Best budget gadgets & tools

TastyReuben said:
I have Wusthof shears and I love the way they easily separate for washing.
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It's great when you have been washing dishes, cleaning as you go, everything is ready, cutting board and knives are washed, and then you think, "Oh wouldn't some chives or parsley be nice as a finishing touch," but you don't want to rewash the cutting board and knife. Voila! Out come the kitchen shears.
 
The kitchen shears are heavy duty (I have 3 pair) and can cut through chicken and other meat quite easily, though I don't often use them for that. I do love to use them when cutting through the top of a lobster shell. I don't use them for anything else but food. My kids used to try to do that and they got heavily chastised. I don't want glue, tape, or any residue from anything else on my shears that I use for food!
 
Morning Glory said:
I don't have a salad spinner - small kitchen - would take up too much space. But then, I don't tend to wash leaves unless they are really dusty or dirty. Same with herbs. I usually buy cos lettuce where only the outside needs a rinse. Or I buy ready washed. The leaves I'm using from the garden don't seem to be dusty - but I do sometimes rinse them and pat dry in a kitchen towel.
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There is all kinds of dirt you can't see! My lettuce, spinach, and herbs don't look dirty when I cut them, but when I soak them and strain them, they leave dirty residue in the bowl. I read somewhere that the average human being ingests 2 pounds of dirt in their lifetime.
 
JASOH1 said:
There is all kinds of dirt you can't see! My lettuce, spinach, and herbs don't look dirty when I cut them, but when I soak them and strain them, they leave dirty residue in the bowl. I read somewhere that the average human being ingests 2 pounds of dirt in their lifetime.
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Well I reckon a bit of dirt doesn't hurt (roughage :D ). The worst thing I remember is when I was about 12 years old and my best friend and I went to her granny's for tea. Granny made a salad from lettuce picked from her garden. Her eyesight was obviously poor because there were insects both green and black that were actually crawling all over the lettuce. I think I've blotted out what happened next.
 
Morning Glory said:
I use ordinary scissors for chives etc. In fact I don't have kitchen shears. Hmmm....
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You should consider a pair. They are strong enough to use when cutting apart a chicken, and they come apart easily (see photo) so you can wash them thoroughly. I use them a lot, and one big use is cutting excess skin and fat off of chicken parts. It is much easier than a knife for jobs like that.

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Morning Glory said:
Well I reckon a bit of dirt doesn't hurt (roughage :D ). The worst thing I remember is when I was about 12 years old and my best friend and I went to her granny's for tea. Granny made a salad from lettuce picked from her garden. Her eyesight was obviously poor because there were insects both green and black that were actually crawling all over the lettuce. I think I've blotted out what happened next.
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That's why I steer clear of organic lettuce, cabbage, etc. I grew up on a farm, I'm used to some bugs on the produce, but I bought an organic cauliflower a year or so ago, and when I got it home, I went to give it a rinse, noticed a few tiny little bugs (aphids, I assume), so I put some vinegar and water in the sink, dunked the cauli, let it sit for about 15 minutes, and there were thousands, probably tens of thousands, in the water, and I pulled out the cauli, pulled it apart, and there were still thousands in there, and they left behind that little sticky goo trail, which meant I would have actually had to scrub each floret, and there's no way to get completely in there, so that thing ended up in the garbage, and back to good ol' GMO-modified, irradiated, hormone-doused factory farm cauli for me.

caseydog said:
You should consider a pair. They are strong enough to use when cutting apart a chicken, and they come apart easily (see photo) so you can wash them thoroughly. I use them a lot, and one big use is cutting excess skin and fat off of chicken parts. It is much easier than a knife for jobs like that.

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That's how mine are. They work really well on removing the backbone of a chicken...the three times I do that in a year. :)
 
TastyReuben said:
That's why I steer clear of organic lettuce, cabbage, etc. I grew up on a farm, I'm used to some bugs on the produce, but I bought an organic cauliflower a year or so ago, and when I got it home, I went to give it a rinse, noticed a few tiny little bugs (aphids, I assume), so I put some vinegar and water in the sink, dunked the cauli, let it sit for about 15 minutes, and there were thousands, probably tens of thousands, in the water, and I pulled out the cauli, pulled it apart, and there were still thousands in there, and they left behind that little sticky goo trail, which meant I would have actually had to scrub each floret, and there's no way to get completely in there, so that thing ended up in the garbage, and back to good ol' GMO-modified, irradiated, hormone-doused factory farm cauli for me.


That's how mine are. They work really well on removing the backbone of a chicken...the three times I do that in a year. :)
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And that would be enough to create a food aversion to cauliflower for me. But an expected one. That's just disgusting, I can see it in my head and it makes me squirm (like an aphid). It's one thing to not know the bugs I am eating are there (we have all unwittingly eaten more than a few in our lifetimes) but another to see multitudes on your food like that. Reminds me of some horrible prison scene in a movie or something. UGH.
 
TastyReuben said:
That's why I steer clear of organic lettuce, cabbage, etc.
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Maybe its different here - but I do buy organic quite often and haven't found anything remotely like that. A cauli shouldn't be infested to that extent. I think that is bad crop management because there are many ways to naturally deal with such things.
 
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