First of all, isn’t Mr. Clean an awesome corporate mascot? Like, I’m sure there are plenty of wacky mascots today, but they’re deliberately wacky. Although I just looked, and apparently Mr. Clean no longer wears an earring. Plus, the original Mr. Clean died this month at 92.

Anyway, In the same vein as my recent post about Asian cookbooks, I want to talk about cleaning supplies. Here’s what I use, and I’d be delighted to hear any upgrade recommendations.

**Orange Plus surface cleaner.** Works fine, smells great. Extremely cheap if you buy the concentrated refill.

**Windex.** None of the “natural” glass cleaners I’ve tried work as well on windows, mirrors, and especially chrome faucets.

**Method floor cleaner.** I bought this after Iris complained that Mop & Glo smelled terrible. It’s true. This stuff isn’t as shiny but smells infinitely better, and really, I just don’t care whether my kitchen floor is shiny.

**Swiffers.** The dry kind. Wasn’t this a great invention? Actually I use the store brand. I don’t use the mop or any other hardware.

**Magic Erasers.** Also the store brand. Nothing comes close for getting stains off walls. Also good for cleaning laptop computers, especially white ones.

**SOS All-Surface blue sponges.** I order these by the case. I know people say not to use sponges because you’re maintaining an unfriendly bacteria colony in your kitchen. Anyone have another idea for getting pots and pans clean? For general cleaning, I use large cellulose sponges that I buy at Walgreens, $4 for 30 sponges.

**SOS Tuffy.** The orange-and-yellow plastic scrubber pad. These things are so great.

**Planet Ultra dish soap.** See here.

**Ajax.** For the tub. It’s a harsh abrasive and will make the tub less shiny. Again, do I look like I care?

Today on Serious Eats:

Cooking With Kids: Edible Cats for Halloween

> “My corporate overlords at Serious Eats have demanded a Halloween post,” I told my daughter, Iris, 4. “What’s something we could make together to eat for Halloween?”

> “How about an edible cat?” she replied.

> “That sounds hard.”

> “We could use cupcakes.” This is her solution to everything.

1. A [book website](http://www.hungrymonkeybook.com/) will be launching soon, so you don’t have to read book-related minutiae here and can stick to my observations on flank steak and the like.

2. Many people have asked me whether I’ll be selling the book directly. I won’t. Any way you buy the book will make me equally (very) happy. If you borrow it from your public library, that is also great. If you have to request that your public library buy it, even better. (But don’t request it now; it’s too early!) If you steal it, that is bad mojo, unless you steal it from someone really mean.

I write a lot about Asian food, and to facilitate this tasty pursuit, I maintain a shelf of reference books. These aren’t necessarily the most useful books in the kitchen (though frequently they are), but they’re the best when, for example, I want to know more about Sichuanese pickled chiles.

**Southeast Asian (general):** Hot Sour Salty Sweet

**Noodles (general):** Noodle

**Thailand:** Dancing Shrimp, Thai Food

**Vietnam:** Into the Vietnamese Kitchen

**Philippines:** Memories of Philippine Kitchens

**Japan:** Japanese Cooking: A Simple Art

**China:** Land of Plenty, Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook, Breath of a Wok, The Dim Sum Dumpling Book

**Chinese-American:** Helen Chen’s Chinese Home Cooking

**Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore:** Cradle of Flavor

**Korea:** Eating Korean

A few observations. First, a few of these books are so comprehensive, it’s hard (from my admittedly limited perspective) to see how they could be improved: _Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, Memories of Philippine Kitchens, Japanese Cooking, Land of Plenty,_ and _Cradle of Flavor._ _Eating Korean_ is close.

_Japanese Cooking_ has held up remarkably well, considering it was published in 1980, but sooner or later there’s going to be a hole there. I have Hiroko Shimbo’s Japanese Kitchen, and I like it, but it feels idiosyncratic, as much about Hiroko Shimbo’s (very appetizing) cooking as about contemporary Japanese cooking.

What are your go-to books for national cuisines?

Last night I leapt up from the couch and turned a stick of butter into clarified butter. I mean, I didn’t just wave a wand, although that would be a cool superpower. I went to the stove, melted some butter, boiled the water out of it, and strained it through a paper towel. Then I used it today for scrambled eggs and crepes.

Why don’t I do this more often? I frequently burn butter, but clarified butter is hard to burn and tastes almost as good. I have a suspicion that French toast cooked in a large amount of clarified butter would be the best French toast ever. I will report on Monday.