Do you know what this is?

A handmade solid wood tortilla press!

I’m imagining home-milled organic corn tortillas, hot off the griddle. These are handcrafted in a workshop in Santa Maria, California, called Central Coast Woodworks. Pur-tee.

And this is impossibly cute. The Let’s Jam Recipe Kitchen Towel is almost too cute to use. I think it would make a fun, graphic kitchen wall art–just stick it in a frame. If jam isn’t your thing, everybody likes cupcakes.

There’s more, too, in the recipe series–pancakes, plus other kitchen-themed towels, like pickles and lemons and even a cheese plate, ha! Since they’re themed, it would be so fun to assemble a theme gift basket along the lines of one of the towels.

From impossibly cute to impossibly cool, while I was researching a post on bagging fruit, I found this article about an American photographer who spent months in Japan photographing their intensive gourmet apple orchards including this obscure technique of placing a stencil on bagged apples (they don’t start to turn red until after they’re exposed to light). When the bags are opened up, they redden, and when they peel away the stencil, voilà!, a perfect image in the apple peel. And they do custom stencils. Want to give your friends apples with your face on it? For the right price, you can!

While we’re being fancy, this recipe from The Kitchn for Tomato Butter looks perfect for crusty toast, pasta, or just licked off a spoon.

Speaking of crusty bread, today’s the last day of free shipping on orders over $49 from King Arthur Flour.

It IS August, so you may be running out of canning jars. Don’t have canning tools? I use my funnel, jar tongs, and lid lifter every time I can.

Finally, don’t forget to plant your carrots for fall/winter harvest. I planted mine today. I’ve had good results with the Scarlet Nantes variety this year.

I’m using these techniques from Cornell University this time, including their recommendation to use seed tape. Carrots require constant moisture for good germination, and the boards help insure they stay damp. Keep checking for sprouts, and when you see them, put a spacer under the boards, increasing the height of the spacer until the plants are established.