Stainless Steel

Greg Cantori plans to downsize when he retires. Really, really downsize. His retirement home is 238 square feet — one-tenth the size of the average new American house — and sits in his Anne Arundel County yard. He and wife Renee can hitch it to a truck and take it with them wherever they go. "It's so cheap — that's what's so cool about this," said Cantori, 52, who envisions a surf-and-turf future, alternating between the house and a sailboat. "We bought the house for $19,000.

I am planning to purchase a new roasting pan for cooking my Thanksgiving turkey. Should I buy stainless steel or nonstick? The folks at All-Clad tell us that stainless steel reflects the heat in the oven back on the bird and helps to create the crispy outside of the bird while maintaining the moisture inside. "That's the advantage of using a great, shiny pan that was specifically designed for roasting poultry," said Anya Edwards, director of marketing and communications. Nonstick is better for an everyday roaster, where easy cleanup might be a priority.

I'm confused about choosing a color to paint my kitchen. I've heard that green is the color of the year. And then I hear about gray being the new neutral. What are the best colors to paint the kitchen? A kitchen should be an inviting gathering space, so warmer or brighter tones are ideal, such as deep ivories, rich coppers, luscious reds, golden yellows and yellow-greens. Be sure to take countertops, appliances and floors into consideration when selecting your color. You'll want something that complements these accents and flows naturally into the surrounding rooms of your home.

You know a product is ingrained in the culture when consumers (and writers) use the name to describe all other similar products. Band-Aid, Kleenex, Jell-O, Frisbee, Gore-Tex - stand up and take a bow. Yes, it makes the manufacturers grind their proprietary teeth and their lawyers write threatening form letters. But the bottom line is, consumers saying your name is better than their not saying it. Hanging out with military and law enforcement professionals recently, I noticed that when they talked about hydration packs, they called all of them "CamelBaks," a tip of the cap to the company that makes all shapes and sizes of bladder-and-tube drinking systems and plastic water bottles.

Q: What is nonreactive cookware?A: This is a pot or pan that is made of a material that will not cause a reaction in the food such as discoloration or altered flavors.Q: What kind of pots and pans are best?A: This is a major purchase decision that should be approached with your individual cooking needs in mind since there are so many types of pots and pans available.There are some basic guidelines to follow however. Pots and pans should be made of a heavy, durable material that will evenly conduct the heat and not burn the food from uneven heating.

Armco Inc. has decided it wants to sell its money-losing stainless-steel rod operation on East Biddle Street and is evaluating two offers for the works, a company official said yesterday.Raymond E. Hein, president of the Baltimore Specialty Steels Corp. plant here, said the Parsipanny, N.J.-based corporate parent has decided that the bar, rod and wire operation "does not fit into [its] long-termstrategy."The two bidders for the 900-worker Baltimore plant both say they want to keep it operating as a steel mill, Mr. Hein said.

Harold Bruce Bending, a steel products businessman whose intelligence and eccentric personality were highlighted when he twice read a set of encyclopedias from cover to cover, died Saturday of an illness related to Parkinson's disease at his Bel Air home. He was 70. Mr. Bending was born in Toronto, where he graduated from New Liskeard High School three years early, at age 15. In 1950, at age 19, he earned degrees in English and engineering from Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio. In December 1950, he married his college sweetheart, Marilyn Lee Patchen, as he began working for a division of U.S. Steel Corp.

Rumors to the contrary notwithstanding, heavy metal is making its way back onto the hit parade in homes across America.No, not the rock music metal, but stainless steel. You'll find it in the kitchen, of course, but you'll also find it making clean, bright design statements in the bedroom, living room, dining room and bath.The matte silvery look also has shown up in galvanized tin, and for those who prefer a little polish, chrome remains strong. But stainless is king of stove hoods and kitchen appliances, while it makes a smooth transition into other rooms.

Avesta Sheffield East Inc. made official yesterday what it had said was likely: the mothballing of its Essex plant and the elimination of 74 jobs.The company, a subsidiary of Sweden's Avesta Sheffield AB, said high imports and tough competition forced the closing of its stainless steel melt shop, the main operation at the former Eastern Steel Co. plant.The announcement came a month after the company said it would close its steel coil plate line, eliminating 27 jobs.Together, the two moves will eliminate all but about 15 of the plant's 115 jobs.

I'm vigilant about cleaning my stainless-steel All-Clad cookware, but sometimes I get rainbow-colored or cloudy white stains that I can't remove. What causes these stains and how do I remove them? I called Bill Groll at All-Clad Metalcrafters in Canonsburg, Pa. Because he is vice president of technology, one of his corporate responsibilities is to stain the company's pots and pans and then figure out how to clean them. Groll said your "rainbow" stains are actually very thin layers of caramelized oil. Like a glass prism, the oil refracts light at different angles, causing a rainbow effect.

