The Daily Meal has a wonderful list today for all of you of a certain age who might have spent a fair time in front of a television set (we plead guilty) in the U.S. It's a list of The 11 Most Iconic Food Commercials of All Time, plus links to the actual commercial on You Tube. As they say, "They're more than just ads, they're cultural touchstones."

Among the ones they list are several of our favorites:  The Claymation raisins singing I Heard it Through the Grapevine, the Spicy Meatball commercial from Alka-Seltzer, and, definitely, Mikey for Life Cereal. But think of the ones they missed - the Bill Cosby Jell-O episodes, the Trix Bunny always losing out because "Trix are for kids," the Wendy's "Where's the beef" lady, and we are even nostalgic for the Green Giant - ho, ho, ho.

Enjoy the trip through memory lane, and let us know which ones you especially liked and don't see on the list.

Food Republic recently ran an article dealing with specialty tools, "Spring Cleaning: 5 Outdated Kitchen Tools You Should Toss Right Now." To some degree, we found the list surprising, since of the 5 tools they mention, we consider 2 of them to be remarkably useful:

• Egg separator: This makes sense - your fingers do the best job
• Garlic press: Sorry, but we can't agree here. We love our garlic press - it's fast, does a great job, and we found one that's actually easy to clean (the Rösle garlic press)
• Mortar and Pestle: This also makes sense - there may be a primal satisfaction in using one of these, but it certainly never does as good a job as a grinder or food processor
• Balloon Whisk: True - these are large, take up a lot of storage, and can't get into the corners or crevices of pots
• Cheap box grater: They recommend substituting a microplane box grater for the usual inexpensive one - it may be better but they cost $35 (at Amazon) -  that's a lot of money since our cheap box grater works just fine 

Having thought this through, it does seem that these lists are quite personal. There are many kitchen tools that everyone probably agrees on - food processors are almost uniformly useful. But for avid cooks, specialty kitchen tools can provide a lot of satisfaction or a lot of frustration -  one cook's mango slicer (we love ours) may be someone else's avocado cutter (useless). 

We'd be curious - what quirky or specialty kitchen tools can you not live without - and which ones did you happily discard?

The Kitchn recently pointed out this article from details.com, which asked six chefs to name their favorite knives: April Bloomfield, Marc Forgione, Jesse Schenker, Stuart Brioza, Chris Shepherd, and Stephanie Izard. The answers are an unquestioned victory for the Japanese - all of the knives are of Japanese origin - with strong and thin seeming to be the most attractive attributes. 

Unfortunately, expensive is also an attribute. So if you'd like some more ideas that are less of a splurge, the Kitchen has this article on recommended knives.

Awhile ago we published a blog on The best food movies and movie scenes, which proved to be quite popular. We had a lot of nice responses from our readers about their favorite scenes, including the escargot moment in Pretty Woman, the Solent Green jelly moment, and this scene from Tampopo. So when we saw this blog on Serious Eats, Staff Picks: Our Favorite Food Moments in Movies we thought you might be interested in seeing what they had to say. Among their favorites?

• The spaghetti scene in Lady and the Tramp
• The ratatouille scene in the movie of the same name
• The food fight scene in Hook
• The restaurant scene in Manhattan

and several from less well known films.

While we'll acknowledge that no scene can top the one from Lady and the Tramp, we do have a few more to add that we can think of off the cuff.

• Two scenes from Charades - The scene on the boat where Audrey Hepburn and Cary Grant are eating dinner and suddenly Audrey isn't hungry anymore - or when she tosses the ice cream on him. 
• The bar scene in the original Star Wars - ditto the Himalayan bar scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• The dinner party in The Hobbit.

If you're enjoying the topic, check out these cookbooks from the EYB library on food and movies. And by all means, contribute your own scenes. At some point, we can compile them all for the authoritative EYB  list.

ATK's Feed recently published some helpful tips on managing a pepper mill. Most cooks have learned the mantra that freshly ground pepper is much more flavorful than preground, but that still doesn't mean that pepper mills are especially user friendly. Here are some tricks to making them a bit more useful (check out the article, 3 Terrific Pepper Mill Tricks, for illustrations):

• Premeasure the grind - know in advance how many grinds it takes to generate a 1/4 teaspoon of pepper (ATK suggests putting a tape with that info right on the mill).
• Before you use it, cover it with plastic wrap (cheap sandwich bags work especially well) to keep it clean.
• Don't leave the mill on the counter since it will drop excess grind - put it on a small plate or dish to keep the pepper from spreading out.

