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Salter
Kitchen Scales
By Kathleen Daelemans &
Rita Daelemans (for those of you who don't know, Rita's
my Mom, my culinary mentor and the best darn cook I know)
Ever
since the day I saw the needle on my bathroom scale soar
past 210 pounds, I've been scale phobic. I absolutely won't
get on one unless I'm forced to at stethoscope point by
my doctor and that's only if all my pleading, begging and
bribing falls on deaf ears.
Kitchen scales are a whole other story. They're not have-to-have,
but a scale is a pretty cool tool to invest in and a great,
get-ready-for-swim-suit-season, present to buy yourself
in the middle of winter when the weather is really depressing
and your pants are doing their best to cut off life preserving
circulation.
I don't know about you, but as soon as the squirrels start
hoarding acorns, I run for the mac and cheese. And as much
as I like to think I'm as active in the winter as I am in
the warmer months, the fact is I'm not. The days are shorter
and the weather is Eskimo cold. I can't resist the feel
of flannel PJ's, the call of crisp cotton sheets and the
lure of my down comforter. When the sun goes down, it's
all I can do to keep from calling it a day. There's nothing
cozier than zoning out in front of the telly. And who can
watch TV without snacking? And who can snack in front of
the television without packing on a few extra pounds? Enter
the kitchen scale.
For the most part, I don't count calories and weigh my food
all the time. Except when I'm "up a few" and want
to get rid of a couple of pounds quickly, safely and efficiently
or when I'm contemplating the consumption of something I
know will please inner goddess, Chubba Grub Grub. I don't
add up the calories in lettuce, weigh out a serving of strawberries
or attempt to calculate the food values of things I know
are low calorie and good for me. Instead, I watch the big
numbers like a hawk most of the time. I weigh all my portions
of meat, chicken and fish. I weigh servings of nuts and
cheese and when I'm in a potato chip frenzy, I weigh those
too.
When
I started to write this review, it was Salter's
sleek 6055 model that had me all jazzed. I hadn't yet
discovered their new Nutritional
Scale. It weighs food portions and calculates nutritional
values. It's got a database of over 900 foods and ingredients
and tracks calories, fat, cholesterol, fiber, protein, sodium
and carbohydrates.
That standard 100 calorie "small" banana becomes
a 119 calorie banana when you use the scale. And that teensy
handful of chocolate chips you tell yourself "won't
matter"? Think again. Because I test recipes for a
living, I consider myself a pretty good judge at being able
to eyeball quantities but when I visually calculated an
ounce of chocolate chips, it turned out to be 2 ounces or
268 calories, 16.66 grams of fat, 35.33 grams of carbohydrates
and 6 mg. of sodium. "Go ahead, pop those chips into
your mouth", screamed inner goddess of Gluttony, during
the experiment The cost? A one hour brisk walk on top of
my normal workout.
The morale of the story, when you want to trim down, get
the calorie low down by using a kitchen scale. You can see
where you're consuming excess calories which means you can
shave them off just as easily by aligning your portions
with your health and weight goals.
Mom's Pros: It
takes the guesswork out of portion control. When you buy
a pound of hamburger meat and you want to divvy it up or
when you buy sausage and you want to know how much one link
weighs, you can find out. You don't have to get out your
calculator and do the math. There's no excuse for not knowing
what a 3 ounce serving of meat is if you really want to
know.
Mom's
Pros: It's not anything you really need but
it's very useful. A lot of recipes list the weight of the
ingredients. "A half a large cabbage, about one pound"
is a mystery until you weigh it. I think of a large head
of cabbage as a gigantic pumpkin because that's what my
father dragged home one time. He paid 15 cents for it.
When you're using a half a box of spaghetti it's nice to
know how much you should really use. A quarter pound of
pasta is even harder to judge. The scale takes the guess
work out of the project and you don't end up eating more
than you should.
Once every five years I get a craving for coconut cake but
I never make it because I only ever want one slice and can't
stand the thought of having to throw away a perfectly good
cake. With the scale, I can easily make a half a cake because
the King
Arthur Cookbook lists ingredients by weight. If you
get halfway serious about baking, cookbooks tell you weighing
the flour is much more accurate. A cup of flour is supposed
to weigh 4 1/4 ounces. You get a better result when you
weigh the ingredients. Having a scale in the kitchen eliminates
the hassle.
Mom's Cons: The
only drawback to having a scale in the kitchen is that it
takes up counter space. But Salter's designs are sleek.
Their scales are unobtrusive. Looking at a scale on the
counter is better than looking at yesterday's mail, stacks
of school papers, shriveled up apples, crayons and car keys.
Kathleen's Cons:
You have to look up food codes in a code book which I thought
I'd hate doing. But once you get the hang of it, it goes
pretty quick. I made a scale code cheat sheet of the foods
I consume most, especially the a-little-won't-hurt-me stuff
that somehow winds up in my kitchen.
Greatest Features: Salter's
scales are easy to keep clean because they've got waterproof
touch pads and removable scale covers you can easily wipe
down.
Favorite Models:
Salter Digital Scale Model 6055
Salter Nutritional Scale Model 1400
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