Junk drawer dog

Moment of self-disclosure: I am a complete kitchen gadget geek.

And additional moment of self-disclosure, I am a sentimental kitchen gadget geek. So, in addition to all the cool, new booty Williams-Sonoma can throw at ya, I've got gadgets that date back to my grandmother's years in the kitchen. Come to think of it, those are some my favorite gadgets.

Anyway.

As a result of this affliction, I have a kitchen gadget junk drawer. Except it's not really a junk drawer. I go to it almost daily, scrounging around for some vital instrument du cuisine. It's just kind of chaotic at this point. And so last weekend, because it was cold and rainy, I took it upon myself to winnow through my gadgets and "get organized."

The "get organized" was short-lived. I had this grand master plan of creating layers of priority. Frequently used on top, occasionally used next, and what-was-I-thinking-when-I-bought/kept-this? on the bottom. Silly me. As soon as you need a what-was-I-thinking, the whole system goes tits up. Literally.

So instead, my efforts were basically limited to winnowing -- and cleaning up about 5 cups of 3-year-old (and that's a conservative estimate) bread crumbs on the bottom of the drawer.


Here are some my besties. What are yours?


My box grater. Yes, micro-planes are grand, and so are food processors, but still. . . .





Chopsticks. I love our chopsticks and we use them a lot. We got these at 100-yen stores in Tokyo and Kyoto. . . .







My garlic press. It minces AND slices. Does life get better than that? But only on the weekends. It's a pain in the patoot to clean on a week night.







My Nana B's silver. OK, a little polishing is order.





Papa B's knife sharpener. It's got a bone (antler?) handle. How cool is that?

And, of course, Nana B's ice cream scoop. I love the box. And the Bakelite handle. And the scoop. It scoops up about 3 times more ice cream than present day scoopers.

Each time I use it, it brings back such vivid memories of watching Papa B dish up ice cream (vanilla only, thank you very much!), his hand, big as the head of a shovel. wrapped around that bright red handle.

He'd plop the ice cream into shallow Franciscan Apple pattern dessert dishes (yep, still have those, too) and we'd top it with

warm rhubarb sauce

or

home-canned Queen Anne cherries

or

Hersey's chocolate syrup. (But only on Sunday.)