Pursuant to yesterday’s broadcast of my NECN interview on cool kitchen gadgets for parents, you now can see the video at NECN or on our press page. Meanwhile, here are specifics on the gadgets I chatted about with host Beth Shelburne, including a few we didn’t have time to discuss.

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Panini Grill
Perfect grilled cheese (and grown up sandwiches) every time! No matter how long I get distracted and leave a sandwich in the press, it never burns! [See full feature with recommended product links.]

Popsicle Molds
Great for making summer treats while being able to control sugar content compared to commercial pops. [See full feature with recommended product links.]

Mandoline (Swissmar Borner V-Slicer Plus)
Great for slicing veggies super fast. The pretty, petite julienne cuts even have inspired Laurel to eat veggies she normally wouldn’t touch.

Wüsthof Come-Apart Kitchen Shears
Great for snipping everything from herbs to your kid's food into bite size chunks. These scissors are sharp, strong, and easy to clean, which makes them particularly good for cutting meat. One mom I know carries a pair in her diaper bag for on-the-go food cubing.

Cooking Tongs
Terrific for maintaining control at the stove or grill while holding a baby on your hip at a safe distance. The tongs I showed on NECN were from a Brookstone BBQ set similar to this one, but the handles on ours are not wooden (more of a plastic/rubberized blend) and the tongs extend for extra length for improved safety.

Zyliss Salad/Dessert Knife
This item was recommended to me by my nutrition guest writer Michelle Stern and it was love at first slice, as it were. This plastic serated knife is great for cutting lettuce or anything in a metal pan (like brownies), while being safe for little hands. The feel of it is very similar to a real knife, so kids (I’d recommend preschool and up) can safely learn cutting skills. Laurel calls this tool “my green saw!”

Collapsible Measuring Cups
Measuring cups may seem like a ho-hum pick, but there’s no denying that kids love scooping and dumping in the kitchen. Plus, the Chef'n SleekStor collapsible measuring cups are cool looking, easy to store, and dishwasher-safe.

Apple Peeler
Essential in the fall for making quick work of the otherwise tedious apple peeling and coring process, off-season the resulting spirals create fun apple snacks for kids. [See full feature with recommended product links.]

Cherry Pitter
Another seasonal gadget, but cherry pitters make easy work of depitting cherries for your clamoring kid. Otherwise, if I spend all my time halving and depitting with a paring knife, there's usually no cherries left for me by the time I finish. [See full feature with recommended product links.]

Cuisinart Food Processor
This classic kitchen tool makes baby food pureeing a breeze, but it’s also great for chopping veggies (it comes with multiple blade attachments) and mixing dough if you like baking.

And now for our weekly dose of web highlights from some of our stylish blog partners:

Coochicoos features a great new nursery inspired by elements from nature. And you could win: a Bugaboo Frog from Car & Caboodle, a LeapFrog Tag Reading system from MomFinds, a Twisted Silver bracelet from One Chic Mama, and one of four Boppy nursing pillows from The Nest Baby.

Wish me luck, folks! This afternoon I’m off to tape my first TV interview, with New England Cable News’s New England Dream House program. I’ll be chatting with NECN about cool kitchen gadgets for parents. The episode will air this Sunday, June 29 at 10am and 7pm, and will repeat at 3:30pm on June 30, July 3, July 8, July 11, and July 16. The segment will be on their website starting June 29.

Not into the tactile tasks associated with traditional scrapbooking? Today, Evadne reviews How Fast They Grow's digital scrapbooking service. Read on for Evadne’s review, as well as to learn how to be one of two winners to receive a $25 gift card to How Fast They Grow!

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“Although I love taking photos and do indulge in some crafty paper arts, I am not a scrapbooker by nature. I rarely get around to ordering prints of my digital photos and I have little patience for cutting and gluing. So while traditional scrapbooking is not my thing, I did jump at the chance to check out How Fast They Grow's digital scrapbooking service. Both of my children are indeed growing up fast and I wanted to do more to capture the memories of their childhood. The idea of being able to create a scrapbook online by dragging & dropping digital photos onto pre-designed pages seemed appealing - and very do-able.

After overcoming some initial inertia, I jumped onto How Fast They Grow's website and learned how to digi-scrapbook through their helpful virtual demo. I was then inspired to create my own project after taking a peek through the sample pages showcased in the Gallery. The variety of page templates available to choose from was mouth-watering and I was impressed by how stylish the designs were.

Actually uploading my photos to my scrapbook page, adjusting them, and entering text took me a while, but I do have perfectionist tendencies that likely stretched out the process (according to the website, it is possible to put together a page in seven minutes or less!). So it was helpful to be able to save my project and return to it, and it was also reassuring to know that the folks at How Fast You Grow are both knowledgeable and responsive (at one point, I needed help entering some title text).

