Bamboo Steamer

Multipurpose bamboo vessel

Nothing in my entire house so perfectly combines utility, simplicity, sustainability, beautiful design and tradition as my set of inexpensive, generic bamboo steamers ($24).

I use the two-tiered, six-inch set daily for steaming small servings of fresh vegetables (over boiling water in a cheap wok–another cool tool). Potatoes steam to mashable softness in about 12 minutes.

The big twelve-inch set accommodates a whole batch of steamed buns, masses of vegetables, or even a plate of leftovers to be gently reheated–and it’s fantastic for carrying pies and cookies to parties, and so much more attractive than plastic ware.

These common everyday items of Asian cookery are craft works of real beauty, with their woven-bamboo lids, their curved and stitched side walls, and their beautifully slatted and fitted bottoms. They darken as cooking heat caramelizes the sugars in the bamboo, but they last a long, long time (I’ve been using mine daily for four years with no sign of failure), and when they do finally give up the ghost, I can burn or compost them, and easily afford a replacement.

(This is a Cool Tools Favorite from 2007 — editors)

Cuisinart Smart Stick Hand Blender

Better than a blender

I hate most kitchen gadgets with a passion. Seeing things like an avocado slicer, mango corer, or left-handed inverted egg whatsizinger give me the hives. For the longest time, I prided myself on being able to do the most with the least in the kitchen.

I’m saying all this because I wanted to convey just how hard it was to buy the Smart Stick a year ago on the recommendation of my wife. Normally blenders are hard to clean, bulky, loud, and can only be used for low-viscosity liquids; if the mixture is too thick, the blade just whirs uselessly.

The Smart Stick solves all that. It takes up virtually no space. It is easy to clean. Instead of scrubbing out a blender, you just pop off the Smart Stick’s head, so it can be cleaned in eight seconds under running water. It’s impressively powerful and can be jammed full force down into a glass of ice to chop it up quickly. Yet, it’s still much quieter than a blender. The measuring cup it comes with is also well designed to break up the vortex the blender creates.

The Smart Stick is the cheapest and most basic hand blender I could find. Others come with whisks and choppers and brushed metal finishes, but I think the regular head works just fine. I found that the Smart Stick did 150% of what I’ve used a blender for and 75% of what I used a food processor for.

It’s very versatile. No more “pour boiling hot broccoli soup into blender to cream it, then pour back into pot.” You can use the Smart Stick right inside a stockpot on the stove. You can use it on thicker foods because you can stir and mash while blending, continuously bringing new material into the blade as opposed to a stand blender’s reliance on gravity to find unblended parts.

Making hummus, salsa, applesauce, and pesto went from “giant mess” to “easy.” Making smoothies went from “big production” to “two minutes.” Guacamole and whipped cream turn out wonderfully smooth. Margaritas can be made right in the pitcher. Almond butter can be made without too much trouble. I imagine this would also be a lifesaver for making baby food.

There are some downsides: It only has one speed (high!), so you have to be careful and use it in bursts if chopping ice, as it will happily sling iced coffee circumferentially around your kitchen in a ten-foot radius if you get too enthusiastic. You also have to be careful using it with plastic bowls as the metal head can punch through the bowl bottom if you push it too hard. The blade is SHARP. It’s not really suitable for use by children (or klutzy adults). If you need to clean around the blade’s backside with a finger, REMOVE the head from the motor first.

Again, I really really wanted to hate this thing and didn’t buy one for the longest time because I considered it useless. Now it’s the only electric kitchen tool that remains permanently plugged in on my counter other than a Kitchen-Aid six-quart mixer.

Split-Pea Lighter

Tiny firestarter

The Split Pea Lighter ($21) is the “world’s smallest lighter,” a stainless steel tube 1.3″ high and 0.5″ in diameter. Unscrew the top, flick the flint wheel, and behold! Fire!

Now I don’t smoke, and rarely do I need to start fires here in Brooklyn. But the Split Pea appeals to my inner gearhead. It’s ridiculously small, well machined, and functions well. It’s sealed so that you can carry it in your bag, Every Day Carry kit, purse, etc. without worrying about fuel spills or spontaneous combustion. Plus, you never know when you might need fire, right?

I’ve carried a number of fire-starters in my EDC kit, and the Split Pea is the one I’ve settled on for durability, weight and size. I wouldn’t want to light 20 cigarettes a day with it — it’s almost *too* small — but for occasional or emergency use it’s perfect.

It’s a great gift because it’s useful, fairly cheap ($11.50), and universal in appeal. If you’re giving it to someone in person, it’s a good idea to fuel it up with liquid lighter fluid (from the hardware store) first, so they can try it out right away. (It’s probably a bad idea to send a fueled-up lighter through the mails, although apparently you can take it with you through TSA security as a carry-on item.)

