Hi Everyone, Each summer when I travel for my annual vacation, there is always a foodie pursuit for an ingredient, a tool, a piece of equipment or something kitchen related. Sometimes I get so obsessed you would think that my life relies on this one thing.
This trend has been happening for more than a decade now but I won’t bore you with all the details… well maybe a few. In some cases it was more of a want than a need and in others it was a need rather than a want. There were a couple of times, yes (whispered), where there was no reason at all and I have to tell you, those were really the best times.
The search starts here in the Caribbean on the Internet. Pages are bookmarked, notes made, addresses of stores and shops written down including telephone numbers. Google maps are checked to determine distances from my base as well as distances between stores just in case I cannot find it in one place. This is a serious foodie pursuit.
Photo by Cynthia Nelson
Once on the ground the hunt begins. Thankfully, I am blessed with very generous friends that have no problem chauffeuring me from one place to the other until I find what I am looking for. A couple of years ago, the object of my obsession were a set of WECK jars. WECK jars are German glass canning jars. Think mason jars. I was attracted to them because they came in various shapes and sizes and something about their metal clips seemed downright old fashioned and homey. I could imagine my sorrel and guava jam in them, pepper sauce, fresh fruit juices and milk. My BFF (best friend forever) and I combed the whole of Seattle and the outskirts looking for WECK jars. At some locations when we did find the jars, they were not the size I was looking for; so on we went with the search. There was one last store to check and they had exactly what I was looking for. Thanks to good customer service, a clerk at the previous store called ahead and asked them to hold the jars for me.
On another occasion, I was looking for a toast rack. Man I looked in every kitchen store but could not find a toast rack. Now, you would think that someone who is consumed with getting a toast rack makes and eats toast regularly. Right? Wrong. I just wanted to have it so that on the occasion that I do make toast, I don’t have to deal with toast sweat. What’s toast sweat? It is the condensation that develops when your hot toast rests on a plate before you eat it. I don’t like it. And the toast rack would save me from the horrors of toast sweat.
Once upon a time I had 2 perfect kitchen timers. Both of these timers fell on different occasions and got damaged so that meant I had to go in search of kitchen timers. You have to realize these were perfect timers. I could punch in the numbers directly rather than having to press an up and down button. They were memory timers, in other words when the timing was up and it beeped, it stopped with the last time I had put in. That was particularly useful for me because I would have more than one timer one whilst cooking and the memory feature told me exactly which task the timer was assigned and was done. The timers could count up and count down and they could simply function by keeping running time. In other words, I could press start and it would start to count up without being pre-setting a particular time. When those timers beeped, I could be in the yard and hear them clearly. They could also function like clocks.
Photo by Cynthia Nelson
To date, the search for replacement timers has been the most frustrating hunt. It is not that I cannot find timers but the ones I have found don’t have individual numbers, all have up and down buttons and a start/stop button. The beeps are faint and not loud enough, I find myself having to take them from one room to the next if I am not physically in the kitchen and let me tell you, I don’t live in a West Wing-like building. Recently I was gifted a timer by some friends, can’t wait to test it.
But as I said earlier, my foodie adventures are not only about kitchen tools. I also search for ingredients. Last year, I was looking for alligator pepper (aka grains of paradise). It is an African spice that I read about in a food history book. The spice was used in the food that was cooked for the slaves while on their perilous journey to other parts of the world. I have not cooked with it yet; when I do you will be sure to know. In Atlanta a friend and I went to many stores until we found it in a little community store off the beaten track that specializes in ingredients from their homeland.
Tea infusers, steak knives, spatulas, spoon rests and mince pie (British) pans have all been foodie summer pursuits too. I know how to have a good time, don’t you agree? Don’t bother answering that.
Cynthia