The final steps of sharing my online pages with friends & family, and receiving my printed scrapbook pages were the most fun. I couldn't wait to receive my pages in the mail and, when they arrived, they didn't disappoint! The quality was impressive - rich colors printed on sturdy cardstock - a highly finished product! It would be wonderful to see the pages bound into an album but, in the meantime, I'm going to pick up some more scrapbook sleeves...I can't wait to start my next digi-scrapbook project!”

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THIS CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED
Congrats to winners JoAnne C. and Heather!
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Now, want to be one of two winners to receive a $25 gift card to How Fast They Grow? Here’s how:

Visit the How Fast They Grow gallery, then email contests@bostonmamas.com (with ‘How Fast They Grow’ in the subject), and name your favorite sample page in the gallery.

One entry permitted per person; US & Canada entrants welcome to enter.

Entry period closes at midnight EST, Wednesday, June 25, 2008.

For the past year we’ve been sharing in our neighbor’s slow and lazy composting method, but we now want to move to a more contained, easy to rotate system. I immediately e-mailed my friend Braden, who has urban composted everywhere from NYC to Tokyo. She writes, “I love that when you think of rotting food you think of me! We use the EnviroCycle Composter [available at Planet Natural and Amazon], a rotating composting bin with a fairly small footprint. Indoor composting or vermiculture are other urban options but I really cannot imagine most urbanites taking up that challenge.”

I’m not sure whether it’s coincidence or consequence that June-born Jon loves cherries, but every year he’d rather have cherry pie than cake. The year Laurel was born, in my sleep deprived, frantically trying-to-bake-while-on-a-conference-call state, I dropped my fully assembled pie as I tried to put it in the oven. I thus was too traumatized last year to try again, but when Bon Appétit’s June 2008 issue featured this Classic Sour Cherry Pie With Lattice Crust recipe, I knew it was time to give cherry pie another go. Plus, Laurel was sure to keep reminding me to use both hands when putting the pie in the oven.

The recipe is by dessert maven Lori Longbotham, whose Luscious Lemon Desserts and Luscious Chocolate Desserts cookbooks we also own. A cherry pitter makes quick work of fresh cherries (or go ahead and use the pitted, jarred Morello cherries from Trader Joe’s – drain them and use the higher lemon juice content suggested for sweet cherries), and while people often are intimidated by homemade crust, with a Cuisinart, it takes about one minute to knock together pie crust dough and another few minutes to roll it out once chilled. I didn’t have a fluted pastry wheel to cut the lattice crust but it still looked fantastic with a straight knife cut. Not that any of us were even paying attention to the aesthetics after taking a bite of the divine crust and filling.

Image credit: James Wojcik, from Bon Appétit feature

Today, Sara Cabot of Little Lettice offers a primer on “that nitrate thing” - the issue of when it's safe to present vegetables such as spinach and carrots to babies. Sara also includes a spinach, zucchini, and potato recipe for babies and toddlers.

“Carrots, beets, and spinach are some of the first veggies to be in season on our Massachusetts farms. When cooked lightly or steamed, these veggies can be very palatable and delicious for our young children. They’re full of great vitamins as well!

However, moms with young babies just starting out on baby food ask me all the time about “that nitrate thing” with these vegetables. What these moms mean is something called blue baby syndrome, which can be caused by nitrates being turned into nitrites in the baby’s stomach. I never knew about this when my kids were babies, and so it never stopped me from giving them carrots at 6-7 months and broccoli and spinach around 8 months. But we are so unsure of our food systems nowadays – spinach scares, tomato scares – that we consumers have to find out the facts for ourselves. This is what I found out:

1. The AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) states, “Because the intake of naturally occurring nitrates from foods such as green beans, carrots, squash, spinach, and beets can be as high as or higher than that from well water, these foods should be avoided before 3 months of age."

At around the age of 3 months your baby starts to produce more hydrochloric acid in the stomach, which fights the bacteria that turns nitrates into the potentially damaging nitrites. In the US, we don’t even start to give our babies solids until 4-6 months so we should be OK. However, because nitrate levels specifically in spinach can increase depending on storage, the AAP recommends 8 months as the age to give children spinach. For best results, cook spinach right away or freeze.

2. Nitrates occur naturally in the soil. But nitrates also occur in artificial fertilizers that are used (unregulated) to promote plant growth. Nitrates are also present in our drinking water.

3. This problem with nitrates in vegetables such as spinach and carrots is not an issue with organic food that does not use the nitrate-dense, artificial fertilizers that farmers add to their crops. Don’t forget, these ‘conventional’ farmers are not regulated in terms of how much and how often they can fertilize. So if in doubt, buy organic. Even better, buy organic and local.

