Foodie meme

Gacked from lexin 

Bold the ones you have and use at least once a year, italicize the ones you have and don't use, strike through the ones you have had but got rid of.

"I wonder how many pasta machines, breadmakers (you will have to prise my breadmaker from my cold dead hands), juicers, blenders, deep fat fryers, egg boilers, melon ballers, sandwich makers, pastry brushes, cheese knives, electric woks, miniature salad spinners, griddle pans, jam funnels, meat thermometers, filleting knives, egg poachers, cake stands, garlic crushers, martini glasses, tea strainers, bamboo steamers, pizza stones, coffee grinders (which actually gets used for grinding whole spices, not coffee), milk frothers, piping bags, banana stands, fluted pastry wheels, tagine dishes, conical strainers, rice cookers, steam cookers, pressure cookers, slow cookers, spaetzle makers, cookie presses, gravy strainers, double boilers (bains marie), sukiyaki stoves, ice cream makers, and fondue sets languish dustily at the back of the nation's cupboards."


I'm not counting a few items which were lost or abandoned during inter-continental moves and not replaced. I'd still be using them if I had replaced them, which  is why I didn't  -- I'm at high risk for diabetes and I don't need the temptation offered by a deep fat fryer or a toastie maker.

The juicer and blender came with the heavy duty food processor, which does get used regularly. I wanted them available in case I had another bout of dental woes necessitating a pureed diet, but fortunately so far I haven't needed to use them.

The piping bag -- I haven't used my piping bag in years. That's because I do my once a year cake decorating elsewhere and use someone else's...

On the other hand, I do have a number of foodie kitchen gadgets not mentioned in the above list, many of which have not been seen outside the cupboard since I moved into this house. Some of them are simply too difficult to use with the level of RSI weakness I have these days, others are fairly pointless if you're not feeding several people and thus preparing food in bulk (my mandoline is brilliant if I'm making food for ten, but a waste of time on food for two). I haven't got that many which were bought for faddish purposes and then abandoned, but I do have to admit to a shameful weakness for the Lakeland Plastics catalogue that would have led me astray had I had more money and kitchen space fifteen years ago. :-)

book log: 72) Ruth Rendell -- End in Tears

20th in the Inspector Wexford series. A man lies awake worrying about his daughter who's out late. She's often out late, but that doesn't stop him worrying, and this time he's right. When he goes out at first light to look for her, what he finds is her murdered body.

Wexford's worrying about his own daughter, who has announced that she's going to be a surrogate mother for her ex-husband and his new partner. The murder of a teenage single mother is a little too close to home for him. And that's before there is a second murder of a young woman. The murders are clearly linked, but how?

The plot's good, but I didn't enjoy this book as much as I have some of the earlier Wexfords. A major part of this is that Wexford's sidekick is such a cardboard stereotype of a humourless politically correct social justice activist who can't see her own prejudices that I felt I was being lectured. I nearly abandoned the book because I found it so irritating. I don't regret sticking with it, but it's not one I'm inclined to re-read.

http://www.librarything.com/work/45471