No Painter, But Some Great Kitchen Gadgets

No, the building is not painted. Our painter flaked out. Actually, he flaked out eight times, and each time I had to call him to find out why he didn't show up. The seventh time I told him it was his last chance, and he came for half a day and then didn't come back the next day, so I fired him. For heaven's sake. We got another painter, but now we have to wait until the end of the week to see how the building turns out.

Tonight I was skimming through the fluff in the last issue of Gourmet and I ended up reading their "year's best cookbook" roundup, which is totally useless to me because I don't use cookbooks. In the review of Stéphane Reynaud's Pork & Sons, it mentions a recipe for blood sausage with walnuts and chestnuts, finished with cream, "which would be a hearty first course for a winter dinner party". Now that's just silly. Who the heck serves blood sausage at a dinner party in the United States? The editor of Gourmet, Ruth Reichl, should be more down-to-earth than that. I don't love Gourmet under her banner, but I adore her autobiographical trilogy. The funniest of the series is Garlic and Sapphires, but it's also the last one chronologically, so it's sort of cheating to start there. But let's not make pleasure reading into an ethical issue. If you know anyone who likes food, that book would make a fantastic gift: it's thoughtful, honest, and hilarious.

Don't buy all your cooking-related presents yet, though: Generous Servings is going to have a nice little cookwares section with my hand-selected recommended gadgets that are really worth the money. I've spent a lot of time arguing with cookware companies about why I only want to carry a single one of their products (which is because the rest are worthless)--that's not the way they want retailers to do things. But I am committed to selling only the items that I reach for on a daily or weekly basis in my own kitchen, and that I know will last for years. One catalog I looked through had lots of great stuff that I ordered for the teaching kitchen, but the last section was completely devoted to that little junk that always sits next to the cash register at cookwares stores: tiny whisks, measuring spoons for "pinch" and "dash", miniature rubber spatulas that are apparently made to go on your keychain. It's amusing to see where that stuff actually comes from--it never occurred to me that self-respecting companies would manufacture those silly things. If you really want a vegetable brush with a cartoon potato face on it or a brontosaurus-shaped pancake mold, let me know and I can get it for you cheap.