Even people who don’t carry lighters will like the Split Pea.

(This is a Cool Tools Favorite from 2010 — editors)

Social mission Bollywood/Pyt/Sketch pad for all media

Recomendo: issue no. 140

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Social mission Bollywood
Two notable Bollywood films give you that special dose of outlandish song, dance and rom-com drama that you expect with a Bollywood extravaganza, plus they advance a vital social cause. And they will give you deep insight into today’s India. Both films are about a maverick who takes it upon himself to undo an entrenched detrimental Indian custom. Interestingly, the same Bollywood super-star, Akshay Kumar, plays the protagonist in both films, which are based on true stories. Toilet: A Love Story is the movie version of a real guy who tried to put toilets in his home against the wishes of the village, and his wife is pressured to divorce him for this affront, and how this became a national campaign. Padman is the true story of a guy trying to get Indian village women to use sanitary pads instead of being quarantined outside during menstruation. He invents a way to make the pads cheaply, which he tests on himself. (!!!) His wife also divorces him. But all ends well in both films — it’s Bollywood! There is a third film, a straight documentary about the real Padman, called Period. End of Sentence. This won an Oscar this year for a documentary short. Quite inspirational. All three films can be streamed on Netflix with English subtitles. The first two are painless entryways into Bollywood. — KK

Danish word for stressful situations
“Pyt” is now in my vocabulary thanks to this Fast Company article. It doesn’t have an English translation, but Danes use it as an interjection to frustrations or mishaps. It means something like “Oh, well,” and is used as a reset button to accept the situation and refocus rather than react. I like it because it sounds like a cute short curse word. — CD

Sketch pad for all media
My art student daughter has been using these spiral-bound Canson Mix Media 7×10 drawing pads. I started buying them for myself, too. The heavy paper easily handles ink pens, watercolor, and Copic markers, and has a nice texture for pencils. A 60-sheet notebook is only $7. — MF

Use Dropbox within Gmail
If you use Dropbox, installing the Dropbox Chrome extension is a timesaver. I no longer have to search for files in subfolders to copy and paste share links. With the extension, I can access all my folders and recent files and attach them in a message without having to leave Gmail. If someone sends me a dropbox link, I can download it directly to my computer without being redirected to another window — all these saved clicks add up! — CD

Automatic product comparisons
When researching a product online, type in the item in Google and then add “vs”. Google will auto-complete with the most popular, and highly rated, alternatives, and the top link will educate you quickly. Then “vs” autocomplete the new item and you’ll have a good sense of the field. — KK

Another use for Starbucks cards
(This tip comes from Recomendo reader Andy Kegel, who saw my tip about converting leftover foreign currency to Starbucks credit.) “More and more rebates come as prepaid credit/debit cards. It’s hard to find something for exactly the face amount, so I feel like I’m always gifting back part of the rebate via unspent residuals. So now I put the whole amount on a Starbucks card or similar and I can spend the entire face value.” — MF

Klein Kurve Wire Strippers

Cuts, strips, and loops wire

In light of the endorsements of various Automatic Wire Strippers, I feel compelled to sorta defend what I’ve come to rely on for stripping wires — and why I prefer them. My overarching preference is for Klein Kurve strippers. There are a few reasons right off the bat to prefer this type of stripper over the little machines recently reviewed:

1. Simple
2. and because of that, Reliable
3. Sleek (so they fit in a tool pouch/pocket easily)
4. Comfortable
5. They Lock Closed
6. They *cut the insulation* rather than rip it

Additionally, the Klein Kurve strippers have taken this style tool up a couple of notches in precision. The holes are precise and sharp. The wire-cutting section is also sharp. Do not confuse these with the crappy, imprecise cheapos that belong in the recycle bin, please.

Regularly (in the past anyway), I needed to strip both small wire (about 20 AWG), through the size spectrum up to 6 AWG (larger conductors get special tools — or a carefully applied knife), so my tool bag has two versions of these, the 11055 ($20) and 11053 ($20) . These are not tricky to operate, and using them for a while will get your eyes used to picking the right slot & length every time. This is part of the craftsman’s pride, and is pretty satisfying. There too are models designed specifically for Romex cables, which the Automatic Strippers can’t touch. (I’ve not used that type but would surely get a pair if I was going to do a lot of household-type work.)

If you’re going to get away from a bench — where you’re going to set down the Auto-type (since they’re too fat to really stick in a pouch or pocket) — and do quality work easily, these are great tools. Oh, and they’re USA-made by a company that was started in 1857.

Liz and Craig, Executive Producers of Salvation

Cool Tools Show 168: Liz Kruger and Craig Shapiro

Our guest this week is Liz Kruger and Craig Shapiro. Liz and Craig have been married for 26 years, writing together for 20. Most recently, they were the executive producers and showrunners of the CBS sci-fi thriller Salvation. Together they’ve written and/or produced, dozens of projects including the sci-fi thriller Extant starring Halle Berry, Necessary Roughness on USA network, and Girlfriends Guide to Divorce on Bravo.

