More Gadgets from Nancy: Time Travel Edition

Posted on March 28, 2014 by Shannon

Yes, dear readers, some time has passed since I last posted. There are a few reasons for this, the most excellent one being that I was visiting my parents in Florida and communing with my spirit animal, the manatee (quiet, gentle, vegetarian, spends most waking hours eating). But the blog was on my mind while I was traveling, as my mother, Nancy, introduced me to a new batch of fun kitchen gadgets.

A couple of these were a blast from the past, like this rad hand-carved tasting spoon from the Berea College in Kentucky. This place is worth checking out; they give scholarships in exchange for work in their crafts studio, and the students make some beautiful stuff. But back to the spoon: you use the big end to stir with, and instead of slobbering all over it with your dirty mouth, you tip it backward and the soup or sauce runs backward along the channel where you can taste it from the little spoon. Apparently these have been used in France for ages, and the ones from Berea have a nice old-fashioned feel, meaning that they make great gifts for both those with Little House on the Prairie sensibilities (me) or germophobes (you know who you are).

Another find from Berea was this little baker’s broom that you hang in your kitchen. “What do you sweep with it?” you may be asking. Nothing! Ha! Got you! When you bake a cake, you’re supposed to snap off one of the bristles and use it to test if the cake is done. Seriously, how did my mom know that Jason tried to use a chopstick to test banana bread last week? Anyway, she thought that this might have been an old Shaker invention, and though I couldn’t find any proof of that, I believe her, the Shakers being notorious for their furniture-making, riotous dancing and cake-testing. Continue reading →

Kitchen Wizardry by Nancy

Posted on April 19, 2013 by Shannon

I used to think that my mother’s thing for kitchen gadgets had something to do with how much time and effort it took to cook dinner for a family of five, day after day, year after year, and a desire to make the process quicker and easier. There is, probably, still some truth to that theory, but after I saw the way she took to the Kindle and iPhone, another suspicion began to take shape: my mother is a gearhead. There are people out there who revel in having the right tool for the right task, and though I can’t profess to have that personality trait myself, no one epitomizes it more in the realm of cuisine than my own flesh and blood. To get a sense of what I was missing, I asked my mom, Nancy, to take some photos of her most beloved and frequently used gadgets.

Manufacturer: Waring

Wine opener
My mother can drink you under the table, in no small measure because she can get the bottles open faster. A few years ago, I was finally coming around to the idea of one of those Rabbit corkscrews that looks like a medieval torture device, but my mother was already a step ahead. This one requires, literally, zero effort. You just put it on top of the bottle, press a button, and the cork magically and invisibly comes whirring out of the bottle. “It never breaks the corks apart,” my mother explains.

Manufacturer: Vinturi

Aerator and strainer
If ever the cork should tragically break apart, however, my mom has it covered with this contraption. You just hold it over a glass and pour red wine through it. The mesh strainer at the top catches any undesirable sediment and then the wine passes through a series of small holes so that more of it is exposed to oxygen. This eliminates the need to leave the bottle open on the counter, breathing, and, as my mom points out, enables more drinking and less waiting. Sadly, a sulfite allergy has seriously cut down on my mom’s red wine consumption, though she believes that now the same company makes one for white wine, too. “I’m not really sure why you would use that,” she said, but it didn’t sound like she was completely ruling it out.

Manufacturer: Egg Perfect

Egg timer
Lest you think that my mom’s gadgets are limited to wine, here’s one that she claimed she used this morning for breakfast. You just pop it in the pot with the eggs you’re boiling, and it changes color to show when the eggs have arrived at soft-boiled and hard-boiled. She’s been using this for decades now, though it has been a subject of controversy. “Dad prefers to time them, and they turn out very nice,” she says slowly and diplomatically. She is saying this because my father has two culinary tricks—grilling a steak and soft-boiling an egg—and I don’t think she wants to discourage him from these tasks. Even so, she admits, lowering her voice, “I still use the timer. It’s much more predictable.” Continue reading →

Name that Kitchen Gadget!

Posted on August 17, 2012 by Shannon

In scouring the Internet for this Friday’s pop quiz, I found an OK Cupid page devoted to “singles interested in obscure kitchen gadgets.” Believe me, they covered quite a spectrum, these singles, from a chipper looking New Zealander making a peace sign at the camera to a scowling woman from Tempe whose eye shadow was almost as impressive as her cleavage.

At any rate, gadgets clearly have wide appeal and since we had fun a few weeks ago with our historic utensil puzzle, we thought we’d let our readers test their wits with some more modern marvels. If you can identify all nine of the items below, you should start your own culinary school…or at least troll for some new admirers on OK Cupid.