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kitchen gadgets essay
David Jefferies
kitchen gadgets essay
081031 {yymmdd}
When we are small, kitchen craft is taken care of by the parents or other house-occupants without our conscious awareness. Food arrives, plates are cleaned, and the idea that any of this takes effort never enters our little heads. When we grow up and set up a home of our own, we unconsciously copy the habits we learned when small, even if this was appropriate decades before, and there is no reason to go on doing things that way.
Then the advertisers move in. They suggest the latest tin-opener, genuinely designed, so they say, to open tins rather than people. They promote orange juice squeezers, and suggest electric waffle-irons for cooking cheese-and-ham paninis. These ideas seem good, particularly when reinforced by our friends and acquaintances who have more experience and money than we seem to possess. The result is that our kitchen gradually fills up with electric gadgets; with exotic devices for cutting and opening, and even large "white goods" representing significant capital investment.
Experience tells us that the usual fate of most of these devices is to be used for a few months and then abandoned. Then, what to do with them becomes the issue. We feel unwilling to chuck them away, and selling them is not very feasible - it seems to the potential purchaser be like using recycled loo-paper. Not a good idea at all. So gradually, little by little, the kitchen fills up with unused and unwanted mathoms.
Even worse, one's well-meaning friends drift through and spot a gap in our kitchen goods market. Gifts of further unwanted equipment arrive. Often these have had a prior life as unwanted utensils in other people's kitchens. And one never wants to throw away the inherited pots, pans, crockery from Victoria's reign, and that marvellous coffee percolator made by Russell Hobbes in 1963 that has always leaked, and makes revolting coffee, but the china jug is Poole Pottery and might one day be a valuable museum piece.
As with most familiar objects, unwanted kitchen detritus works its way into the background of our being, into our expectations of order, and becomes part of the family. On the other hand, the things used regularly, the oven, the hob, the dishwasher, the sludge-gulper, the toaster, the coffee espresso machine, and the microwave oven, never elevate themselves into our consciousness as mere "gadgets". By definition, a "gadget" is a one-day wonder, of little use long term, and just a talking point for visitors.
Sometimes one's gadget provokes such a reaction in a visitor that it is re-elevated to a condition of service. One spends a happy half hour showing off what it will do; what visitor is not going to be impressed by a freshly-baked loaf of bread in the Breville breadmaker? But this enthusiasm seldom lasts.....
Generally, kitchen gadgets are not very useful. What would be useful is to resurrect one's parent(s).
kitchen gadgets essay
David Jefferies
kitchen gadgets essay
081031 {yymmdd}
When we are small, kitchen craft is taken care of by the parents or other house-occupants without our conscious awareness. Food arrives, plates are cleaned, and the idea that any of this takes effort never enters our little heads. When we grow up and set up a home of our own, we unconsciously copy the habits we learned when small, even if this was appropriate decades before, and there is no reason to go on doing things that way.
Then the advertisers move in. They suggest the latest tin-opener, genuinely designed, so they say, to open tins rather than people. They promote orange juice squeezers, and suggest electric waffle-irons for cooking cheese-and-ham paninis. These ideas seem good, particularly when reinforced by our friends and acquaintances who have more experience and money than we seem to possess. The result is that our kitchen gradually fills up with electric gadgets; with exotic devices for cutting and opening, and even large "white goods" representing significant capital investment.
Experience tells us that the usual fate of most of these devices is to be used for a few months and then abandoned. Then, what to do with them becomes the issue. We feel unwilling to chuck them away, and selling them is not very feasible - it seems to the potential purchaser be like using recycled loo-paper. Not a good idea at all. So gradually, little by little, the kitchen fills up with unused and unwanted mathoms.
Even worse, one's well-meaning friends drift through and spot a gap in our kitchen goods market. Gifts of further unwanted equipment arrive. Often these have had a prior life as unwanted utensils in other people's kitchens. And one never wants to throw away the inherited pots, pans, crockery from Victoria's reign, and that marvellous coffee percolator made by Russell Hobbes in 1963 that has always leaked, and makes revolting coffee, but the china jug is Poole Pottery and might one day be a valuable museum piece.
As with most familiar objects, unwanted kitchen detritus works its way into the background of our being, into our expectations of order, and becomes part of the family. On the other hand, the things used regularly, the oven, the hob, the dishwasher, the sludge-gulper, the toaster, the coffee espresso machine, and the microwave oven, never elevate themselves into our consciousness as mere "gadgets". By definition, a "gadget" is a one-day wonder, of little use long term, and just a talking point for visitors.
Sometimes one's gadget provokes such a reaction in a visitor that it is re-elevated to a condition of service. One spends a happy half hour showing off what it will do; what visitor is not going to be impressed by a freshly-baked loaf of bread in the Breville breadmaker? But this enthusiasm seldom lasts.....
Generally, kitchen gadgets are not very useful. What would be useful is to resurrect one's parent(s).