4. Nitrate poisoning is very rare; when it does occur it is usually traced back to ground water contamination.

5. Commercial baby food companies may “screen” for nitrates, but they don’t have to and they don’t remove them.

My advice to moms is this: Please don’t let all this concern stop you from giving these important leafy green and vitamin A rich veggies to your kids. You can feel secure giving your babies these veggies organically. Just follow the correct stages: i.e., carrots around 7 months, broccoli and spinach around 8 months.

For more information about when to give what, see my previous post on First Foods For Baby.

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SPINACH, ZUCCHINI, & POTATO RECIPE
Suitable for babies 8 months and up

Ingredients

2 tablespoons of olive oil

½ onion, chopped

1 large zucchini, washed and cut into ¼ inch slices

1 small potato, washed, peeled, and cut into 1 inch cubes

1 8-oz bunch spinach, washed and roughly chopped

1 cup vegetable stock

1. Heat oil and fry onion gently until softened; add potato and zucchini and stir. Add vegetable stock. Cover and simmer for 10 minutes.

2. Add chopped spinach and stir. Simmer until veggies are soft but still bright green (don’t over cook to olive green color).

3. Puree in a food processor and serve. Freeze leftovers in covered ice cube trays or 4 oz. containers.

Variations

Mix in some grated cheese for added flavor.

Mix with small pieces of pasta for more substantial meal.

When baby is 1 year, serve with white fish and grated cheese for a delicious fish Florentine.”

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Image credit: FreeFoto.com

And now for our weekly dose of web highlights from some of our stylish blog partners:

Weekend reading: Car & Caboodle highlights a feature on learning to improve your gas economy. Clever Parents encourages readers to support Ella’s Miracle Fund, and/or attend the Ella’s Miracle Fundraising Event in Raleigh, NC. Coochicoos reports that the Beaba Babycook has hit the US market, but is not BPA-free.

Goods & giveaways: One Chic Mama reports that the Schick Quattro gives you a perfect summer shave. And you could win: a $150 Shopping Spree at BeanNewYork.com from MomFinds, the Microsoft Zune 30GB bundle at Moms’ Buzz, and a Retro Stripe diaper bag from The Nest Baby.

Formal heat advisory or not, it’s important to keep cool and hydrated during this incredibly hot weather. Aside from installing air conditioning units or fans in your home, here’s a roundup of simple, inexpensive activities to keep the whole family cool:

Backyard fun. If you have yard space, kiddie pools and sprinklers are a popular, easy way to cool down. But if you’d like to conserve water, and/or not have to worry about dumping out or cleaning floaties out of a kiddie pool, consider getting a water play table with a cover.

Spray away. Inexpensive household spray bottles offer relief for the whole family. April’s daughter loves spraying her mom and dad – and being chased and sprayed herself - while everyone hangs out under a ceiling fan.

Tea party water play. Bring water play indoors with a cooking/tea party. For easy clean up, set your kid up on towels on the kitchen floor. Fill a dishpan with cold water and various household toys: measuring cups, drinking cups, funnels, rubber spatulas, tiny colanders, etc. Add ice cubes to the water if your child is past mouthing (i.e., choking hazard). In advance, you also can freeze a couple of smaller toys in a small block of ice; as your child plays, the ice will melt and free the toy.

Play clean. Give your child cold wet washcloths to “clean” their or your arms, face, legs, as well as plastic toys.

Tubby time. Suz’s son loves play time in the tub with bubbles, finger paints, and music (the latter changes the atmosphere from a regular bath). Keep the water cooler like a pool. If you’re lucky, by the end of the water play, your kid will also be sufficiently cleaned up so you don’t have to worry about a bath later.

Make popsicles. Check out our popsicle feature from last year, for information on sugar content in commercial popsicles and ideas for making your own.

Cool ride. Sara loves taking the T with her kids; the air-conditioned cars are refreshing and will take you to the city’s many terrific museums.

Indoor fun. See our Fun Indoors archive for cool retreats in the form of libraries, art studios, museums, and indoor play spaces. Note that at libraries, you often can pick up free passes to area museums.

Public water play. If you’re looking to submerge yourself in something more expansive than the backyard kiddie pool, check out our previous post on local water play spots. Also, Sara’s favorites include: Soldier’s Field Road (for older kids say 5 years and up), Fillipello Park in Watertown, and Hancock Street playground (for younger kids up to 5 years) in Central Square.

Will bring lunch for pool. If you have friends who have a pool, ask whether they’d be up for a casual pool gathering. In exchange, offer to bring in lunch and popsicles for your and their families.

And of course, drink plenty of water, and apply sunscreen.

Image credit: FreeFoto.com