Tag Archives: product reviews

What’s for dinner Wednesday: A new recipe and a new Cave Tools cooking tool

8 Aug

This was a favorite new meal of ours, thanks to our new Cave Tools BBQ Grill Pan, and I can’t wait to have it again.

Happy August!

This summer seems to just be flying by. We had just finished the whirlwind couple of weeks surrounding graduation when I last wrote a blog post, and that was followed by two weeks of vacation. We came back from that and went right into the final days of planning and then hosting our second daughter’s 16th birthday party here, a sunflower-themed Sweet Sixteen on a beautifully sunny day. Now that we’re back into a regular routine again, albeit a summer routine, we’ve been trying out some new recipes and even a brand new Cave Tools product.

We were asked to try out a newly launched product, the Cave Tools BBQ Grill Pan in July, around the same time that I kept seeing a recipe go by on social media for Sheet Pan Chicken, which consisted of oven-roasted veggies and chicken all tossed together in a homemade marinade and cooked in the oven. When we agreed to try out the BBQ Grill Pan, we opted to use the inspiration from the recipe we’d seen online, but to do it our own way, utilizing our new pan. It seemed to be made for such a meal because it had a slotted side and a flat side, with the slotted side designed to allow the BBQ flavors and smoke to come up through the grill pan while excess grease falls through, keeping our grill grates clean.

One pan cooking is my favorite, especially for clean up.

We tossed our chicken in some bottled Italian dressing for a quick marinade, and sliced up our veggies: asparagus, zucchini, squash, Brussels sprouts and carrots. We weren’t sure if we had more veggies and chicken than space, but it was a perfect fit, with the veggies on the flat side and the chicken on the slotted side.  We also liked that the stainless steel pan had grips on three sides so that it was easy to handle.

The new Cave Tools BBQ Grill Pan is designed to cook more than just chicken and veggies, though. It’s perfect for other types of meals, including breakfast, which we’d like to try out next. Cave Tools suggests using the griddle side for sautéing peppers, onions, eggs, bacon, cheesesteaks and any other food that would typically fall through the grill grates, but the idea of eggs and bacon really appeals to us, having never cooked like that on the grill before.

Cave Tools 3

This stainless steel grill pan features a flat side and a slotted side, with grips on three sides.

I’m sure you’d like to know how you can get this great new product!

To order your own Cave Tools BBQ Grill Pan, you have two options:

  1. You can order from Amazon
  2. You can order directly from Cave Tools and use the code GRILLPAN15 to receive an additional 15% off your purchase.

As I always say, the Cave Tools products have a 100% money back guarantee, but I’d be surprised if you ever needed it. Their products are second to none. We also saw this post in the information on the grill pan’s website that we thought was worth noting, and that also speaks to the value that Cave Tools puts on the quality of their products for their customers:

A Note From The Manufacturer

We specifically designed this grill pan after seeing the popularity of PTFE (Teflon) Grill Mats. At normal grilling temperatures we concluded that the grill mats were in fact extremely toxic and potentially cancerous. Your health is more important us than the money we could make selling grill mats which is why we designed this safe stainless steel grill mat alternative.

As always, I encourage you to try out this great new product and to enjoy the fun of cooking outdoors. The cleanup is easy, especially with the Cave Tools products, and the food is flavorful.

Have a great rest of your week and keep enjoying this beautiful summer!

*I was given a free product in exchange for my review.

However, as always, my thoughts and opinions are honest and my own.*

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A Cave Tools product review

29 Sep

This fish basket keeps the fish off of the grill itself, and is dishwasher safe.

I love grilled salmon. I love it plain, but I love it even more when it is smothered in pesto sauce. This past week, we chose to have grilled salmon with pesto sauce for dinner one night and I had the chance to try out the latest Cave Tools product that I had been given to review.

The basket is made of stainless steel and comes in two sizes, large and small. Here, we have the small and we were able to fit four salmon steaks inside of it. We found that thicker fish works better than a something like a piece of flounder would work because the thicker fish holds itself together better.

Our fish cooked well in the fish basket, and we recommend using a non-stick spray to help keep anything from sticking to the basket itself. However, should you have anything stuck to your basket, it’s easy to just put it right into the dishwasher and it all comes off.