It's maple syrup season here in the New England, so we thought we'd take a moment to discuss grades of maple syrup and dispute the claim that an "A" is better than a "B." 

We should note that the grades depend whether you're buying maple syrup from Canada or the United States, since the two have different grading systems. Canada, which produces more than 80 percent of the world's maple syrup has three grades: Canada #1, including Extra Light (sometimes known as AA), Light (A), and Medium (B); #2 Amber (C); and #3 Dark (D).The United States has two grades:  Grade A and Grade B, though Grade A is broken into three subgrades,  measured by translucence: Light Amber, Medium Amber and Dark Amber.

But what's the real difference? Actually it's just a matter of flavor intensity. Grade A has less maple flavor than Grade B. And that's largely because grade is not a matter of quality or filtering, as is commonly published, but simply rather of timing. Grade A comes from the first sap flow of the season, while Grade B comes from later flows. As for taste, many people consider Grade A to be sweeter, while Grade B has a bit of caramel flavor that Grade A doesn't have. 

Grade A is more expensive than Grade B simply because there's less of it. As for use, again, they are largely interchangeable. So our suggestion, if you like maple syrup but think you should pay more for the A grade since it's of higher quality , is to think again and try Grade B. You may find you get more while paying  less.

It's Friday (at least here in the U.S.) so we wanted to be a little frivolous and this posting from Epicurious touched the spot. In Top Ten Places to Hide Your Snacks Kemp Minifie aims to help those of us who'd like to make the cookies, chips, caviar, whatever just a little harder to dip into. Or, alternatively, keep them to ourselves away from greedy loved ones.

Here are some locations that have worked for those who were surveyed:

• Bottom Shelf of the Refrigerator
• Cleaning Supplies Cabinet
• Dishwasher
• Empty Cereal Box (not a popular cereal - they suggest Bran Flakes)
• Empty Shoe Boxes
• Kleenex Box
• Empty Shampoo Bottles (not sure about this one - if nothing else, it seems the scent would linger - but it was apparently popular with kids at camp who hid M & M's in them)

You can read about more hiding places, and the stories behind them in the story, but we also wanted to know if any of you are particularly clever in this regard. Personally, we used to hide sugar packets in the basement pantry with the extra paper towels, etc. given that a certain female child had an addiction to sugar. When we found several on the floor with the top neatly torn off, the same child attributed it to mice. We moved the sugar.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Recently, a member of a very erudite cooking bulletin board raised the  fact that it is now the spaghetti harvest season in Switzerland. The Swiss have, to a large extent,  convinced the rest of the world that spaghetti is made in Italy from a wheat dough, but true food cognescenti are aware that spaghetti is actually grown on trees. Like much in Switzerland, the process is secretive, but the intrepid British actually once caught the harvest on film, thereby proving its existence. Admittedly the quality of the video isn't great, but it still proves the point.

If you doubt any of this, we all know that the BBC never lies- so  check out this video on You Tube.

The Daily Meal recently posted a fun list, Best Songs to Bake To. And they have some good ones, which they've posted on Spotify if you'd like to download them. Here's the list:

• I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) - The Four Tops
• Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns In Bed - Kinky Friedman
• Good Lovin' - The Young Rascals
• Love You Madly - Cake
• Stir It Up - Bob Marley & The Wailers
• The Candy Man - Sammy Davis, Jr.
• Pure Imagination - Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory Soundtrack
• Midnight at the Oasis - Maria Muldaur
• Strawberry Swing - Coldplay     
• Candy Girl - New Edition
• The Muffin Man - The Countdown Kids  
• I Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl - Nina Simone
• Cookie Jar - Jack Johnson

Now my guess is that this list will differ according to age, taste, etc., but the concept is a lot of fun. So here's a weekend challenge - let us know what songs you like to cook to. We have a hands-down favorite - Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World (if you've never heard it, listen to this You Tube video - it will undeniably make you happy).  So feel free to participate, and we can create an EYB play list. And everyone have a happy weekend.

Angela Keller, writing for the Daily Meal, took on some common food myths and busted them all. Here's a short list of the kitchen myths she refuted - you can check out all the myths and the full details in Busting the Most Common Kitchen Myths:

• Salting water makes water boil faster
• Never rinse your mushrooms
• Store coffee in the freezer
• Searing a steak locks in juices
• Don't cut meat on a wooden cutting board
• Adding glass marbles will keep milk from boiling over

And we wanted to remind any of you looking for last minute holiday ideas, or just to luxuriate in beautiful photos, that we have some great ideas on our Easter and Passover Pinterest pages. 

Photo from iStock