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Posts with tag IKEA

Ikea Offers Free Cooking Classes

ikea meatballs
Meatball plate at Ikea. Photo: roboppy/flickr
Swedish meatballs may be the mainstay at the Ikea cafeteria, but the flat-pack furniture chain is branching out.

Next month, Ikea will hold five free cooking classes with well-known chefs as part of a marketing campaign with Family Circle, Mediaweek reports.

Food University Presented by Family Circle will stop at Ikeas in Seattle (Oct. 20, Caprial Pence), Costa Mesa, Calif. (Oct. 22, Katie Chin), Tempe, Ariz. (Oct. 28, Claudine Pepin), Sunrise, Fla. (Nov. 3, Oliver Saucy) and College Park, Md. (Nov. 5, Mary Ann Esposito) for two-hour seminars that promise an introduction to ingredients, tips on entertaining and spicing up a menu as well as healthy family recipes.

The seminars are free and open to the public.

[Via Mediaweek]

Sweet! - Feast Your Eyes


These fat, shiny, sugar-crusted gumdrops could make Willy Wonka weep for joy, and a dentist weep, period.

Given that the best candy can trigger nearly hallucinatory pleasures (chalk it up to the sugar high), it's somewhat fitting that this is not actually a photo of gumdrops. Technically, it is, but what you're really looking at is a photo of another photo of gumdrops. Taken by johnnypants over at Flickr, it's a shot of a promotional poster at Ikea. Sneaky, eh? Still, you've got to hand it to those Swedes: just as their furniture can fool anybody into thinking they know their way around an Allen wrench, these gumdrops are so vivid that you'd be forgiven for thinking they were gobbled up right after this photo was taken. And maybe they were ... somewhere in Sweden.

[Via Flickr]

Ikea's New Kitchen Gadgets - Feast Your Eyes

servingware
We've already acknowledged our obsession with IKEA glassware. Now over at The Kitchn (the design arm of Apartment Therapy) they are waxing poetic about the design of Ikea's new spring kitchen accessories from the stylie triple-threat servingware above (TROLSK) to some "cake doilies" called -- no joke -- DRÖMMAR. Um, are we the only ones who think that maybe sometimes the Swedes just make this stuff up to trick us? Like, they just started putting Elven lingo in these catalogs years ago and are waiting to see if we'll catch on?

Anyways. Check out the 15 items The Kitchn has their collective, design-nerdy eye on. They're as curious as we are to see which ones stand up in the kitchen (report back if you've tried one!), and none of the featured items will cause you to shell out more than a ten-spot.

Ingredient Spotlight: Lingonberry

lingonberry bush
No, IKEA did not invent the lingonberry. Though, since the furniture giant's cafeteria special of Swedish meatballs with lingonberry jam is the only time many Americans have encountered the lingonberry, it would be easy to think so.

Lingonberry, AKA cowberry, foxberry, whorlberry and partridgeberry, is the fruit of a shrub that grows across northern Europe and the colder regions of North America. They're a bit smaller than cranberries, and shinier, their color the full, vampy red of 1940s movie star lipstick. They're ubiquitous in Scandinavian countries like Sweden, hence the IKEA connection.

Since lingonberries are quite sour, they're almost always cooked down with sugar. Their deep, tart taste goes well with heavy meats - I've enjoyed lingonberry preserves on wienerschnitzel with dilled potatoes and a squeeze of lemon, and seared elk medallions with lingonberry reduction. A dollop of lingonberry jam mixed into your oatmeal or yogurt makes for the kind of elegantly spare breakfast that would seem at home on a simple blond wood table in a whitewashed Nordic kitchen. My Swedish college roommate used to keep a bottle of lingonberry syrup on her bookshelf, to mix with seltzer or hot tea. Lingonberries also make excellent pie or tart filling; heated lingonberry jam is good over rich, plain sweet cream ice cream.

Solo Cuisine



My husband and I have similar tastes in many things like music, decor, 19th century English literature, mayonnaise brands, etc. It makes for pretty smooth sailing day to day, but there are a few notable exceptions -- namely that if given a jar and a fork, I'll gobble down marinated herring like a rabid porpoise, and the very sight of cured fish sends him swimming as far upstream as he can get.

