Gadgets for your Enjoyment

Ooooo, slicing fun!

Time marches on and here we are at Tips, Tricks and Treats Tuesday.  I thought I'd cover the tips/tricks aspect with some nifty gadgets I use around my culinary unit (kitchen) that I am more than happy to recommend.  

I'm not usually into gimmicky gadgets like those, and I won't print exact product names, that make sliced, fatty pig meat (yum!) into little bowls or that cut a yellow fruit that rhymes with "Montana" into uniformly sized discs. They say one man's trash is another's treasure but hopefully you'll agree with me that these do-dads are worthy.

First up and above/left is a mushroom









slicer.  However, it can be used not only for mushrooms but, as shown, for strawberries and kiwis (strawberries work great but I've never used it on kiwis...I'm thinking you'd be better off cutting those with a trick I can show you in the future and you'll just have to visit my blog again!) plus I've used it for olives and hard boiled eggs.  Buy the kind shown with the strong dividers as I used to get the kind with the metal-ish strings and those ALWAYS broke too quickly.

Next is something the Hub and I bought on a whim while on vacation from some quaint kitchen-esque boutique.  It's called the Clever Cutter and you can watch it in action in the supplied video above/right.  We use it all the time and it really is quite convenient as you can, and I just did this for dinner, cut your chosen food (e.g. broccoli) onto or into wherever you need it to be (e.g. pot of boiling water).

My newest love 

Bringing up the rear is my new springy love, the coil whisk.  Again in a kitchen gadget store with Hubster, my eyes caught the glint of this little, silver beauty.  I have a few balloon whisks and they worked fine but at times I found that they weren't working as well on concoctions that were on the heavy side.  When I pondered on her (I often name certain inanimate objects like some men name vehicles) I thought, Hey!, this just might do the trick.  Sure enough Frenchie (the label in the store called this a French Whisk but apparently it's not the proper name for this style, but I think Frenchie suits her) is living up to my dreams of whisking anything that comes my way.  I don't whip cream by hand but use Big Red (hee hee, my guy, a red Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer) so I can't attest to how Frenchie would work for that.  However, I've been using her for everything else and she's a champ!  I read you are supposed to use an up and done "springy" motion but I've done the traditional circular whisking method as well with super-duper results.

Now that you've gotten a peek into my culinary unit's inner workings you might give some of them a try and find a new love yourself...you can even name the if you like :)