption, as long as its done “sustainably”, meaning within the limits of internationally-recognized quotas.

The Inuit of Greenland have been whaling for a few thousand years and that won’t change any time soon. While visiting the southern town of Qaqortoq, a minke whale was hunted and butchered right down in the harbor. What followed was an odd blend of ancient tradition and 21st century technology: cell phones buzzed around town to spread the news, and all the old folks gathered around to chat and linger. It was a big event–whole families walked in to look over the meat, people brought their own bags and carefully picked out the morsel they wanted. For a few minutes, I was able to suspend judgment and just witness the way life is lived in Greenland.And life in Greenland includes eating whale. Not all the time-whale meat is rare and not eaten everyday. Also, whale isn’t cheap. In the supermarket, a pound of narwhal costs around $40. Smoked salmon is far more abundant and much cheaper, as is musk ox and reindeer (also tasty). But whale is the delicacy people love and the way Greenlanders talk about it is not unlike Americans raving about KFC-it’s oh so wrong, but it just tastes so good.

At some point, all travelers have to find that balance between personal beliefs (“But I’m a vegetarian!”) and simple respect towards the place they are visiting. For me, that meant eating tiny chunks of whale blubber as an appetizer at a cocktail party in Narsarsuaq.%Gallery-103128%

GadlingTV’s Travel Talk – Torontonian Exploration!

by Stephen Greenwood on

GadlingTV’s Travel Talk, episode 30 – Click above to watch video after the jump

For those of you that attended this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, you may already know just how cosmopolitan Canada’s largest city is. Upon arriving, it’s safe to say that we completely underestimated the fifth most populous municipality in North America, but quickly realized its vast cultural offerings upon exploration.

There’s more than meets the eye in Toronto, so watch as we shake off the Virgin America party from the night before and explore the exciting neighborhoods of the world’s ‘most diverse city’!

If you have any questions or comments about Travel Talk, you can email us at talk AT gadling DOT com.

Subscribe via iTunes:
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (M4V).
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Links
Check out Gadling’s own guide to budget travel in Toronto!
Visit the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere! The CN Tower.
And whatever you do, don’t miss out on Kensington Market – full guide available here.

All images used under a Creative Commons license. All music used courtesy of Nonstop Music.

The hidden danger of restaurant kitchens

by Sean McLachlan on

It’s often the dirtiest thing in the kitchen. Infrequently changed, always moist and often with raw food stuck to it, it’s a breeding ground for bacteria, yet it’s the very thing that diligent kitchen workers use to wipe their food preparation surfaces “clean.”

What is it? The dishcloth or sponge.

A new survey by the UK’s Health Protection Agency has found that a large percentage of dishcloths in restaurant kitchens contain potentially harmful bacteria. The HPA visited 120 kitchens and examined 133 cloths. They found that 86 cloths contained fecal bacteria, 21 had E. coli, 6 had Staphylococcus aureus, and 5 had Listeria. Even worse, 24 had been used both on preparation surfaces for raw meat and ready-to-eat foods.

The HPA warns that even restaurants that disinfect their cloths regularly aren’t doing enough, because simply soaking a cloth in bleach doesn’t remove the tiny food particles that attract bacteria. As soon as the cloth is taken out of the disinfectant, the bacteria start coming back.

So next time you’re in a restaurant, or your own kitchen for that matter, don’t ask how fresh the fish is, ask how fresh the dishcloth is.

[Image courtesy Anna Sacheri]

U.S. Open: Chomp on a Hotdog

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Hotdogs and sporting events belong together, so when I went to my first U.S. Open tennis match, I knew I’d have to see what the Arthur Ashe Stadium had to offer. Given a delay caused by matches earlier in the day, the Nadal/Gabashvili pairing started late, so I wasn’t able to take my first bite until darkness had descended over Queens.

I left my seat and ambled over to the concession as the players battled into the night to see what a U.S. Open hotdog would taste like, and I found three alternatives I could use to satisfy my hotdog jones. There was an Italian sausage, which would have been too upscale for me if it hadn’t spent what looked like an eternity under the heating lamp. That left traditional hotdogs in two sizes: regular and foot-long. Obviously, I chose the latter … wouldn’t you?

Carefully balancing my cardboard tray – laden with my two foot-longs, water and a beer (Heineken Light, my feeble attempt to make sure there was something healthy on the tray) over to the condiment counter, where I added ketchup and mustard.

%Gallery-101122%

%Gallery-101120%Back at my seat, I took my first bite. Simply maneuvering the monstrosity to my mouth took two hands, and I had to be careful to ensure my shirt remained clear of the red and yellow adorning my dogs. As two models of physical fitness sprinted, grunted and heaved under the lights on the court below, I pierced the casing of an American tradition.

I was not disappointed.

The Arthur Ashe Stadium hotdog was exactly as unimpressive as I’d thought it would be. It didn’t quite snap when I bit, and the temperature was only lukewarm, in part my fault because of a detour to the smoking area. The taste wasn’t bad, though. Some stadium dogs can resemble warm bologna too closely, but this one was the real deal. I munched mercilessly and quickly.

While the U.S. Open’s hotdogs don’t compare to those I’ve had in Iceland, Montreal or Antigua, they get the job done when you’re baking in the hot city sun (or if you’re suffering through a sweltering New York night). It’s not the taste that matters when your back is pressed against the hard stadium seats. Rather, it’s the fact that you’re participating in a uniquely American institution that’s important. If you’re among the masses headed to New York for the U.S. Open, be sure to grab a dog –and make it a foot-long!

[Photos by Laurie DePrete]

Disclosure: I was a guest of the U.S. Virgin Islands Department of Tourism, Andrew Hickey and Laurie DePrete. My opinions of these Queens hotdogs were not influenced in any way by the Caribbean destination.