Make Your Own Cooking Gadgets and Upgrade Your Kitchen This Weekend.
The Rubber Band Trick: How to Keep a Cut Apple Fresh in Your Lunchbox. Spice Hunting: Make Spice Kits for Fast, Creative Cooking. [Photograph: Max Falkowitz] If you walk down the spice aisle of your local grocery store, you'll find as many spice blends as actual spices.
Some of them are painfully, eye-rollingly cheesy ("New Orleans-style flavor? Seriously?). Others, like five spice powder and vadouvan, are more worth your while. I'm a big fan of spice blends when they're made with care and quality ingredients, not just some ham-handed effort to reduce a cuisine to a dust.