Everyone should buy this

So I went to Broadway Panhandler today to spend the rest of my gift certificate (thanks Dirk and Marcie!). I bought a pie dish, rolling pin and whisk a couple of weeks back and was going to go get a pair of tongs, but came across the JarPop.

I have this jar of olive tapenade that I've been trying to open for months now. Months. Sometimes I would feel really strong and inspired, and I would try to open it, but it wouldn't budge, not after running it under hot water or turning it upside down and tapping it on the table. It was really disheartening, especially if I was really hungry.

While I'm not always a fan of gimmicky gadgets, I thought for $4.95, that I could give it a try (the price tag said $7.95, but it rung up as $4.95. YAY!). There was only one left, a white one, so I couldn't buy a cool semi-translucent one, but you can buy one on Amazon.

JarPop opened the stubborn olive tapenade within seconds. I'm sold.

Apparently a Danish engineer invented JarPop for his mom who had arthritis. It has won numerous design awards, including the prestigious Danish Design Council award for excellence.

Two Apologies

Dear Readers,

I want to apologize for my absence. I have been extremely busy with work and had a bad cold. I will post something soon.

I also want to apologize to Gina. She seemed quite upset over my photo of her Baked Alaska compared with the photo of what a Baked Alaska should look like, even though I told her this was informational purposes only and not to spite her.

I made Gina a pie she requested for her half birthday. It was a layer of peanut butter mousse covered with marshmallow meringue and drizzled with chocolate ganache on a graham cracker crust. The meringue did not hold up well overnight so the pie looked ugly, but it tasted delicious. I think next time I would put the chocolate in the middle because I have a feeling it made the meringue deflate. Gina invented this pie in her mind so I had to combine a bunch of different recipes.

Gina threatened to take a photo of the ugly pie and start her own blog (how cruel is that?), so I'm going to post some pictures of the meringue after I took it out of the oven so people will know what it really looked like.