NO HEADLINE
Sometimes the simplest things are the most important. Most modern kitchens are outfitted with high-tech appliances and the drawers are filled with complicated gadgets.
The stand mixer on the counter can do anything from mixing dough to making sausage. Looking at the espresso machine – with its dials and switches and dangerous looking nozzles – makes you wish you were an engineer. Or there was a Starbucks next door.
It’s never safe to throw away the manual because you never know when you’ll need it to program the slow cooker or dry fruit in the dehydrator.
But a few simple machines have yet to be improved upon.
Carol Hunter, a Spokane attorney, keeps an old corkscrew around for just that reason. It works better than any other she’s tried.
But that’s not the only reason she cherishes it. Hunter’s wine opener belonged to her grandmother.
“My grandmother, Miriam Lienkaemper Hunter, moved to Spokane in the late 1920s,” Hunter told me. “Before that she lived outside Yakima on a prune ranch.”
Hunter’s grandmother acquired the utensil before moving to Spokane. In the early 1990s, when her grandmother moved into a nursing home, Hunter’s father offered her the old wine opener.
“My first thought was ‘that will make a nice memento,’ ” Hunter said. “Little did I know it would become a useful tool in my kitchen.”
She’s tried other, openers but always came back to her grandmother’s wine opener.
“Over the years, we have used the more modern wine openers but always end up using the old stand-by – Grandma’s – because it is fail-proof,” Hunter said.
A state-of-the-art kitchen has its appeal but sometimes, when you want to get a job done, you don’t need a lot.
That’s the lesson Hunter learned when she put away fancier equipment in favor of her grandmother’s old kitchen tool.
“I like it because it is lightweight and the wood handle makes it easy to grip,” Hunter said. “Mostly though, I like the fact that it is so old and yet it works better than anything created after it – which is hard to say about most inventions.”