Kitchen stuff meme:

[snarp]

Bold = have and use, italics = have but don't use, strikethrough = had and got rid of.

"I wonder how many pasta machines, breadmakers, 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, margarita glasses, tea strainers, bamboo steamers, pizza stones, coffee grinders, 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."

We had a purge of unused culinary items a while back, which included, along with the struck-through things, dumpling molds and a waffle iron. We've also got a wok that's not currently in regular use; for a while thegeekgene basically just ate lo mein, and I think eggs? (By the way, thegeekgene, are you eating your vegetables? Eat your vegetables, thegeekgene.)

I'm on my second breadmaker, third or fourth ricemaker, and fifth or sixth tea strainer. I tend to buy cheap stuff and overuse it until it breaks. The current ones are slightly more expensive well-reviewed ones, which will hopefully last longer; Mom got me the breadmaker and ricemaker as birthday gifts in consecutive years.

The tea strainer is a plastic-framed Finum-brand one that's shaped like a cup, and it's much better than the little eggs on chains, the collapsible rubber ones, or the metal bowl-shaped ones that come inside teapots and in 3-packs at the 100-yen store. All of which I have, of course, tried. The mesh in this one is very fine so leaves don't escape, it's got handles so it's easy to remove without scalding yourself, and the bottom's flat so you can set it down on a saucer without having it meander around like a cat.

Comments

[chomiji]

We have about 8 tea strainers, because we drink a lot of tea. A couple of them are the ball-sharped jobs, which only get used when we make an entire pot. And that's not often, because the Mr. likes Lapsang Souchong and I like a bunch of other stuff that isn't Lapsang Souchong, so we usually just make a separate mug each. Most of ours look like the conventional handled kitchen strainer, except a little smaller and with a finer mesh.

[snarp]

Those are the ones of whose meandering I disapprove; they seem to be pretty much the standard thing in Japan, if you don't use a teapot with the filter built into the spout.