Kitchen woes and miracles

On Sunday, I broke my favorite knife. It was a small ceramic knife that I bought in Tokyo back in 2004 and oh so carefully imported back to the Netherlands. Sunday afternoon, I was using it to open a pack and it slipped from my grasp and broke on the floor. Ceramic knives: wonderful for chopping things, never go blunt, extremely easy to break. Boo!

"Suddenly, I'm not half the knife I used to be ..."


Monday evening, I managed to tear off part of the nail on my little finger with my vegetable peeler. I've cut into the nail bed and now have the fingertip wrapped in a rapidly greying plaster. Yes, it is painful.

On the plus side, however, I have achieved my goal of perfect mashed potato. Mash is my favorite food, bar none. When it's good, it's sublime; when bad, a lumpy waxy mess. The key is the potato ricer. On Saturday, I finally purchased one at the Steamer Trading cookware shop in Bournemouth, and I used it for the first time yesterday. Bliss! Ordinary boiled potatoes were quickly and easily transformed into a pile of riced potatoes; hot butter and milk were beaten in, generous amounts of salt and pepper added, and then the whole lot consumed within minutes. Fluffy gorgeous mash -- just like the Best. Mash. Ever. that is served at Quaglino's. Roll on a carb-tastic 2009! Potato ricers: You owe it to yourself to buy one. You won't regret it.

FYI, Steamer Trading was excellent; lots of stock, friendly staff. Of course, in retrospect, I really needed to go there on Monday, AFTER I'd broken my ceramic knife -- as they had a wide selection of them. Curses.