Inspect Her Gadgets

Recently in ShopRite I happened upon a plastic device designed solely for slicing bananas.  How ridiculous, I thought upon first glance.  Who can’t take the time to slice a banana?

But that got me thinking about the myriad of gadgets that I have bought, used, discarded, regretted and swore I couldn’t do without lo these many years of living on my own.  I mean, come on, who hasn’t succumbed in a weak moment to the late night infomercial for a sandwich maker or a NuWave Oven (so far, not me).  My most recent purchase – from QVC, a fine purveyor of gadgets – is a slicer that fits over a bowl (provided) that makes quick work of zucchini, tomatoes and strawberries.  That’s assuming you first cut these things into chunks small enough to fit into the slicer so it can make them even smaller.  But once I take out the cutting board and the knife, do I really need a slicer? 

For me, the accumulation of the gadgets began with repeated late night showings of the Boerner V-Slice infomercial.  For those of you who are actual cooks, this device can best be likened to a mandoline.  And it works on everything – including fingers.  I know this because, despite the printed warning on the sharpness of the V-Slicer, I managed to slice my pinky once anyway, necessitating a trip to the emergency room, accompanied by my concerned and somewhat disdainful sister.  Nonetheless, I love the V-Slicer, and am on my second one.  Nothing ever cleans up as well in real life as it does on TV, which is why I am on V 2.0.

And speaking of things that look much better on TV, let’s meet Vince and the SlapChop, which I have addressed in a previous blog entry.  Yes, you put veggies in it and get out your aggressions by pounding the top to chop the veggies, but the thing is so small that you really have to cut up the veggies first anyway, so why do you need the Slap Chop?  Since the blade is shaped like an extended W, the food gets caught in the angles of the blade, and cleaning the damn thing takes much longer than simply slicing the food with a knife.

For a while, pasta machines were all the rage, and, of course, I just HAD to have one of those.  I poured in the flour and water (paste, anyone?), selected one of the “dies” that you use to extrude the dough to form linguini, spaghetti and the like, and, before you can say, “This thing is impossible to clean,” you have flour all over the kitchen and a clump of pasta.  Taking it out of the Buitoni box is so much easier.  I used it once, and when I had to take a paper clip to poke the dried dough out of the die, I realized that this only looks easy on TV.  I sold it in a garage sale, though I felt guilty about foisting it on another unsuspecting gadget lover.

When I lived in a townhouse back in the 1980s, a local real estate agent would drop off all kinds of gadgets to generate business.  There were measuring cups and spoons, pasta portion measurers, bottle openers, things to use when draining liquid out of a bowl, citrus reamers, those rubber things you use to open jars – literally dozens of items that I referred to as “the Laura Sampson Collection” since they all came emblazoned with her name and number.  Some of these items came in handy – who doesn’t need a bottle opener, after all? – and many of them can be found in my “junk drawer” today, lying beside the turkey baster that gets used once a year, the little plastic thing that I can use to cut potatoes so they look like mushrooms (though I’m not sure why I thought that was a good idea in the first place), the egg and mushroom slicers (separate, but equal), and the little spiral thing that came with the original V-Slicer that I can use to turn a zucchini or cucumber into what looks like a Slinky (think about how important it is to have something like that).  Granted, some of these things haven’t been out of the drawer since my nephew so neatly arranged them when I moved into this house six years ago, but some – like the cheese grater – get used fairly often. 

I have particular admiration for the single-purpose devices that do their jobs exceedingly well.  You may not use a melon baller often, but try to get to make a piece of watermelon round without one.  Similarly, a grapefruit knife is designed solely for use in separating the membrane from the fruit, although I suppose you could extend its magical powers to sectioning oranges, too.  My mother had the best grapefruit knife ever, with a blade so thin that it cut expertly between sections.  When she passed away and we got rid of her kitchen stuff that we didn’t want, it never occurred to me that I should keep the grapefruit knife, and I have been mourning its loss ever since.  (Ironically, since I take Lipitor for high cholesterol, I am no longer allowed to eat grapefruit, so I miss the knife less now than I do eating grapefruit in general.)

I have a jar popper that I find indispensible for opening jelly, jam, pickles – basically anything that comes in a jar.  And I was recently introduced to the “bev hat,” a device that looks like a strainer but is designed to sit on the top of a glass to serve as a barrier between the bugs and the beverage.  

My junk drawer holds funnels, meat thermometers, chip clips, special dishes for corn on the cob (along with a little plastic guy who holds a stick of butter so you can butter the corn, and, of course little plastic corn cob holders), a garlic press and a plastic device that you use to stab a bagel and hold it so you can slice it without inflicting bodily harm.  At one time I had a bagel guillotine that I donated to the office to use on “Bagel Day” Fridays.  Marie Antoinette would have admired that one.  I have at least four vegetable peelers, three timers and a host of non-electric can openers (not to be confused with bottle openers), strainers and a few things whose missions now escape me.

Yet I continue to succumb to the intrigue of a new device when I see it on TV.  Hence, the “Pocket Hose.”  This is a hose that expands (supposedly up to 50 feet; if that’s 50 feet long, I am 6 feet tall) when you turn on the water and it contracts down to a very small, manageable size when you are done using it and turn the water off.  I used my first one (yes, the story is not over) and loved it, but when I turned on the water without first uncurling it, the pressure exploded the thin (and therefore, collapsible) plastic.  Undeterred – after all, this was my fault, I figured – I bought Pocket Hose #2.  Now, the plants and I get watered at the same time, because the cheap plastic nozzle springs leaks.  I tried switching back to the nozzle from the old one, but apparently the only way to avoid getting wet is to buy the Pocket Hose that comes with a metal nozzle (and costs more).  How much money do I want to throw away on hoses, I ask myself, already down $40? 

Some things work out well.  You’ve probably seen the Sham Wow cloths.  They are demonstrated on TV as the pitch man soaks up a bottle of soda from a carpet.  My Sham Wow cloths come in handy for soaking up water in the bottom of the hot tub or anywhere I find a pool of liquid.  You can wash them, but you can’t throw them into the dryer.  So instead of a wet floor, you end up with wet rags hanging everywhere to dry out.

Then, of course, there are the electric devices.  I have two George Foreman grills (one for hotdogs and one larger one that I use for, well, larger things), as well as the George Foreman Rotisserie.  Having grown up in a house with a rotisserie my mother frequently used, I thought this gadget (a gift) would come in handy.  However, it is enormous.  It takes up more counter space than the toaster oven and toaster put together.  And then, though George himself and Ron Popeil can get their chickens rolling just right, mine tend to flip and flop, wings going all akimbo and impeding the rotisserie motion.  Cleaning it is not quite as bad as cleaning that pasta machine, but I have to say it looks pretty good – sitting in its original box, from which it hasn’t emerged since I moved here in 2007.

A few years ago I just had to have a Rabbit wine bottle opener.  There’s something that will last forever, since it has yet to be opened.  The same is true for the ultrasonic jewelry cleaner, though I am tempted to haul it out and read the directions.  Any day now, Tina, any day now.

The moral of the story is that I need to resist temptation and stop collecting these time-saving devices that take too much time to use and clean.  These days, even my smartphone is smarter than I am.