Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities

Kitchen gadgets can be handy time-savers

Ahh, those kitchen gadgets. They’ve been making them for centuries and advertising them on late-night television infomercials for decades.

Even if you bought it because you were worried it would never be available in stores or because you were worried about all those poor under-worked operators standing-by or, like me, picked it up at a yard sale later, we all have gadgets we love — even if we can’t always find them.

One of our favorite gadgets has always been the slow cooker. We’re actually on our third or fourth model. These days we’ve added an electric pressure cooker and an air fryer. I really use the electric pressure cooker a lot. You can cook beans really fast or you can use it on slow-cooker mode. It’s a one pot meal solution without having to remember to get everything in the slow cooker in the morning.

The air fryer hasn’t been as flexible, but we still use it. We love frozen shoestring fries that are ready quickly in the air fryer.

Most of our kitchen gadgets were either given to us at our wedding 38 years ago or came in a Christmas stocking. Very few were actually acquired because we went to the store for a melon baller or ice cream scoop.

Our silverware drawer is a jumble of smaller gadgets kept behind and to the side of the silverware tray. We also have two other drawers devoted to gadgets. In that drawer are three bottle openers with church keys (bet most of you under the age of about 40 never used one of those), a little grater, a spiral whisk, a spatula, melon baller, cake server and the blades to the electric knife.

Those larger gadgets we own include a stovetop omelet pan with hinged lid, a microwave omelet dish, a two-egg microwave dish, a microwave bacon tray, a hand-operated chopper, an electric chopper and a huge food processor.

Among the most unused gadgetry in the kitchen that hog the most counter and cabinet space are an electric fajita griddle, an electric skillet, fondue set, a wok, an ice cream maker that doesn’t use ice, and a microwave soup and stew pot.

Nearly all those gadgets either work really well or save time — if you can find the gadget and all its attendant parts fast enough. There’s a work-around for nearly all those items and often times it’s just easier to use a fork instead of the wisk, a bowl in place of the egg cooker and a paper plate in place of the bacon tray.

The comedy sketch that the comedian Gallagher used to do about the Sledge-O-Matic used to crack me up. Before pounding a vegetable with that huge wooden mallet he would throw out the same rhythmic sales pitch that they used to hawk one of my favorite gadgets of all time — the Veg-O-Matic.

My mom regularly turned out mounds of French fries with that handy little tool. If you see one in good shape at a garage sale grab it fast. It’ll make your life easier.

Karl Terry writes for Clovis Media Inc. Contact him at:

[email protected]

 
 
Rendered 03/23/2024 10:31