One of our favorite ways to eat salmon, this time using the Cave Tools small fish basket.

The Cave Tools small fish basket is easy to store, given its compact shape and size and fits right into a cabinet or inside the bottom drawer of a stove when not in use. Its small size also allows for other things to be cooked on your grill at the same time, which was helpful to us since not everyone likes salmon as much as we do at our house! By keeping things separate on our grill, my husband and I could have salmon while the kids could enjoy hot dogs.

Although we have not tried it ourselves, I have also read that grilling vegetables is made easier in the fish basket and I’d like to give that a try. Sometimes grilling things such as asparagus can be tricky on a grill, given the wider spaces between slats. This might just be exactly what we needed to solve that problem.

Our salmon came out great and we enjoyed our meal very much. If you’re looking for the Cave Tools small fish basket, you can find it here on their website or on Amazon as well. If you choose to purchase directly from the Cave Tools site, you can use the coupon code FISH15 to receive a 15% discount.

Of course, all Cave Tools products come with a lifetime warranty in case you’re not happy with your purchase. There is also a free downloadable BBQ recipe guide included with your purchase.

**I was given a free product in exchange for an honest review of this product. Although I was compensated for the review with the free product, all thoughts, opinions and statements are my own.**

 

 

 

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Product Review and Giveaway: Rachula Web Arts consultation

8 Sep
Where do bloggers and site owners get technical support? Rachula Web Arts can help!

Where do bloggers and website owners get technical support? Rachula Web Arts can help!

I can remember when I had my oldest daughter, back in 1999. That was the first time I’d ever heard the word “blog,” when my brother, always ahead of the techie curve, said to me, “You should start a blog!”

“What’s a blog?”

I’m never ahead of the techie curve, but that year, I started my first blog. I didn’t post often. I was a working mom with a new baby, but I did post at least one or two times, that I can remember.

Blogging and the internet and website design have come a long, long way. Now there are hundreds of “mom bloggers” out there and lots of other kinds of bloggers as well. Over the years, as my career has changed to fit my lifestyle, I’ve had the baby blog, a craft blog, a newspaper article blog and now this blog which encompasses it all, The Whole Bag of Chips.

And yet, I’m still not a techie type of person. I took some “blogger boot camp” types of courses while working with Stampin’ Up!, and I got some basics down then, but technology is constantly changing and it’s so hard to keep up, to truly understand what it is you’re doing or need to do unless you have a technical background. I sometimes will count on tech support for various issues I’m having, but sometimes even that isn’t what I need.

Enter Rachula Web Arts.

A friend of mine recently started her own technical support site, along with a friend of hers. Together, they provide bloggers and website owners with feedback, maintenance, answers to questions and suggestions for improving your existing platforms. Here’s what they write in their “About Us” section:

“We are a couple of user experience professionals focused on helping small businesses improve online presence and customer interaction. 

We are not Web designers or graphic artists. We understand and are power users of IT tools. We help guide you in making sound decisions to make your Web tools useful, understandable, and appealing.

Here’s what we will do: We’ll talk with you and see where you think there are issues. We’ll advise you on possible remedies and suggest ways to get to know your customers better.

Here’s what we won’t do: We won’t throw a lot of jargon at you. We won’t send you a list of all the things you are doing wrong and make you feel like you don’t know your business.”

Sounds perfect, yes? It sounded exactly like what I could use myself, here at The Whole Bag of Chips.

Paula and Rachel took a look at my blog, gave me some feedback, answered my questions and helped me to understand features and benefits of my blogger dashboard that I didn’t even know existed. I was able to update my blog and make some changes based on their advice.

They have a whole menu of services at Rachula and you can see it here.

For now though, they’d like to help you!

Rachula Web Arts is giving away……a one hour phone consultation about a website or a blog!

HOW TO WIN:

If you think that your website or blog could use a once-over by two amazing IT professionals, and that you would like some constructive feedback about how to update or improve your blog, then leave me a comment telling me why YOU should be the winner of the one-hour phone consult!

This giveaway will be announced in ONE WEEK! On September 15 I will post the winner’s name here on my blog!

 

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