The other night I went in one of the several junk drawers I have in my kitchen. Did you ever look at something that you look at all the time and then suddenly you have what they call an “Ah HAHHHH” moment? and you notice things you didn’t notice before? That happened. In the kitchen. Looking into a junk drawer. It was just (literally) overflowing with glorious gadgets. Some people have shoe fetishes? I have a kitchen utensil fetish. By the way, this is not a picture of my personal junk drawer. That was too scary for even me to post. This is just some random one I found on the internet, but it does resemble mine somewhat.
Anyway, the first thing that caught my eye (and actually caught the drawer so I couldn’t close it again) was my handy-dandy hard-boiled egg-slicer. This is the Rolls Royce of egg-slicers and cost a whopping $14.99 (minus the 20% with the Bed, Bath and Beyond coupon I had saved since 2007…the BBB coupons never expire.)
This little beauty is the size of a small tractor. Not only does it slice, you can turn the dial and it chops…and it also provides a little cleaning screen. Now, the last one of these do-hickeys I had lasted about 15 years. It came cross-country and then it died. Maybe it was homesick. I bought another, less expensive model and that didn’t last a week in the junk drawer. It apparently was attacked by other utensils. So I went back and bought this deluxe version, which I have yet to use.
For the record, I make egg salad about three times a year, one of those times being the week after Easter. What else do you do with all those colored eggs? But I needed this for the times I do.
Next item in the sea of stainless? an avocado slicer.
I never even knew such a thing existed until I moved to Cali. It consists of a sort of, well, I guess it’s actually “avocado shaped” stainless hoop with slicing blades in it, so you can scoop out the avocado and slice it at the same time. It’s really neat and avocado is one of those good fats you should eat and I’m always in when it comes to fat and eating. Plus, you can get avocados all year round here so I do eat them…certainly more often than hard-boiled eggs.
Along with that is an “avocado saver.”
As you can see, this looks like an avocado half with a seat belt. The idea is, if you are not using the whole avocado, you keep the seed (which is, of course, the size of a golf ball) and put the unused half face down into the plastic shell and strap it in. I’m not sure what the strapping in does, but I’ve used it with good results about 50% of the time. When it didn’t work, I attributed that to the fact that the avocado had somehow wiggled itself loose from the restraints. Or had help from one of the things that lives in the back of my refrigerator.
This was becoming fun. So I reached waaaaay back in the drawer to see what had migrated there. That’s when I came across the pair of giant yellow hands used to toss salad. They are actually a little scary looking but I do use them when I have a big salad to make for company. Who can’t use an extra pair of hands in the kitchen? even if they are plastic and yellow?
The “hands” were resting on top of not one, but two deluxe crank-style cheese graters.
I don’t know why I have two; it may be that I thought I needed one for a back-up in case the first one broke and I’d be left fresh cheese-less on my pasta. Tangled through the cylinder of one of the cheese graters was a mushroom slicer.
A mushroom slicer is one of those things that I thought I needed after taking a cooking class. The instructor just whipped through an entire basket of the fabulous fungi in record time. It consists of a sort of clamp that you rest the mushroom in and then press and it comes out sliced in perfect proportions. I need to slice mushrooms about as often as I make egg salad. Yet, I have one of these. At least I don’t have two.
Scattered underneath these goodies I’ve described were old corks from wine bottles, long pick-up stick skewers for the once a year I make “shrimp-on-the-barbie,” the meat thermometer and microwave probe I’ve yet to use, a variety of clips for bags, one of those rubber “round tuit” things to help you unscrew caps…and coupons, the most recent of which was good until 01/01/01. And crumbs. I’ve never seen a junk drawer that didn’t have crumbs at the very bottom.
People who see all this stuff I have, in particularly MOTNSO (“More Often Than Not Significant Other”) and they don’t understand why I have what I have and why I don’t just get rid of them if I don’t use them. I try to explain that I have already disposed of more stuff than he can possibly imagine. I no longer have the pasta maker, the 100 cup coffee pot, dinner plates for every holiday (well, I still do have the Christmas ones but the ones for Thanksgiving and Easter are gone) and the spare blender I kept just in case on the very day that I desperately desired a piña colada the first blender broke.
I think the best way to get him off the subject is to make him an egg salad sandwich with sliced mushrooms, garnished with sliced avocados and freshly grated cheese. Oh, with a side salad tossed by the big yellow hands. Who could resist something like that?
Very cute and oooooh so true.