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A kitchen checklist
Letters
in my mailbox last week included two stories with kitchen connections.
 One
person wrote that she noticed a cup with egg whites still standing on the
kitchen table right after she'd put a cake into the oven. So she took the
pan out again, scraped out the dough, put it in another mixing bowl, added
the egg, mixed it again, put it into another pan and put it back in the
oven. She said the cake looked OK when baked, but she did cut out a sample
to taste to make sure it was all right. It was a cake she planned to serve
as refreshments for a group coming to her home.
The
meeting went well, and she shared the remaining pieces of cake with
neighbors. Later there was a phone call from one of the women who helped
eat the leftovers. She commented on "how good the cake was and that
it had an especially nice texture." After they laughed about the
problem with getting the batter all together, the neighbor suggested it
was "a new improved method for making cake."
Another
letter, from someone more likely to make bread than cake, concluded with a
toothpick report.
"Was
running low on toothpicks," he said, "but couldn't find them in
the store. Figured they would be near the baking cups, or possibly the
dental floss. No luck. Finally stumbled across them in the paper plate
section!"
When
I tried to think where I would look for toothpicks in the grocery stores
where I shop, I wasn't sure. Then I looked in the kitchen cabinet and
found a good reason why I didn't know. According to the tags on the
containers, my most recent toothpick purchase, two boxes for $1, came from
Wal-Mart instead.
With
hundreds of the little "square-center round" sticks remaining, I
won't lose sleep over where to find more when I want some.
I
don't remember how long ago I bought them. The text on the boxes mentions
1887, but it says that's when someone named Charles Forster started the
first wooden toothpick factory in this country.
 For
more recent history from the kitchen cabinet, there are two containers of
a salt blend. They were definitely not a "two-for" deal. In
fact, I bought them years apart. The older one — the shaker with a few
hardened white chunks rattling around at the bottom — shows a 1990
copyright on the label.
At
home I learned to put butter and salt on roasting ears and popcorn, but
since then I haven't added much salt to anything. A quick look at the
table of nutrition facts on almost any processed food confirms that plenty
of sodium is in there already. On the rare occasions when I bake and the
recipe mentions salt, I've substituted from the aging container of
"iodized lite salt blend" and usually cut down the amount
besides. A 2-ounce supply lasts a long time that way.
It
must have been the making of the most recent pumpkin pie that prompted me
to start on a new container.
In
spite of the age difference, the paper labels on the two looked almost the
same, with white lettering surrounded by brightly colored markings on a
background of black. The list of ingredients showed no change. The UPC
numbers matched, except that the newer bottle had one additional numeral
at the end. Instead of today's standard table of nutrition information,
the older product presented a chart with vertical bars comparing the
amount of sodium in various salts.
 The
difference that caught my attention was the change in identification. The
older version was called "Lite-Lite-Lite-Salt." The label on the
newer container says merely "Lite Salt."
Seeking
an explanation, I checked the numerical details on each label but found no
significant difference. Both indicate "85% less sodium than table
salt." In both cases the serving size stated is one-fourth teaspoon.
The
newer container says a single serving has 85 mg of sodium, while the
older, triple-lite product has slightly more, at 90 mg. Following the same
pattern, the newer label reports that regular salt has 590 mg of sodium
per serving, while the older figure is 595 mg.
Evidently
the difference between triple-lite and lite is measured more in years than
milligrams. The new, improved version adds 5 mg and cuts back on two
words.
In
summary, if you have baking plans, remember the whites, don't take the
"lites" too seriously, and be sure to allow enough time to
stumble across the toothpicks.
[Mary
Krallmann]
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