Star Spangled Spatula

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream made with the Soft Shell Ice Cream Ball, a product from YayLabs!. It combines two of our favorite summer pastimes, ice cream and ball games. Pleasing to both artisanal ice cream aficionados and more casual ice cream enthusiasts alike, the Soft Shell Ice Cream Ball embodies the highbrow/lowbrow dichotomy in a way that only a homemade ice cream maker that looks like your average, everyday kickball could. Fight the been-there-done-that end-of-summer slump by bringing it on all of your adventures and shaking, tossing, rolling it until you get the smooth and creamy ice cream you had previously been too intimidated to make on your own (and it only takes 20 to 30 minutes!). We urge you to proceed with caution, however — you don’t want anyone mistaking your next batch of strawberry-blueberry ice cream for their next dodgeball weapon.

It’s PIZZA WEEK here at FTHQ. This is one we have been jonezing for for quite a while. The Gozney Dome brings pro level operations and modernized old school aesthetics to your back yard. Their first move into this space was a few years back with the Roccbox. The Dome up levels what they achieved in Roccbox with more cooking space, a steam injector for baking, easy wood to gas fuel switching all while maintaining that near 1000 degree temperature. Plus, just staring at it when not in use is a gaping drool fest. You know we like beautiful things that are also super functional. No surprise we already belabored this point thrice. The price tag is a bit hefty but if you consider the $10,000+ pro oven cost you are staring down a bargain. Spring is around the corner. Vaccination availability seems to be picking up pace. There will be a group of backyard revelers stopping over sooner than you may think. Plus, we don’t have much to talk about these days as quarantine pretty much shut down all out good answers to “Hey, So, what’s up?” Think about the monologue you can go off on when this is propped up on a throne-like your backyard queen.

Mushrooms and pouches can’t be passed up if I’m hunting with Missus Tasty. One of our must hits when in Montreal is V de V. Their home good curation is unmatched. With eyes locked on Danica Studios Mushroom Pochette there was no turning back. Perfect for your art pens or makeup kit, this pouch will keep everythig safe while adding some whimsy to the inner lining of your purse of pack. At least that’s what the ladies say.

We’ve always been big fans of eating at home. So much so we often recreate our favorite restaurant meals in our home kitchen with fairly good accuracy. The favorite is a solid, full spread, Peter Lugar’s recreation that we get super pumped about, but we digress. Equal Parts is a new cookware company aimed at helping us eat, and cook, more in our kitchens. To aid in this increasingly difficult behavior, considering the ease of food delivery these days, every purchase includes a coach. The coach is accessed through a text chat provided when you receive your products. They dub it “Your friend in the kitchen” which we love because friends who know how to cook are some of the best. Starting up is pretty easy. A simple chef knife runs you $80 with “your friend coach”. You can then work your way up to an entire 20 piece kitchen set. Interesting side note, Equal Parts was a design agency called Gin Lane just a few short months ago. They gave up their clients to focus full time on birthing their own DTC products and brands. A huge move, and that’s coming from an agency owning veteran. With that news, you’re probably wondering what a former design agency knows about making cookware. Apparently a lot. Not surprising they lead with design and decided to shroud their cookware in a sleek matte black. This covers the aluminum and ceramic core. Ceramic instead of Teflon keeps the toxicity at bay while letting the eggs slide away. The aluminum makes for a lighter, and faster to heat, base with the same cooking quality as steel. They finished off each piece with a comfort forward handle and universal lids. We LOVE universal lids. They are by far the hardest thing to store in a kitchen. Less of them means a more organized pan draw. We likey. Enamored with the service we’re anxious to try this first hand. No NYC pop-up store yet so we started with a chef’s knife. We’ll report back on the experience here and on our Insta. Needless to say, we have high hopes.