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Got Utensils? |
I was
whipping up some cole slaw sauce today and panicked when I couldn’t find my
favorite rubber spatula – the one with the end shaped like a spoon that
extracts mayo from bottoms of jars as smoothly as a surgeon using robotic arms
on an appendix removal.
Garth flew
to the kitchen when he heard my ranting noises above the shouts of the baseball
game blaring from the television set.
He arrived
to find me frantically pulling items from the vintage-crock- turned-utensil-
holder on my kitchen counter, using language that would put a drunken pirate to
shame.
“What’s
going on? What’s the matter? Did you
burn yourself or something? What happened?”
After I explained
my dilemma, Garth sighed on his way back to the TV, “I don’t know how you can
find anything in that holder anyway. It’s jammed tighter than Dodger stadium on
bobble-head give-away night."
In a last
ditch effort to find my special spatula, I spread all the utensils on the
counter and went through the stash item by item, until – success! My treasured spoon-spatula was recovered and
I was able to finish the slaw sauce like a Cordon Bleu chef.
Then it dawned
on me. The crock-on-the-counter was only one
of the utensil holder places in the kitchen. That seven inch round crock held 5
wire whips (and I still can’t make a decent gravy), 8 spatulas (of which I use
only two), 14 wooden spoons (including one shaped like a duck head at one end
and ladle at the other), 2 pasta servers (one plastic with melted prongs), 3
wooden tongs (to extract hot bread from the toaster) and 2 wooden things shaped
like rulers with notches that hook onto oven shelves so you can pull them out
without burning your fingers or using a potholder). That adds up to 34 items –
in one holder – just on my counter top.
Since it was
Sunday afternoon and I didn’t have anything better to do, I decided to take an
inventory of some of my other utensils. Spoiler alert - this gets ugly, so if
you have a weak stomach, you may want to stop reading.
My regular utensil
drawer is 34” wide x 21” deep. I won’t bother to list how many items are in
there—I didn’t have a calculator handy—but suffice it to say I have multiple garlic
presses, hand sieves, melon
baller/cookie scoops, and all the other usual stuff, like 8 metal tongs, 12
mixing spoons and at least 6 spatulas.
I did find a
few fun items I’m not sure I've ever used…like a combination plastic orange
corer/juice sipper, a butter press for corn on the cob and a bottle opener
that’s shaped like a Moulin Rouge dancer’s leg (the one that plays the UCLA
fight song when you open a beer is Garth’s).
Exhausted,
and feeling kind of dumb for spending my Sunday afternoon counting utensils in
drawers, I gave up my futile pursuit before looking in the china hutch, pantry
and garage cabinet, which I’m sure harbor more items I’m too embarrassed to
admit I have.
If you
recall, awhile back I wrote about my friend, Ellie aka “The Gadget Queen”.
Today I made a discovery about myself that may necessitate an apology to Ellie.
If she is “The Gadget Queen”, then alas, I must be “The Utensil Queen”.
Although, if
I looked thru El’s kitchen drawers, my guess is she could match me item for
item...but that’s for another Snippet.
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