Janelle Maiocco

Hi.

Welcome to my blog. I live in the Wallingford neighborhood of Seattle on an Urban Farm (w/ five laying hens and a huge garden). I am a trained chef (w/ a certificate in food preservation), taught at a cooking school & like to share 'kitchen hacks' - culinary tips that save time, money & maximize flavor. If that isn't enough, I also run a food+tech startup called Barn2Door.com - a platform to help everyone easily find & buy food directly from farmers, fishers & ranchers (from CSA's to urban farm eggs to 1/2 a grass-fed cow).

Thanks for the goodies!

Thanks for the goodies!

thermo pen
thermo pen
seapak
seapak

This post is combo review and thank you.ThermaPen: Am loving the automatic pen. Its super easy to use, clean and calculate temps of food. Thanks for sending; I will use it often!

SeaPak Seafood: I loved popping into the store with coupons from you. My nearby store had only two of your products: the Clam Strips and Butterflied Baked Shrimp. So I bought both and we pulled out all the stops, eating them on a weekend afternoon. The shrimp we liked; the downside was it cost $9 for a small box.

vino
vino

Apothic Red Wine: nice, full-bodied and a fun label for Halloween. We drank to YOU in front of a black skull in a dimly lit room. Nicely done. The price it appropriate ($14 a bottle).

YoGreek yogurt: we spent a year in Europe and fell in love with European yogurt. Forevermore, American yogurt has tasted 'bleh' and/or way too sugary. You provided something closer to the 'real thing' as far as we are concerned. Thanks for the samples---it is nice to feel like yogurt is yogurt and doesn't have to cheat its way into American mouths. Its not ice cream, after all. Thanks for sticking to 'yogurt roots.' The husband likes it.

Euphoria Greek Extra Virgin Olive Oil: you have entered a household quite picky about its oil. Having spent a year abroad---9 months in Florence, Italy, we had many opportunities to taste olive oils under festival tents. We sampled and speculated, sniffed and slurped olive oil. I even wrote a post on HOW TO TASTE TEST OLIVE OIL. And yet you were undeterred: you sent a bottle. It was actually lovely, more reminiscent of the just-pressed olive-oils under Italian tents than the [sometimes] colorless oil I buy in American grocery stores. My biggest complaint: the bottle you sent was clear glass (not protected from light) and there was no date on the bottle (correction from Euphoria: their bottles come in dark bottles to protect the oil; mine was clear but previously stored in a tin). Unlike wines: I want my olive oil as close to the pressing time as humanly possible (unless of course, I am just using it for cooking). (Euphoria emailed me to say they DO normally put dates stamped on bottles, to ensure connoisseurs know what they are getting---thanks Euphoria!) Thanks for the send---makes me want to visit Greece! Instead, I hopped over to your site.

raisin
raisin

California Raisins: I love you! How cool to send me a plush raisin toy, water bottle and container of raisins. We live for the UPS guy to drive up and plop the next box on our doorstep. It was no stretch to use raisins... because they weave through my baking anyway. BUT this time I incorporated them into a new curried chicken wrap which my family LOVES and now: I make a week's worth in advance and plug it into lunches, snack-time and growling stomachs. Check out www.loveyourraisins.com and if you want: vote for my chicken curry recipe on their www.facebook.com/californiaraisins page!

Gifts from your Kitchen (plus: recipe for candied chipolte pecans)

Gifts from your Kitchen (plus: recipe for candied chipolte pecans)

Italian Grandmothers.

Italian Grandmothers.