Flakey view

Last winter, we were smothered in snow for over four months. This year, the white stuff did take its time arriving, as we are having the first heavy snowfall of the year right now. In February, no less. And it seems as if Father Frost were determined to drop the whole year´s stockpile on us at once. As long as we don´t have to use the car, that´s fine with me, but I sure hope they´ll have the roads cleared by the next time we have to drive to visit MIL Until then, I enjoy looking at the flaky white stuff falling down gently in front of my window.
As we have been, without using the car, pretty much housebound  these days, I have had ample time to putter around in the kitchen.
Guess what, there was one more thing I decided to get rid of, namely, an electric knife that had been taking up the better part of one of my kitchen drawers. When I bought that thing, I intended it for cutting up roasts, the kicker being that the serrated edges on the knife were tearing up rather than cutting the meat, and besides, what it did, unfortunately, cut a lot faster than the meat was the surface of my cutting board. So, I stopped using it pretty fast, but I did what happens all too often when something I bought doesn´t work out the way I thought- I put it away into that drawer, where it stayed through several moves, unused.
Last year, I splurged on a set of really good Henckel´s chef´s knives, among them a carving knife that cuts through even a stubborn roast as if it were butter. The likelihood that I would ever use that blunt electric knife again has, therefore, dropped to something below zero, so, I finally decided I had better uses for the space it occupied. It´s currently in the recycling basket for electronics, awaiting the next trip to the recycling center.
The lesson in that? It´s not always better to have an electronic gadget for preparing ingredients. If a gadget doesn´t work properly, it´s absolutely permissible to dump it at once instead of carrying it- and the guilt about having wasted money on it- around for the next twenty years. Provided, of course, you get rid of it in an environmentally friendly way. And it sometimes pays to pay for quality. I´ve had several cheap knife sets over the years, but the ones I have now will probably be used for the entire rest of my culinary career.
On the same note, I´ve had several sets of cheap pots that broke down rather fast, losing their handles or getting warped bottoms. The oldest of the more expensive professional-quality stainless steel ones I bought after having that happen once too often have been with me for some twenty years now, and show no sign of the hard use I have subjected them to, apart of course some scratches and discolorations- it happens even when you are careful.

But, they still work, and hopefully will continue to do so for years to come.
If I were to calculate the cost-per-use factor for the cheap stuff versus the high-quality stuff, it would almost certainly be a lot higher for the cheap stuff, apart the fact that working with good-quality equipment in the kitchen also saves a lot of time and hassle over using cheap pots and knives.
It has, of course, taken me several years (and some lucky finds at special sales or special discount offers) to replace my cheapo stuff in the kitchen, but it´s definitely been worth it.
And by not going around replacing everything at once, I could work those things into our budget without creating any undue waves.
Today, I have the equipment I need for preparing us nutritious food- which also saves us plenty of medical copays because the better nourished our bodies are, the less they get sick.
And the price of dinner in a restaurant compared to having the exact same meal prepared at home is, even at the cheaper eateries, at least three times as high, plus, you can´t control what they put into your food in a restaurant.
So, I´m thankful to my Grandma who taught me how to cook. It´s healthy, and it´s frugal. What more can you wish for? And yes, even if I say so myself, it tastes as good or better than what you´d get in a restaurant. Just ask DH :).


Julia