Today on [Serious Eats](http://www.seriouseats.com/):

SmartShopper: A Real Yo-Yo of a Device

> It’s an electronic shopping list, and catalogs like Sur La Table and The Sharper Image are pushing it this holiday season. And if your idea of fun is getting into a screaming fight with your fridge, I highly recommend you pick one up.

SmartShopper did many other funny things that I didn’t mention in this short piece. Like, at one point it suggested I wanted to buy LIQUID TEA. Is this an actual phrase people use?

I was going to mention that a good prank would be to go to the house of someone who uses SmartShopper and program funny or obscene things into it, but that assumes that you know someone who uses SmartShopper, and I felt bad about accusing my readers of this. It’s like if I told you to sabotage your buddy’s Segway.

This month on Culinate:

The stinking rose

> I’d long dismissed pre-peeled garlic cloves as being in the same category as those jars of minced garlic, which are pretty bad. But I was intrigued for two reasons. First, Gower is a great cook. Second, you don’t argue about garlic with Koreans.

When Iris was born, she received a gift from the Seattle Public Library: a free board book. I chose My Food/Mi Comida by Rebecca Emberley. (I also got to thinking about how I could exploit this free gift thing, maybe by bringing in a huge sack of babies and demanding dozens of free books.)

Each page features a collage-style picture of a food and its name in English and Spanish. But not everyone approves of this book. As one Amazon reviewer said:

> “Radish” is another choice, but since it is such an uncommon vegetable, I am not sure why she didn’t use someting like a potato or a bell pepper, which are more common.

I’ll tell you why: because the Spanish word for radish is _el rábano_. If I were a masked bandit–and who’s to say I am not?–I would call myself El Rábano. I’d steal fresh ingredients from the trophy kitchens of the elite and cook them (the ingredients) into lavish banquets for the people.

I can hear them calling for me now. _¡Viva El Rábano!_

(Hmm, I guess this fantasy is heavily influenced by _Three Amigos._ I’m not sure what that says.)

Iris and I have been eating a lot of pecans. She doesn’t like any other nuts in non-spreadable form, but she loves pecans. Today she sprinkled some on her cereal and then fished them out of the milk one by one and ate them before continuing with the cereal. (Good parents do not buy the cereal in question, so I will say only that it rhymes with “Lunch Cherries.”)

Pecans have a reputation as expensive. I certainly would have told you they were, until I stopped to think about it yesterday and realized they’re not expensive at all. I bought a pound of them at Trader Joe’s for $6.29. Much less than a pound of steak or coffee–and not much more than a *cup* of coffee. (You can let the comparison slide this time, but please terminate my net connection if I ever use the term “Latte Factor.” Thank you.)

I realized that I thought of pecans as expensive purely because *they’re shelved next to the peanuts.* The peanuts at Trader Joe’s are about $2. The pecans are more than three times as much. But they’re at least three times as good. At least until I overdose on pecans and get a craving for almonds to put on my Lunch Cherries.