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Show notes:

Artemis Prime Directer’s Viewfinder App ($30) (iTunes, Google Play)
For the first time, I just directed an episode of television. I was terrified, and someone turned me on to this app, it’s a director’s view finder for smart phones. You’ve probably seen this, where cinematographers will hold one of those little view finders to their eye, or directors will where those around their necks, and they walk around looking through it, and adjusting the lenses to line up a shot. What this allows you to do is you can input into your phone whatever camera your DP’s gonna use, all the lenses that he has in his camera that are available to him when he lines up shots, you can have those lenses input through this Artemis Prime app, so when you go to a location, for example, your scouting location, and you’re looking, you’re trying to see what shots are there, where am I gonna put the camera. This is all in the prep stages. You’ve got all the lenses on your phone, and you can line up shots, you can see different lenses, and you can be prepared much better on the day that you show up, as opposed to having to use other peoples’ view finders, you can actually take photos of a location, you can make videos of the location. This really gives you so much information about what you’re looking at; it gives you so many different ideas, and it really educated me on what different lenses look like.

Dry Erase Magnetic Strips ($2 each)
The charm of these is, because it’s dry erase, it can be written and rewritten over many, many times. But also because they’re magnetic, they can be put up on this special magnetic board, and quickly moved, rearranged, erased, rewritten … because when we’re breaking stories for shows, the whole idea is to keep it as loose and as in the flow as possible, and you don’t want to have to stop every single time an idea is changed or an idea is moved, and rewrite the whole card, or unpin it and move it. And this gives you a flexibility that within the writers’ room, everything flows so much easier and faster.

A Guided Sleep Meditation by The Honest Guys
So how many people out there have trouble falling asleep at night? I know I do, and I searched far and wide for something that would knock me out, other than just a club to the head or sleeping pills … I’m not into that kind of stuff, so I found, I was just listening to various things on the internet, and I found these guys, they call themselves The Honest Guys, which of course makes me very suspect. However, they had these guided sleep meditations. And the first time I listened to one, I fell asleep before I even got through minute three. And I thought, this is crazy miracle. But the voice on it is very quiet, I think it’s a little British; it’s really hard to define the accent, but what I am most concerned about, and I can’t be sure, is it might be turning me into the Manchurian candidate, because I never get to the end of this, so I don’t know what they’re actually telling me while I’m asleep. But it’s 30 minutes, and I am definitely asleep by minute three or four. It’s pretty amazing. But I did one time try to stay up to the end just to hear what they were saying at the end, and if any political assassinations occur, and I’m somewhere in the vicinity, I am going to be a little concerned, but for now it seems to just be knocking me out cold, so I definitely can recommend that.

Respironics DreamStation CPAP with Humidifier ($900)
This changed my life. This is the coolest tool out there, even though it is about as unsexy as a tool can get. I actually couldn’t breathe. And also, several times, I also realized that I was so tired all the time. So I went to the sleep clinic, they show me my EEG and all my work, and they go, well look at this, the first four hours you are sleeping, you have zero REM sleep. Zero. That’s bad. …. The doctor said to me, after I did the testing, he said, “You wear the CPAP machine, you will feel different tomorrow morning.” And I said, “How can that be?” He said, “One day, it’s gonna make all the difference.” And he was so right. I obviously was waking up dozens of times in the night; I wasn’t getting enough oxygen; and not only do you feel tired, but it really negatively impacts your cognitive abilities, and so anyway, one day later, not only does it stop the snoring completely, it has a kind of a quiet little hum about it that I actually kind of like, it helps me sleep. But most importantly, I don’t wake up anymore in the night, and I’m never tired anymore; it really, really did change my life, and so there you go. That’s the CPAP machine.

Also mentioned:

Derri-Air Bicycle Seats
I had an exercise bike at home, which when I bought it, had this big, cushiony seat, and I thought, oh, isn’t that amazing, it’s so comfortable, only to realize, it’s enormous, it’s meant for someone who’s probably 7 foot 6 and weighs 800 pounds. And so when I would ride on it, not only like was it uncomfortable, but my butt would go numb. … And so, I got on the website …and they delivered exactly what they said they were going to deliver, Craig figured out how to put it on to the bike, and it really has been a life changer, like, I couldn’t ride the bike before, and now, no more butt numbness.

We have hired professional editors to help create our weekly podcasts and video reviews. So far, Cool Tools listeners have pledged $400 a month. Please consider supporting us on Patreon. We have great rewards for people who contribute! If you would like to make a one-time donation, you can do so using this link: https://paypal.me/cooltools.– MF

What’s in My Bag? — Mark Slavonia