Shaped like an hour glass, or two cones whose points meet in the middle, this gizmo has a row of sharp metal teeth in each cone that shred zucchini or squash or whatever suitable vegetable you twist into its open ends to make “vegeghetti.” The cutting points are more widely spaced in one cone than the other, so you can make a two varieties of gluten-free “veggie-pasta”, depending on which width you select. Simple. Easy. Fun to use.
Daughter Mosa gave it to me for my birthday. I’ve been enjoying inventing new dishes with this toy. Today, I caramelized some onions, browned some round slices of chicken sausage, sautéed lightly the Zucchini noodles, and tossed it all together with a bit of Basil and garnished it with a few bright red pomegranate seeds. Pretty! And delicious!
Some gadgets we’ve acquired over the course of forty-five years are not quite what we wish them to be, but the stories of how we acquired them are always memorable.
1988 found the four of us Maxwell-Smiths in Sydney, Australia at Paddy’s Market. Think swap meet on steroids. There among the rows and rows of booths, we stumbled upon a carny with the greatest sales pitch for “Roller-Rulers.” The idea behind this gizmo is that you can make straight and parallel lines down a sheet of paper with no sweat simply by inserting a pen or pencil point in a small hole, then rolling the ruler down the length of the page. We bought two! Such good and engaging salesmanship, we couldn’t pass up the deal. How many times have we used the amazing Roller Rulers in the intervening twenty-eight years? In round numbers? "0."
Zero is a round number. That’s about it. But we still remember the guy with great schtick and his juicy pronunciation of “Roe-lah Roo-lah.”
Then there's the serrated knife with a Pac Man like mouth at the tip with which you can spear the neat rounds of tomato you’ve just sliced so evenly with the serrated edge. It’s one of those gadgets that works so well for the demonstrator, but less effectively once out of its box and in our hands at home. Ah, but the joy of walking with the nieces and nephews, sisters and brothers-in-law through the circus maze of hockers and sellers in New York’s Roosevelt Field out on Long Island is a treasured memory of lots of laughter, great hot dogs, and sun with a hint of ocean salt in the air. The knife now resides in the box of camping utensils, ready at a moment’s notice to slice our tomatoes or hack off a hunk of frozen bread. (Not that we’d have frozen bread on a camping trip... except maybe in Antarctica.)
Holiday times bring up the memories of the wonderful people who have given us gizmos, gadgets, and thing-a-ma-bobs over the years- many of which work wonderfully well, and all of which were, at the time, much appreciated.
Last year found Mark and me at a white elephant gift exchange party at the Painted Turtle Camp. At the end of a long day making sure the many families who came for the holiday party had a marvelous time, and after all the families had gone home, the camp hosted all of us counselors for an overnight.
Oh, those young counselors can be wickedly mischievous about what they’re willing to swap with the person on the spot in the middle of the circle who’s just opened the solar hula dancer suitable for your dashboard. Now, there were some choice gizmos… half-gloves made to look like BVD underwear, Nerf Football with whizzing sound effect, cat toys with feathers, and a prize we wanted and won for the Grandie: a battery operated light show in the shape of a turtle. It projects stars and moons onto the ceiling in one of three colors: red, white or green.
How did we ever learn to live without these fantastic items?
I’m about to find out.
I vote to hold onto the memories and chuck the gizmos that do not work.
Two years of living in Oakland have made it very clear that we moved way too much stuff.
Gizmos be gone. Books, files, and never listened to cassettes, watch out! You are next.
Think I’ll keep the Hubby.
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