The upcoming holiday season is a very special time for most people. The next few weeks will be filled with decorating, shopping, angrily uttering dirty expletives while decorating and shopping, and for some, abusing their children by forcing them to sit on the lap of a fat, bearded stranger, dressed in red, ho-ho-ing their kids into future therapy sessions. It’s also a time, when people whom normally satiate their desire for baked goods with a visit to the local grocery store bakery, lose their minds and start baking anything that’ll rot your teeth and add an extra compartment to your already impressive saddle bags. Unfortunately, I am not impervious to such manic bouts with creating scrumptious, Yule Tide pastries, pie, in particular…food of the Gods and the chubby. In order to make the perfect pie from scratch, one must possess the proper tools to handle such a delicate job. That’s when I turn to the drawer in the kitchen I usually avoid the other 11 months of the year; the utensil drawer.
Oh, who am I kidding? Like you, I have more than 1 drawer housing these never used, bizarre gadgets, which I felt compelled to buy, after a few drinks and a heaping pile of guilt served up from an exploitative, friend hosting a Pampered Chef party. We have 2 drawers which can barely contain the twisted, shiny crap. One drawer holds the devices and tools which we use more frequently than drawer 2’s useless devices. Let’s first compare drawer 1, shall we?
3 spatulas: I only have 2 hands and plan on keeping it that way for the foreseeable future. I can’t find any situation where I’d be required to work 3 spatulas with only 2 hands. And honestly, I barely have the coordination to hold a bowl and work a spatula simultaneously. Besides, the only reason to use a spatula is to scrape of the extra batter or frosting so you can shove it your mouth when no one is looking. Fingers work just as well. I’m more of a face-in-the-bowl-probing-tongue-guy myself. Oh, very important…1 spatula must have a curled, burnt end from where you put it in a hot pan and were too lazy to throw it away.
2 can openers: The more modern looking one, I haven’t quite figured out how to use and the other one, looks like I went back in time, circa 1971, and stole it from my parent’s utensil drawer.
Oh, who am I kidding? Like you, I have more than 1 drawer housing these never used, bizarre gadgets, which I felt compelled to buy, after a few drinks and a heaping pile of guilt served up from an exploitative, friend hosting a Pampered Chef party. We have 2 drawers which can barely contain the twisted, shiny crap. One drawer holds the devices and tools which we use more frequently than drawer 2’s useless devices. Let’s first compare drawer 1, shall we?
3 spatulas: I only have 2 hands and plan on keeping it that way for the foreseeable future. I can’t find any situation where I’d be required to work 3 spatulas with only 2 hands. And honestly, I barely have the coordination to hold a bowl and work a spatula simultaneously. Besides, the only reason to use a spatula is to scrape of the extra batter or frosting so you can shove it your mouth when no one is looking. Fingers work just as well. I’m more of a face-in-the-bowl-probing-tongue-guy myself. Oh, very important…1 spatula must have a curled, burnt end from where you put it in a hot pan and were too lazy to throw it away.
2 can openers: The more modern looking one, I haven’t quite figured out how to use and the other one, looks like I went back in time, circa 1971, and stole it from my parent’s utensil drawer.
2 wooden spoons: Mom used to smack the hell out of me and my sisters with her wooden spoons. We use ours to grow dangerous bacteria in the porous wood fibers and to make anything you sample, via the spoon, taste like you’re chewing on a popsicle stick.
1 potato masher: Bulky and odd shaped, it’s never used because we make instant potatoes. Its’ sole purpose is to get entangled with other objects and piss me off by jamming the drawer.
11 knives of differing shapes and sizes bought from a late night infomercial: I’m guilty on 2 fronts there, as I have Ginsu’s and an enviable collection from Ron Popeil. Mock if you must, my surplus of cooking shanks, but I’m quite prepared if ever attacked by the cast of “West Side Story.”
1 knife sharpener: Guaranteed to whittle off dangerous, tiny bits of metal shavings into your families food, all in the name of having a knife that can saw through a tin can, then slice a freakishly, thin tomato slice.
An ice cream scoop: Filled with dangerous anti-freeze, so the impatient diet-breaker can carve through a frozen block of “Cherry Garcia” without having to wait a whole 2 minutes for a natural thaw.
A giant turkey baster: It’s that plastic tube with the rubber bulb on the end of it. It looks like a gigantic version of the gizmo we utilized to suck boogers out of my infant daughter’s nose. I have never seen anyone baste a turkey. Most people use this to suck off excess fat. Why? What the hell are you doing!?! Fat is flavor…cooking 101.
Meat mallet: This is used to tenderize your meat and impress people with your skills in preparing succulent dishes. TIP: Lose the mallet and impress your friends by forking over a few extra pennies for edible cuts of meat, rather than beating your meal into something palatable by means of construction tools.
Aside from a smattering of other strange devices, that about covers utensil drawer number 1.
Drawer number 2 is where we keep the utensils we’ll need when Hell freezes over. They seemed like a worthy purchase at the time but booze tends to lower your inhibitions, making pinching the ass of your best friend’s wife and buying stupid kitchen junk really cool things to do!
8 pairs of corn on the cob holders: Back in the day, these were cleverly shaped like little ears of corn. Genius! We have these green, cork screw things that are impossible to screw into a piping, hot ear of corn. We’ve never used them… but we have them… in case a visiting dinner guest simply can’t proceed with the meal until he/she has something to protect their digits from nasty buttery corn. Chances are I will punch them in the throat for being a pain in the ass, well before the meal is over.
4 dwarfed, pudgy butter knives with carved fruit handles: One day of the year, we serve an appetizer that can be spread on something else. It’s comforting to know we have these hideous things.
6 metal shish-kabob skewers: Metal skewer + hot grill + dopey host, half-way through a twelve pack = blistered hand and a pool full of k-bobs.
Hard-boiled egg slicer: Good for putting the finishing touches on a Cobb salad. We’ve had one for 16 years now…the welling, anticipation of that first, damn Cobb salad is almost more than I can handle. I’m sure we’ll put that to use one of these decades.
Not 1, but 2, count ‘em, 2 melon ball scoops!: I like to carve watermelon into chunks as big as the heads of the kids whom are eating it. The melon ball scoop is only used when I’m feeling randy and re-enact the “Aunt Jemiamah treatment” scene from “Stripes.”
An assortment of twisted, wacky, plastic straws: Ok…I use these.
Plastic popsicle forms: We spent $12 on 10 pieces of 2 cent plastic, so we can make popsicles that cost about $4 for 100 in the local store. So did you!
5 giant clips for sealing chip bags: Never been used in our house as an opened bag of chips is an eaten bag of chips. I put the clips in my hair sometimes to act like a sissy man and bum out my daughter. I do that a lot.
2 broken meat thermometers: I don’t tell guests they’re broken. I place one in cooked meat, pretend to be reading the meter, confidently announce, “and yes, that’s it…perfect…let’s eat!” Then I pray no one gets worms or Dysentery from eating undercooked meat.
And that about covers it. I feel liberated, openly sharing what we have in our utensil drawers. Honesty does that for people. As long as we’re being honest, I must confess a falsehood I said earlier about pie. I don’t make pie. I eat pie but since my famous second grade mud-pies, I’ve never made one. Strange…isn’t it. A guy with all those tools and doesn’t make pie. A rational person would throw out all that crap but I can’t. You never know when friends will pop over this holiday season, aching for corn on the cob-shaped ice cream melon balls, toting kids with boogery noses and in need of a good ass slapping with a wooden spoon. I love the holidays.
