vs.

I’m staring at the thing that I bought T a few years ago as a Christmas gift.  It’s called a mandolin. Not the pretty little miniature stringed instrument but rather the kitchen implement which, until this moment, was relegated to the ‘Useless Kitchen Gadget’ drawer.  We are proud knife-wielders. Nothing’s quite like using a well-honed Kasumi Santoku that’ll cut through anything.  Even when our ancient Henckels can be pursuaded to give in to the steel, we’d prefer to do the chopping.

I have fresh beets and a half a head of cabbage so natch I must make a borscht.  But memories of making past borschts produce fear and loathing for the carpel tunnel the shredding caused.  I dust off the mandolin and see that it’s not without its merits.  The blades look pretty lethal and to avoid lobbing off my thumb I insert the blades into the thing ever so delicately.  It slices, shreds, juliennes, blah blah blah.  It’s still not something that I would leave out on the counter just in case.  It brings to mind the useless kitchen gadgets like the garlic peeler on wheels.

It was a little contraption that had an axle and two wheels on it.  These were attached to a little pod in which you inserted your garlic clove.  Then you drove it around your countertop this way and that, all the while muttering appropriate rrrrmmm rrrrmmm engine noises, and then you opened the pod and there sat your peeled garlic clove.  Then you did whatever it was you needed to do with the garlic and then spent the rest of the evening trying to get the garlic peel out from between the wheels of the little car.

The potato ricer is another miracle of ueslessness.  If you want your white starch to come out rice shaped, just make rice.  It’s easier and rice has about as much nutrition in it as a potato so don’t waste your time.  The potato ricer feels like it weighs about 10 pounds and it’s huge. You’re supposed to put your mashed potatoes into it and like a garlic press, you push the potatoes through the little holes and they come out looking like rice.  Huh.  Then you spend the rest of the evening trying to wash the potatoes out of the little holes so you can put the giant contraption away IN ITS OWN CUPBOARD BECAUSE IT’S SO HUGE.

Another bunch of favourite headscratchers revolve around wine.  The first is the wine stopper.  I don’t even know what that’s for.  Like we ever don’t finish a bottle and if we do, that’s what a rolled up wad of paper towel is for.  What’s wrong with you people?  Also, those little gadgets that you put around the stem of your wine glass so everyone always knows which glass is theirs don’t help at all:

“Tad, is this your wine glass with the little bunny?”

“Why no, Poopsie, I had the gnome, don’t you remember?  We arm wrestled for it.”

“Darling, I distinctly remember picking out the baby goat but I might be mistaken.  Anyway I’m so drunk that I don’t care whose wine I’m drinking! Where did I leave my glasses anyway?  Oh, I’m wearing them…”

Or the wine aerator.  We aspire to know our wines and occasionally splurge on a good vintage to savour on our deathbeds, but I daresay we often forget to swirl and aldouze our plonk and therefore we’re guilty of forgetting to use this thing before we open the bottle in the first place.  We will keep it though, so we can show off at our next dinner party.

Another contraption that found its way to a shelf at a Value Village near you is the food holder-downer (for lack of a better name).  It was a set of one large and one small four-pronged spikes that sat neatly in a little stand to be displayed on the countertop in case required.  The idea is that you spike the food you’re chopping so it stands still while you slice it.  On principle it made sense.  Ever tried to slice a watermelon without having it roll all around the cutting board?  You get the picture.  The problem was the spikes were not sharp enough so I kept stabbing myself in the abdomen. When I tried to spike the rutabaga into submission it would carom off the vegetable, sending it flying around the countertop taking out small kitchen appliances in its path.  If I recall correctly I ‘donated’ it while pregnant with my son, just in case.

Last but not least is the citrus juicer.  You remember the ones that we had when we were growing up? A little pleated plastic point with a moat-like trough around it to catch the juice after you spiked and twisted the fruit.  Simple, easy to clean, even if it required a little elbow grease to use.  We have a similar one today that doesn’t have the trough so when you stab the fruit with it the juice often runs down your arm to the elbow but for the most part it works just fine, provided you’ve pointed it in the right direction.  We also have a large and heavy tool that you can use to juice citrus fruit, as long as it’s round.  It kind of resembles a long and deep serving spoon with another one like it that fits on top of it. They’re connected by a hinge at the bowl end and what you’re supposed to do is put the half of your orange back-to-back against the concave side of the upper spoon, then you crush the lower spoon over top of it to turn the half-fruit inside out, thus squishing all the juice out into the bowl that you must not forget to put underneath before you attempt this.  It works just fine but there’s something about the inside-outedness of the peel afterword that brings Silence of the Lambs to mind.  It’s also large, heavy, awkward to use and messy.

There you have it.  I shall attempt to use the mandolin for my borscht without shredding the skin off my knuckles because, as you know, I’m a vegetarian and that just won’t do.

Epilogue

The mandolin requires so much force to use that I almost broke the glass bowl it was sitting on and the beets seemed too tough for the barely-used blades.  It was messy because I had to shred right onto the counter (I have no non-breakable bowls).  I’ll give the machine a reprieve and see if I have better luck next time.