Monday, December 26, 2011

Bonus!

For 10 Bonus points, what is this???

Answer: An egg piercer (or Salmonella carrier, as mom called it this morning). It is used to pierce the bottom of a raw egg before boiling it to prevent the egg from cracking while being boiled

The Obscure Kitchen Utensil Quiz

My visits home are wonderful. They always include spending time with my much missed family and friends, lounging on my super comfy couch watching recorded episodes of Ace of Cakes, making up for lost time with comfort foods and ALWAYS involves my mother trying to convince me to take home some of her obscure kitchen utensils.

My mother has the best stocked kitchen that ever was. She has collected a myriad of wooden spoons, kitchen tongs and spatulas over the years (Note: kitchen utensils is not even her official collection. That's confined to Swarovski crystal figurines, chopsticks and straws) and now has drawers overflowing with kitchen loot that she wants to bestow unto me. She wants to pass the obscure kitchen utensil torch.

It usually goes something like this-
I'll be eating my breakfast at the kitchen table and she'll be innocently working at something at the kitchen counter, when her arm juts upwards with something shiny in her hand and she asks loudly and hopefully, "do you need a cherry pitter?" A Yes means triumph. It means the utensil is deemed worthy enough to be shlepped across the atlantic, taking up a portion of my limited luggage allowance. A No means the utensil retreats to the drawer until my next visit, when she will try again. Her persistence sometimes works.

Here is a selection of some random utensils from my mother's kitchen drawer. Can you guess what these are used for?

Answer: 1) sticky rice spoon 2) falafel press 3) chestnut piercer 4) soda bottle gasser 5) ice pick 6) courgette corer 7) tablecloth crumb collector 8) citrus wedge squeezer 9) citrus thick zester 10) crinkle cut vegetable blade 11) crab meat pick 12) egg wedge segmenter 13) walnut pick
14) garlic crusher cleaner 15) olive spoon 16) cheese slicer 17) cherry pitter