Too Many Kitchen Utensils

Over the past fortnight, I’ve been participating in Natalie Sisson - The Suitcase Entrepreneur’s 15 Day blog challenge.  Yesterday’s challenge (day 12) was: What work and life clutter are you going to remove to be more of a minimalist and free up space for you? Perfect - finally a challenge topic that I could write about for The Foodie Inc...

Cooking dinner last night, I opened the utensil drawer to grab some tongs and the drawer jammed for the hundredth time. I’ve lost count of the number of times this happens and every time I think to myself, often out loud, that kitchen drawer really deserves some attention. The drawer is wide with lots of dividers but only 5-6cm deep, and it is chock-a-block full of every imaginable kitchen utensil. Now for those of you who know me personally, this won’t come as a surprise. I love kitchen utensils and often purchase them on my travels, often resulting in some very interesting conversations with customs officials but that’s another story in itself.  I pretty much have every utensil I could ever need, in fact I realised last night that I could probably fit-out a second kitchen quite easily!

So how many wooden spoons does one household really need? The one I use the most is the one I made on the lathe in woodwork class at intermediate school - yes a few years ago now.  Come to think of it, somewhere I might even have the tongs I made in metalwork class too. Though they were rather ugly, complete with rivets and hard edges, and not very user friendly so maybe not!

Do you really need three mini whisks? And six spatulas?  Well they are different shapes and sizes and the mini ones are perfect for small bowls and young bakers’ hands. Three potato peelers? My favourite is the Kitchen Aid one I got in a goodie bag at the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival so I think it’s time to bin the other two that never get used.

And my favourite five utensils, some collected on my foodie travels: pallet knife (Wellington), rolling pin (Hobart), wooden spoon (made by me), cooking chopsticks (Melbourne) and zester from a food show but can’t remember where.

So now that I’ve pulled everything out of the drawer and sorted through them, putting aside the essentials every good cook needs and those must keeps - and yes the drawer opens and closes with ease, the local Hospice shop will be the lucky recipient of those duplicates and triplicates.

But finally I want to share a little story about the egg beater - which lives in the next drawer down.  Baking with two 10 year olds in the school holidays, the electric beater stopped working so I grabbed the egg beater out of the drawer.  With very puzzled looks on their faces, one exclaimed “What is that? It looks like something from the olden days!”  Let’s just say I ended up beating the eggs – their little arms got tired very quickly from that manual labour!.

So what’s your favourite kitchen utensil and why?  Feel free to leave a comment.

 Michelle

ps if you're interested in the 15 Day Blog Challenge check out Natalie Sisson, The Suitcase Entrepreneur