I’m the type of person who enjoys big cooking only once in a while, preferring simple dishes the rest of the time. Homemade soups, quesadillas, maybe some good-quality frozen stuffed shells dressed up with a decent sauce and bread…that sort of thing. And sometimes—more often than I’d like to admit—after a really hard day at work, the sound of the cereal hitting the bottom of the bowl is like the Balm of Gilead.
As a minimalist cook, I haven’t really invested a lot of money into my tools. Most of them date back to my first wedding shower, years ago. Pre-Food Network, pre-OXO™-Design-as-Function, pre-silicone. Since I didn’t really cook, I limped along with my stained white rubber spatulas, ends curled from scraping hot chocolate pudding from the pan. As a slap-dash cook, I didn’t align my tools neatly on the counter like a surgeon’s scalpel and clamps. Instead, mid-recipe, and often at a crucial point, I scrabbled through kitchen drawers hoping to pull out one of my mismatched and melted plastic measuring spoons. These dripping and Dali-esque specimens, victims of the dishwasher’s heating element or the dog’s chewing phase were approximate measures at best. My potholders were a mismatch of scorched, crusty terrycloth and those colorful and wildly ineffective woven ones the kids made on a loom. I don’t do fancy entertaining, or cook with others, so my disgusting implements were my own dirty little secret. Along with my sunny yellow 1970s-era canisters and my batter-splattered ancient Sunbeam™ hand mixer, which still runs but emits a burning smell when you mix chocolate chip cookie dough, all these things marked me as a kitchen slattern.
So when my daughters asked me last year what I wanted for Christmas, I decided to skip the usual books, soaps, and gift certificates and ask for a few things to spruce up my image. I had already started, sort of, to clean up my act. Gone were the melted, stained white rubber spatulas; in their place were two blue silicone beauties with shining stainless steel handles. These space-age wonders could withstand temperatures up to 500 degrees, a test confirmed during a flaming pepperoni incident late last fall. I wanted more.
On Christmas day I opened a set of stainless steel measuring spoons and cups with functional yet trendy chunky black handles that made them look sleek and Todd Oldham-ish. What at first appeared to be small lunar landing pads for the space shuttle Mary Kay® turned out to be pink silicone potholders, and a large silicone mitt that swallowed my hand to mid-forearm rounded out the set. Only those receiving breast implants for Christmas got as much silicone as I did that day.
I was so excited. I spent the morning filling the trash can with melted and misshapen measuring spoons and cups. I tossed all but a couple of my nasty potholders, setting aside two loom-woven treasures for sentimental reasons. Ripping off the labels, I tossed the new items in the dishwasher, and they took it like a champ. The stainless steel cups scalded my fingers when I grabbed them from the rack, but the handles were pristine. The mitt had fallen to the bottom but was unscathed, gripping the heating element in a display of pure silicone hubris. Even my lunar landers emerged steaming but intact.
I’m not sure if anyone thought I would really cook more, least of all me; but I did think it would be more enjoyable, or perhaps easier with these oh-so-modern accoutrements. In fact, clean up is easier, and while I don’t necessarily find cooking more enjoyable, there is an ineffable quality to the experience now. After careful examination, I realize what it is: I feel like a scientist. The serious look and feel of the matte-finished steel, the precision of the capacity, the engraved fractions, the ability to dip my mitt-covered hand in boiling water and laugh with abandon—this must be what Marie Curie felt like when she handled her lab instruments. Now I know why they call cooking a domestic science. I find myself feeling smug and superior, as if my steely kitchen instruments and my silicone fire-repellers are capable of solving some sort of crisis beyond my own need for dark chocolate cappuccino snack cake.
“If I get the proportions right, just one precise, level cupful or spoonful, in just the right mix, I will surely bring about a resolution to (muttering)…I am a scientist, after all.” But then reality, in the form of yellow plastic canisters from which I am spooning flour, comes crashing in. I am, after all, not a domestic scientist. And while my fancy gadgets are satisfying to look at, handle, and most of all, clean, they are not going to change me from a cereal-eating, vacuum-packed-mashed-potato-dependent kitchen slacker. That’s going to take one of those freestanding bowl mixers that look like jet engines. And this Christmas, as we all know, is just around the corner.
