Why do otherwise savvy hosts insist on serving their spirits in decanters? It's neither retro, nor now. There is very little cachet in having admirable crystal in the modern home. It merely reeks of pretension. What decanters do is scream! They scream 'CHEAP LIQUOR!' They draw attention to the host who passes off Claymore as Laphroaig, they reveal the cad who would present Three Barrels as a Hine. Nowadays, the decanter is quite simply dead. An embarassment.
What household item would you condemn to the recycling box?
posted
The dessert spoon, I mean what kind of **** uses a special spoon just because it's a f*cking dessert? Especially a stupid f*cking round spoon that doesn't even fit your mouth properly unless you have a gob like Cherie Blair...
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quote:Originally posted by squeegy: Tea cozies. I mean come on people!
But it helps keep the tea in the pot warm while you're drinking the cup you've poured. Surely that is a useful thing?
I would send armchairs to the recycling bin. They're just shit aren't they. Not as big as sofas, you can't lounge on them, you can't fit as many people on them. Just pointless small sofas really.
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posted
Fish knives. They don't appear any better at filletting out small bones than a bog-standard knife, and cause confusion about which way to hold them when using them for just cutting, at which they're not very good.
As for decanters, I think they have their place for port or wine, as the act of 'decanting' airs said drink as it goes in. But for spirits they are, indeed, declassé.
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posted
Garlic presses. When I was in sing-sing paulie would always slice the garlic with a razor so that it melted in the pan...or something like that.
Garlic presses are the stupids things to wash up.
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quote:Originally posted by herbs: Fish knives. They don't appear any better at filletting out small bones than a bog-standard knife, and cause confusion about which way to hold them when using them for just cutting, at which they're not very good.
aren't they easier to peel the fish away from the skin with?
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quote:Originally posted by SilverGinger5: I would send armchairs to the recycling bin. They're just shit aren't they. Not as big as sofas, you can't lounge on them, you can't fit as many people on them. Just pointless small sofas really.
I sort of see your point - at the moment I'm usually consigned to the armchair in the living room so my housemates can share the sofa, and if you swivel to the side and try and put your feet up, you wind up with one arm of the chair working its way into your back seperating your vertabrae, leaving you lolling backwards like a clock in a Dali painting. But! A good armchair feels like a throne and makes you feel like a king.
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posted
In our kitchen there is a knife block. 6 knives: one big fuck off carving one, 2 other long meaty ones, 1 vegetable and 1 mid length. Then there is this really skinny one with a pointy end. What the fuck is this for? It's too slender to properly chop stuff with, or use the blunt side to spread marge etc. Even more annoyingly, the fucking clowns I live with have failed to notice the clever system I use of always putting this duff knife in the centre of the block, so you know to avoid it. Quite often I'll pull out an end one, expecting it to be a sensible chopping knife, and find the dud one been put there instead of in the centre! Fucking outrageous.
ETA: in our bathroom there is a plastic inflatable pillow filled with red feathers that is stuck to the bathroom wall. It looks shabby and tacky and annoys me every time I take a shower.
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posted
I've checked through the list and we don't have any of those things in our house anyway, including the internet and an armchair (we have one sofa). We did have a garlic press once, but I used it once and then threw away.
What I would get rid of? We've got really stupid things in our house which were bought to fit in a specific place in one of our five previous dwellings and have never fitted in any of the others and just sort of lean, in a corner somewhere. There's a sort of cooling rack/hot saucepan stand which used to fit perfectly on a little area right next to the cooker in our last house. Now it has no place and just gets knocked over every now and then and goes, *CLANGGGgggg* and everyone jumps and goes, Ohmigod, what was that? It was the same thing that went *CLANGGGgggg* this morning when someone else knocked it over, can we get rid of it? No, it's nice, I like it and we might use it, one day. If we ever move back to our old house.
So, I'd probably chuck out the thing that goes *CLANGGGgggg* every time one knocks it over.
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Astromariner
Going the right way for a smacked bottom
posted
We got a sort of heavy duty pump-action corkscrew as a wedding present that comes in its own mahogany-effect box. Also in the box is a selection of different poury things for the top of the wine bottle and two spare twiddly bits for the corkscrew, in case of some kind of wine-opening calamity that would necessitate reinforcements. The kitchen shop I used to work in sold them for about £90. It's roughly as heavy as a Volvo containing a family of four, and opens bottles of wine in about the same time as the drowning man corkscrew I bought from Oddbins for £3.99. It's very shiny though.
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posted
Why is it that grapes that have seeds in them are called "seeded" grapes, but if you take the skin off a banana or a chicken then it would be "skinned" and if you took the bones out of a piece of meat it would be "boned". This has confused me on a number of occasions, to great crunchy effect. Grapes have to be "seedless", but chicken can also be "skinless" and meat also be "boneless". "Peeled" means there's no peel on it, right? "Seeded" means there are seeds. Just keep that in mind.
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posted
It wasn't having a go, Benway, it was making a joke!
The joke is that I will only see the picture every two weeks, because I only have a shower every fortnight! Don't you see?
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