Inspired by Kathy's new place it's...the contents of my kitchen junk drawer, laid out for display because, well, imagine a picture of this in a 1x2 foot box.
Notes:
• I thought organizing the rubber bands by color would add a nice graphical element, but they're more or less lost.
• I can actually identify every item (larding needle! butter wheel!) except one. The gizmo at the farthest right, which you can't see very well and which looks like a fleur-de-lis on a stick.
• The baggie at upper left holds poultry needles. We keep the dope upstairs.
• The skewers (bottom right) have little animals on top: pig, dog, rooster, kangaroo, lamb, falcon). I love 'em. I've had them for thirty years. And I've never used them once.
• I had no idea I had seven corkscrews. I've never used the French Zig-Zag model to open a bottle, but it's trés cool.
• That's a cold food thermometer stuck in the kitchen twine at top right. Goes from -20 to 140º F. I have no idea why I have one.
• Over by the melon baller is one of those elastic hair things. I think that's my wife's doing.
• The two loose razor blades are from my earlier, Romantic period.
• This is far from my entire collection of miniature batterie de cuisine. In fact the stuff I use regularly, like the real meat thermometer, is in another drawer. And I was surprised there were but two pastry tips and no bags. I think the rest are in a drawer in the basement.
16 comments:
You certainly have a lot of skewering things. What's up with that?
I like the items sealed in plastic. I stick everything around here that moves slowly enough into a plastic bag.
It does look like there's some sort of puncturing fetish going on, doesn't it? They must be my wife's; I've got no use for anything kabobed. I may have done fruit kabobs once for a party.
She's the source of all the odd butter curlers and lemon presses and cheese slicers that live in the basement under the stairs. Old money. No one in her family can cook. But I'll wager they all have asparagus forks.
actually, do you have those cute little pushpins that you can stick in corn on the cob? what are those called? those are so nice ... i've never seen an asparagus fork. i guess that tells everyone where i come from, eh?
Yeah, we do have those things. Dunno what they're called...corn holders? Shaped like little ears of corn themselves. Can you get them with ball bearings, I wonder? My wife uses the things. I just regard them as one more little dodad to go down the garbage disposal and raise hell.
An asparagus fork is the quintessential piece of frou-frou tablewear. A serving piece. It has a sort of pincer movement that clamps down on the stalks and then releases as you serve. Identifying an asparagus fork is a mark of high culture, like knowing where the dessert spoon is supposed to be placed. (Above the coffee cup, handle pointing out. I had a good friend who was a snooty waiter.)
I admire your dedication to kitchen frippery, though may I say you seem to be missing a mushroom brush.
The flagship of our household is a seven dollar professional melon baller, made of high grade stainless steel and a black graphite ergonomically designed handle. It lives in its own black velvet drawstring bag and has never been near a melon or anything else.
I believe my partner got it to make truffles, though any truffles to make themselves known in my home come in boxes that say "Godiva" on them.
The closest it's come to being used is that I threaten to take eyeballs out with it occasionally, and we place it on a lovely walnut stand as our centerpiece when company comes to dinner.
I was considering the matching lemon zester as an anniversary gift this year, but perhaps I should look into an asparagus fork.
You should look into those new fangled corkscrews that have a grip to hold onto the bottle top, and then you just flip over a lever to put the screw into the cork, and flip it back the other way to pull the cork out. It's the easiest thing I've ever used and I love it. Now I know you're a little bit of a wine snob (no offense) and I know how some people can be about all of their wine accessories, so I don't know if you've got some preference for those corkscrews that end up tearing a rotator cuff or something, but these are nice.
That's understandable, but for me, whatever opens the bottle the easiest and quickest will always win out.
Yosef, for me, that means just poke a hole in the box and tilt.
Very funny, D. Sidhe (and again, get well soon). I'd have gone for the zester in the first place. Much more useful. Better still paired with my favorite gadget, the underappreciated canell knife, which may not be spelled like that and usually isn't called that anyway. It has a small, circular business end with about a 1/4" nipple in the middle, and you can run it around an orange to make it look like a barber pole. The resultant long strip of citrus zest can be fried in the peanut oil before stir-frying chicken, or it makes a great garnish for desserts.
Yosef, you mean the Screwpul™? My neighbor swears by it, but I'm with hokie; gimme a captain's knife. Simple, portable, knife attached. Preferably the $15 solid stainless jobs. If you break a cork (and it happens) you'll never get it out with anything else.
And hokie, bear in mind that's a thirty-year collection. And with all tools a) buy something when you need it; b) get the best you can afford; and c) take care of it. But I know how you feel. I wish I could afford a kitchen all this stuff would fit in.
Talking about how hard it can be to get a cork out when you break it - you should see how hard it is when you break it trying to put it in the bottle. I'm making my own wine, and so far in the whole year process, corking the bottles sucks the most.
Corndog- I always love box wine jokes!
Amen! That Franzia I have in the fridge is shouting my name right now!
Hok- you could get winemaking supplies at your local home-brew store. There are some kits in which the wine can be made in under a month. I'm using fresh fruti though (blackberries) and with that it takes much longer.
What kind of monster keeps a speculum in the kitchen drawer? Wait. Sorry, my bad. Its a . . . what the hell is that thing?
Was I the only one who looked at the picture and expected at least one reference to Gitmo or Abu Ghraib?
Hokie- I've been able to keep everything in the bottom of a small closet during fermentation and aging. When I actually have to do work on it, it can clutter up the whole kitchen, but it's not too bad. I started off with a 6 gallon carboy and moved it down to a 5 gallon. Right now it's in 24 bottles, so it's not taking up that much space.
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