Pastor Kelly at G-Free Rev (revgfree@wordpress.com) invites us to a Season of Thanksgiving in the gap between the Canadian celebration (this weekend past) and the American one six weeks hence.
Thankfulness has been much on my mind this week for various reasons, some more comfortable and edifying than others -- that's quite another story. But I'm happy to take up Kelly's challenge and make a start here, at least.
I am thankful again and again for a battery of really substandard, off-code, frankly kinda "ad hoc at best" and "crappy at worst" kitchen utensils that I've grown accustomed to over the years, and come to rely on in a grab-this-first sort of way.
There is my cutting board. I have a Sunday-go-to-meeting one, but the one that knows the knives best is a slab of 1" X 12" Lauan mahogany, about 18" long, a relic of somebody's rec-room renovation in a bygone decade, I am sure, that I bought for maybe $1 at a garage sale in a posh neighbourhood, years ago. It fits across my sink and leaves room to scrape debris into a colander below. It is double-sided. I have scrubbed it down countless times. It's faintly cracked here and there, but unwarped. "Remember now, you're bacteriostatic," I remind it from time to time.
I have a proper big wooden pastry-board too -- but it is neglected in favour of the patch in the middle of the old Arborite kitchen counter where a previous owner's au pair set down a hot saucepan and burnt the &^%* out of the surface. The ruined section was replaced with a slab of Corningware ceramic, with a neat metal margin around it like a sink fitting. The best thing to roll out pastry on because it's always cold. And always a safe place to set down something too hot to handle!
An array of battered "Harvest Gold" nylon scrapers and spatulas, scorched and warped and -- from time to time -- rehabilitated by a little scissor-work...and still serviceable!
I might also mention the genuine pre-owned Mouli hand-grater (French) bought back in the last century for fifteen cents in a thrift-shop operated by the women's auxiliary of the Canadian Opera Company back in The Navel of the Known Universe aka Toronto. They make them in plastics, now, but this is the real tinned-metal dented and battered article. It has chewed up a lot of Parmesan in its time.
And for all these widgets and who-jimmies I am thankful, this morning.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment