Edwin has a strange fascination with my kitchen equipment. Every time I'm cooking dinner and several other times throughout the day, he heads for the drawers where my measuring cups, spatulas, pastry brushes, egg slicer, candy thermometer, and other various and sundry items reside.
I let him, as I let his sisters before him, because it keeps his mind on something other than screaming and wanting to be picked up. The downside of this arrangement, however, is when things get carried off. I still haven't found one pastry brush after months of looking, and the other is usually in the bathtub more than in the drawer. Currently my small sieve is missing, and so I had to use cheesecloth to strain my lemon juice while I was making jam on Monday. When we lived in a two-bedroom duplex in Springville, Kathleen absconded with my rolling pin, and I had to use a leg from our utility shelves filled with beans as a substitute. I assumed we would find it when we packed out, but it never did turn up.
Another favorite of Edwin's is the potato masher. Why? Nobody's quite sure, but it likes to make peregrinations throughout the house, where I found it last week in the toy room. It had gotten a little bent, but the cheap metal was quickly bent back before the potato masher returned to its residence in the kitchen.
On Sunday, I started making apricot jam. Jam requires mashing, so I fetched the potato masher for mashing. Near the end of the mashing, the unthinkable happened: it broke. I don't remember exactly where I had picked it up, but I think it may have been when I first went to college. It had survived through countless moves, quite a few roommates, and a lot use to expire in a pot of apricot jam.
Which now leaves me with a problem - no potato masher. Usually I fix such problems with a visit to my local online retailer, but I've run into another problem - three and a half weeks before the movers come. And so, I'm just stuck without a potato masher until I'm back in the US to buy one. I wonder what will break next.
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5 comments:
I assume the Egyptians don't mash potatoes? It's funny the tools we take for granted, that others manage to survive without. Last December, Dad and drove all around Kralendijk (Bonaire) looking for a cheese slicer. It's a Dutch protectorate, right? The Dutch eat cheese. The Dutchmen living in Bonaire need to slice their cheese, right? Wrong, there were no cheese slicers in Kralendijk. We had to make do with bad knives. But the cheese was good despite the uneven slices.
Maybe Edwin stole my hand mixer beater. I've only had one for the past few months and it perturbs me. I can't imagine how you must feel, having kitchen tools disappear right and left.
Maybe the Cairo Walmart stocks potato mashers? :)
Please tell me there's not a Walmart in Cairo.
And I quote: "Tools for mashing food date back to ancient Egyptian times. During their explorations of tombs, archeologists have uncovered remnants of tools most likely used for the purpose of mashing food. The Egyptians probably used their mashers for such things as vegetables and grains rather than potatoes, the latter of which they likely had no knowledge."
Any thought that maybe, just maybe, the archeologists have actually uncovered YOUR potato masher? That maybe Nedwin left it at the pyramids?
OK, go reread the post. The potato masher BROKE after being bent out of shape by the Edwinator too many times.
EXACTLY why I don't buy kitchen gadgets. Or cook.
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