Late in the afternoon, a time of day when many teenagers were chilling, those in Wendy Parker Robinson's class were still in school, still sweating. Clad in chef's whites, they were chopping squash, searing chicken breasts, forming balls of goat cheese and beautifying butter. They were getting ready to feed 200 people dinner at the National Academy Foundation High School, housed on the Digital Harbor campus in Federal Hill. It was the school's first Restaurant Night, when students in its hospitality and tourism classes would serve a three-course meal to anyone quick enough to book a reservation.

Nov. 26: Name of product: Century Cookware Stainless Steel Stockpots Units: About 7,000 Importer: Ocean State Jobbers Inc., of North Kingstown, R.I. Hazard: The stainless steel pots have metal handles that can detach during use. Sold at: All Ocean State Job Lot stores throughout New England from July 2008 through October 2008 for between $12 and $25. Remedy: Consumers should immediately stop using the stockpots and return them to the place of...

The political opposition researcher who illegally snooped into Michael Steele's credit history has found something else to stick her nose into: toilets. Lauren Weiner fraudulently posed as Steele on the Internet to obtain his credit history three years ago. At the time, she was a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee researcher, and he was the lieutenant governor and a likely Republican candidate for Senate. These days, Weiner is a potty blogger. On fullyflushed.blogspot.com, she digs up dirt on public johns.

ABOARD THE YNOT MABEL - A massive front-end loader wrestled more than 40 stainless steel New York City subway cars off a barge yesterday, swinging them one by one over the gray, choppy water before releasing them with a splash. Some of the cars lingered briefly on the surface before heading for the ocean bottom 85 feet below. Others rolled on their side, emitting hisses as water rushed in and air escaped, creating tiny geysers like whales exhaling. One by one, they became Maryland's most-ambitious offshore artificial reef project to create homes for fish and an underwater playground for divers.

Forget about cowboy coffee, that hideous, gritty brew cooked in a pot over the campfire that people try to pass off as, well, authentic. And don't reach for that jar of instant, either. If you want a morning shot of joe before going hiking or firing up the outboard or raising the sail, make the real thing with the Hector Press ($22; www.active-gear.com), an all-in-one French coffee press and insulated mug. Just put your ground coffee in the bottom of the mug, add 20 ounces of hot water, put the lid on and let steep.

Shake off your red-checkered curtains and bring in Le Corbusier chairs. Country is going modern. Not that it hasn't been a tad modern all along. Old gas station signs have always been a kissing cousin to pop art. And Shaker interiors are as pure and clean-lined as anything dreamed up by the Bauhaus, the German art school that so influenced modern design. But the point being made by the authors of a new book, Modern Country (Gibbs Smith, $34.95), is that it's a good idea to marry country and contemporary pieces.

It's often the littlest things that cause the biggest problems around the house. That's certainly the case for a New York state reader who's having a problem with galvanized screws.The offending screws are in a newly constructed, 1,300-square-foot, tri-level deck. The homeowners were so concerned about preserving the beauty of the deck that they asked for cedar, rather than pressure-treated wood, and for screws, rather than nails, "to avoid unsightly 'nail-pops.' ""Our contractor did a beautiful job constructing this deck, and we were quite pleased with its initial appearance," the reader writes.

The owner of the Eastern Stainless Steel plant on Rolling Mill Road said it earned a profit in the last three months of 1990 but lost money for the year after taking a $15 million charge for restructuring.Cyclops, a Pittsburgh-based specialty steelmaker, had previously announced its agreement to be taken over by Armco Inc., a New Jersey-based steelmaker with a stainless steel rod plant on East Biddle Street in Baltimore.The company said its flat-rolled products division, including the stainless steel plate and sheet operation in Baltimore, has suffered from a slump in sales, lower prices and higher energy and labor costs.

I boiled some red new potatoes for a salad dish, but the potatoes lost their color and came out rather dull gray. What was the reason? Did I do something wrong? Preserving or enhancing the color of foods we cook, particularly vegetables, is one of the holy grails of both home and professional cooks. Creating a dish that evokes voila! and wow! requires the happy convergence of many factors, including the heat, the quality of the cooking medium such as water, the utensils, the ingredients and even the weather.

If you've been thinking about letting the sawdust fly and renovating your house, decorator Lyn Peterson has a few things you ought to know. First, don't automatically toss your cabinets, light fixtures or tub, even if contractors tell you that it's easier to gut a room and start from scratch. "Easier for them, but not necessarily cheaper for you," insists Peterson, co-founder of Motif Designs and author of the information-packed book Real Life Renovating (Clarkson Potter, $37.50). Look around your house and see what's worth saving.