Issue #22 Kitchen Hacks For The Impatient. Or Ill Tempered. Or Both.
Frustrastion
Two kitchen hacks for the impatient.
Or ill-tempered.
Or both.
First of all, engineering is failing us.
A very specific kind of engineering.
The kind involved in the design of how to open – or more often NOT open – things.
I’m betting that at least once a week I find myself wrestling with stubborn packaging.
I’m not complaining about the sort designed to be theft proof. I keep a hacksaw at the ready for everything sealed in that industrial clam shell plastic.
No, I’m talking about the kind that someone got paid to engineer by adding a pull tab or a string, or a little notch in the plastic or my favorite “just peel this apart right here”.
I used to try to make the thing work. If it was a string I pulled it, if it was a tab I tried to peel it etc. The usual result was a string that broke off without opening anything or a tab that sliced off a tiny piece of the side of the thing but still resulted in a smugly sealed container.
Now I just go straight for the ball point pen. Six or seven good frenetic jabs tends to end the chess match between me and the contents I’m being denied access to.
Sometimes it’s not a pen. Sometimes it’s a butter knife.
Potato. Potahto.
Stabbing is involved.
The second hack for today concerns cheese.
Specifically, frozen shredded cheese.
I like to buy things in bulk.
Unfortunately, shredded mozzarella cheese goes moldy pretty quickly unless you freeze it. And Costco doesn’t just let you buy one giant bag of cheese. They insist on making you schlep home TWO giant bags.
One of which always goes into my freezer for later.
Sometimes, later means “pulled out five minutes before I actually want to put it into a recipe” later.
The best method for preparing a solid frozen lump of cheese for sprinkling - over a pizza or a lasagna or what have you - is to take the bag and whack it repeatedly against the kitchen counter.
It’s best if your counter is a sturdy one. Granite, butcher block etc. (Old fashioned laminate is kind of wimpy and, in the battle between cheese and counter, a laminate might lose.)
This method also works for frozen shredded hash browns.
Or peas that were accidentally left out of the freezer for twenty minutes one day and, when returned to sub-zero temps, decided to huddle together for solidarity. Pun intended..
The whacking method has the added benefit of a good workoutf or the upper arms and a cathartic release of aggression.
The downside is that it scares the hell out of my dogs.
Copyright© 2023 Anne Morse Hambrock All rights reserved.
Four O’Clock
This year I planted something called “Four O’clocks”.
Guess what?
Four O’clock means exactly that.
The flowers open each day at around 4:00 pm.
The rest of the time they look like little pips.
Not a lot of bang for my buck. :-)
Keep The Messages Coming!
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I appreciate the feedback and knowing how often I have struck a chord with your lives.
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