Gadgets We NEED!

I love to cook.  I collect cookbooks and magazines to the point of being crazy.

I love to go to cooking stores. I could spend hours looking at cooking gadgets. Toys of the trade. I have a few drawers full of these toys. There are all sorts of imaginable items to make a cook's life easy, and more fun. A gadget for this and a gadget for that.

 I have a few items on my wish list:

Strawberry Slicer

I love fresh strawberries. There are lots of them available for much of the year here in California. Most are grown locally by small farmers and you can find the big huge corporate growers as well. You can buy strawberries being peddled on many a street corner by the crate. So yummy!!

I usually just wash them off, take off the green leafy tops and slice them in half. A little sugar and sometimes a tad of whipped cream. Can't get much more summery than that!

I never considered thin slices of strawberries. Maybe I could dry them for cereal. Or just have thin slices instead of stuffing my mouth with a half strawberry. Plus this gadget would make a colorful addition to my drawer of stuff (that rarely gets used)!!

Tomato Slicer


I eat a lot of salad. I have at least one salad almost every day. In most of my salads, I will have a tomato, especially this time of year when I can go out in my garden and get fresh home grown tomatoes almost daily.

Sometimes I love sliced tomatoes with fresh basil and fresh mozzarella, with a bit of salt and pepper.

Or what better sandwich is there than a BLT on the freshest of bread??

But slicing tomatoes can be troublesome. Especially with a dull knife. It is shameful that my knife is always on the bad side of dull. It squashes the tomato. Cutting thin slices is something a dull knife will not do.  Not to mention the uneven slices. Some fat, some thinner. Oh the mess! I can't begin to tell you how terrible it is!! I think this would solve my problem. Nice even slices in a fraction of the time!!

Just image how many picture perfect tomato slices I could make! Shall I slice some for you?


Mushroom Slicer

Here is another gadget I wonder how I have lived so long without!! Have you ever made mushroom soup and cut up mushroom after mushroom (I will not buy the precut nasty ones, so don't even suggest that!). It takes forever!! Do you think those who partake of my mushroom soup appreciate the time I took in slicing mounds of mushrooms (it does take a lot of them for a good sized pot of mushroom soup!).  Oh the agony I endure by slicing each little mushroom into thin slices. It's a time consuming unappreciated process.

Can you imagine the time I would save in slicing the fungi?? I might have time left to clean up the cobwebs and dust in my house!!



Ham-Dogger

Ok, don't laugh. It did take me a moment or two to fully appreciate the utility of the can't-live-without gadget!!

You know the problem. The number of hot dog rolls never matches the number of hot dogs you get in a package. So you always wind up with too many if you plan on having a roll for each dog. If you are serving hamburgers as well, you will also need hamburger buns! Acchh!!! How many packages of each will you need? What if you buy too many of one and not enough of the other?

So when you are having a BBQ for your friends, you don't have to worry anymore!! Just buy the hot dog buns and you don't even have to worry about how many packages of each type of bun you need! (can you say Costco here I come! Load me up with the H-D Buns!!).

Now with this ingenious gadget you can make burgers in the shape of hot dogs!

Does your guest want a hot dog! Great!! You have a bun for it!!

Does your guest want a burger!! Great!! You have the SAME bun for it!!

AHHH!!! My cookouts will become soooooo much less stressful!!


Banana Slicer


Just how did I EVER live without this gadget???

Certainly this is something I REALLY need. I must stop using my teeth to slice the banana as I am eating it out of hand. I am probably wearing out the enamel on my front teeth. Maybe even wearing down the very teeth!

Ok, I admit using a spoon to cut up my banana into my bowl of cereal is not good form. But I thought I would save time, and there is one less dirty piece of cutlery to wash.  I am sure that Chef Ramsey would not approve of my method and he will come and shut my kitchen down.

Using a knife does not help in cutting uniform slices either (see my dissertation on that problem in the above Tomato slicer commentary). There is nothing that displeases the tongue more than uneven slices of anything. The "mouth-feel" is enough to gag the strongest of us.

Have you tried to cut a banana evenly? You have to be an engineer complete with drawings and plans to negotiate the curves.  This is where you need that agonizing class in calculus that you took thinking "when will I EVER use these math skills?" What they never told calculus students was calculus is necessary for cutting uniform, civilized slices from bananas.

It is not an easy task, certainly not for the faint of heart. The banana slicer puts an end to this age old problem.

But wait!!! Here is another model!! Oh!! Can you imagine!! I could pop out banana slices faster than a Slice-O-Matic!! Maybe even use it as a banana gun of sorts!

In either case....I think this is the ultimate gadget for the ladies to have. Leave it on the counter....look at your hubby/boyfriend when he has not done the Honey-do list or has otherwise pissed you off, then look longingly at the banana slicer....then back at him....repeat as needed.

It will strike fear in his heart.

Lorena Bobbit should have had one of these, don't you think??