Even the last grubby mounds of unmelted snow have now disappeared. This composition in The Grove made just a week ago is just a memory..
Two gadgets that have come into the house this Christmas are a citrus presser and pourer and a folding chopping board. Both are are remarkably ingenious and helpful. The pourer consists of a perforated cylinder with sharp edges that pierces a lemon or lime and when twisted extracts the juice which can be poured from the top, the fruit effectively becoming a little jug. The lid consists of a removable, green, plastic seal, which you take off to pour the juice generated inside the fruit, and replace to preserve the content for further squeezing. The chopping board is made from thin, very tough plastic. It folds to make a shovel-like, angled receptacle to assist in the spill-free transfer of chopped material into a pan or other container. When in use as a board it opens out perfectly flat ready for chopping.
.
Cooking this year has been a great pleasure. On Christmas day, there were six to cook for; on other days four. I cannot explain why there is little I like doing more than cooking. Though the results are rather less permanent, I think I prefer cooking to writing poetry or even, dare I day it, to the daily production of this blog.
3 comments:
Mrs BB has difficulty rotating small lids and corks. Santa, aware of this problem, delivered a device that looks like a minaturised conical version of an Iron Maiden operated by sprung secateur-like handles. I borrowed it from her to open several bottles of Waitrose cava which it did with great ease. Flushed with success I then opened a bottle of Cloudy Bay Pelorus fizz which spewed foam down my newly donned blue corduroy trousers. An existentialist link with Michael Schumacher. Kitchen equipment shops have a virtually inexhaustible range of Christmas presents although, as we both know, the problem is storing them for accessibility.
As to preferring cooking to blogging you have often resolved this by combining the two. This evening I shall be using the production version of the famous sausage fork and will be posting my observations shortly. Incidentally there is a response to your most recent comment on my blog that comes from someone you know well, present at both Perros Guirec and Concarneau.
I think we may have received the most bafflingly useless and undesirable gadget ever this year: a kind of borer device conceived for cutting a hole in the middle of a piece of fruit in order to place a nightlight candle within it, suggested for making table centrepieces.
Apart from never being able to see the point of table centrepieces taking up room better used for food, the idea of putrifying items of fruit with sputtering nightlights sunk into them anywhere is fairly gross, to my mind. I don't dare write about my true feelings about this on my blog in case there's an outside chance the giver or someone close to them may read it, so I am airing my exasperation here!
I have been wondering about whether I prefer cooking to those other activities. I suppose I didn't blog or write much for years, but always cooked , and always found it a source of satisfaction. Fortunately, one is never actually forced to choose.
Cooking = alchemy.
Post a Comment