Weapons of Mass Destruction
This summer Marc and I went to a few State Agricultural fairs. At one of the fairs, I saw a woman on a raised platform wearing a speaker’s microphone while she stood in front of a pile of near-naked vegetables.
“No way,” I said to Marc as I pulled him to a stop. “She’s demonstrating peelers. Let’s go watch.”
My first tip-off should have been that no one, absolutely no one else was around her.
My second tip-off should have been the Band-Aid on her finger.
“That’s not from the peeler, is it?” Asked Marc who laughed because the thought was so ridiculous – a demonstrator of peelers who cut herself – now wouldn’t that be silly.
Well let’s just say that sometimes reality can be a lot funnier than anything this writer could have come up with. Yup, she hadn’t been paying attention and she had sliced her finger on a peeler.
“Sometimes, you just have to make do with what you have,” she said as she waved her finger aside ready to start her presentation.
Marc and I both should have walked away but the sense of the absurd held us.
She demonstrated the peeler (keeping her injured digit gently raised and out of the cutting area.)
“It’s really very simple,” she droned, “if you hold it this way , it peels, if you hold it another way it dices. And if you use this tool,” she expertly pulled out another device that looked suspiciously similar, “you can grate your vegetables to make slaw with NO messy clean-up.”
Not only did it do all that, but these magical peelers also:
- Removed eyes from potatoes
- Could be used by right or left handers
- Were Swiss Engineered
And to top it all off, these peelers were high recommended for use by Arthritis and Rheumatism suffers. I didn’t have either of those conditions but who knows what coming down the road, right? Best to be prepared.
“Marc, we have to get this,” I said picturing the two cabbages that were sitting on our counter being easily grated into slaw.
The peelers were $6.95 a piece but if you “acted now, you could get both for only $10.” I happily paid the woman her money (avoiding that sore finger) and tucked my paper bag with the two peelers into my purse.
When I got home, I took the peelers out. “We’re having Cole slaw with dinner,” I told the kids. About 5 minutes (I’m not kidding here) and two Band-Aids later, I rinsed off the Incredibly Easy-to-use Swiss Super peelers and hung them up to dry (we had been warned that you mustn’t leave them wet because they could rust) and instead took out my heavy Swiss kitchen knife. Very quickly, I had not only cut up the cabbage but also two apples that had been sitting on the counter – into the pan they all went.“Forget it,” I yelled out to the family, “Slaw’s for another day.”
That night I sautéed because sometimes you just have to make do with what you have.
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Wendy Thomas writes about the lessons learned while raising children and chickens in New Hampshire. Contact her at [email protected]
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