In the interest of marital accord, I hold off my pesce-centric binges for times when he's out of town or at his office on a weekend, and I was very amused to learn that other friends of mine make the same sort of bargains with their partners. One friend has a similar anchovy pact with her husband, another's wife goes into a broccoli rabe munching frenzy when he's away for a day or two, and my very own grandfather acquiesced to my grandmother's wishes that he only eat Limburger outside of the house. His compromise? He set up a cheese-eating outpost in their backyard.

Do any of you have culinary agreements with a partner, family member or roommate due to their repulsion or yours? Are there any foods that trump the bonds of love or friendship? Share 'em in the comments below.

More on Guilty Displeasures

An easier way to buy in bulk

Awesome: the idea behind bulk food. Cheaper, more control over the quantity, easy.

Not-so-awesome: the collection and storing of bulk food. Most supermarkets provide plastic bags, which are not only bad for the environment, but are messy to store, can break or leak easily, and typically result in a pile of unusable crumbs.

But a friend of mine has come up with an easy solution that I'm jealous I didn't think of first: she bought a few of these Droppar storage jars (at left) from IKEA (although any small metal or glass jar with a lid would do), and brought them to her local Whole Foods store. The cashier first weighed the jar itself, which she wrote on a piece of tape and placed on the jar lid.

Each time my friend buys in bulk, she simply brings her jar with her, writes the checkout code on a sticker which she keeps on the jar, and brings it to the cashier, who subtracts the weight of the jar and charges her for just the food. Easy, environmentally-friendly, and easy to store when she gets home. (Another idea? Just wash out peanut butter or pasta sauce jars, place stickers on the sides, and reuse those).

Warning: this should work at Whole Foods and Wild Oats, or other similarly-minded food stores, but I don't know if other stores would agree - you'd have to call your local supermarket out find out.

Great Ideas: Ice Straws!

Here's an interesting idea via Instructables.com: make an ice straw for your favorite cold beverage.

IKEA sells trays that create the straws for you. They are long ice cube tray-ish racks. You put a regular straw in each section (you might have to cut them a bit) with a little clay at each end so water doesn't get inside. Freeze them for a few hours and then take out the straws with a little skewer.

Full directions at the link above. Click on or hover on the photos on the top of the site.

IKEA to offer a whole smorgasbord of Swedish foods

ikea swedish meatballsCome on. Admit it. You don't need a single piece of furniture, and you certainly don't want to spend the time putting together a bookshelf when you've got to get dinner on the table. But sometimes, you just want to go scurry through the maze of perfect little made-up rooms at IKEA to get the prize at the end: Swedish meatballs.

But now there's even more reason to brave the warehouse of Swedish semi-DIY furniture maker IKEA. This fall, IKEA will roll out a complete line of privately branded food products to add to the meatballs, herring, and lingonberry jam they already offer.

Jan Kjellman, CEO of IKEA Food Services says that "prices will follow the IKEA spirit of cheap goods for everyone." A jar of herring will sell for just $1.

Mmmm. Herring.

Cookware for the culinary kid

ikea cookware set for kidsI don't have any kids of my own, and my brand new niece is a little too young to be joining me in the kitchen when I'm making lunch, but when there are kids around who are old enough to hang out in the kitchen, I'd love to get them this six-piece of set of cookware from Ikea made especially for them. I don't know how functional they truly are, since Ikea's website says that they must be handwashed and are not oven-safe, but at the very least, they're better than the candy colored plastic ones that really do look like toys, and you'll save your own pots and pans from getting dented, dropped, and all around banged up.

The set is available from Ikea for $9.99

[via: Megnut]

Fossa spice mill from Ikea

ikea spice millOkay, so I know that Ikea is a furniture and homewares store, but on any normal occasion, the only reason I would actually go to Ikea is to satisfy a craving for Swedish meatballs. I'm not hating on their style (hey, outfitted an entire apartment in past lifetime with Ikea), I just cannot stand the mechanics of shopping there. Thank god for an online store.

This Fossa spice mill is sleek and unique in shape and design, and work on battery. It's fairly inexpensive at only $17, but of course, it is not available for purchase via the online store. You have to go into the store.

Tip of the Day

December may have peppermint bark, but have you thought to incorporate the taste of autumn into white chocolate with a rich pumpkin swirl?

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