I’ve Got WHAT?

It’s been too hot to cook at my home in Florida lately. Temperatures have been in the mid-90s, almost cool compared to most of the rest of the country. Are there air-conditioned spaces where people can go to avoid the heat? I’ve been going grocery shopping but when I get home, where the air conditioner stopped working at the exact time I could not afford to get a new one, it’s just too hot to cook. Maybe one of these days I’ll take a bus to the mall and stay a while. Then again, maybe I won’t.

My kitchen needs a make-over. Barring that, it does need a good cleaning and reorganization. Can’t do the clean-up all at one time. It’s a good all-summer project. Hopefully, I’ll be finished by the time the weather cools – whenever that may be.

I decided to start with one drawer. No, not the junk drawer! I opened the double drawer where the silverware sleeps. Knives, forks, and spoons sleep in one divider of the drawer. Cooking tools - well, some of them – are resting in another divider on the other half. Looked like a fun drawer to start with.

I found that I have four corkscrews. There may be more. When I helped set up wine tastings at a now defunct liquor store, I always carried one, along with a cheese knife. That one is a sommelier knife, also known as a waiter’s friend. Sort of looks like a pocket knife. There are three of those, all different. Then there’s the wing corkscrew like the one my father used to use. Mine’s red, white, and silver and big enough I can always find it.

There are two ice cream scoops in that drawer. One is metal. The other is plastic. I’m afraid to use the plastic one unless the ice cream is melted. They’re both dippers. The metal one has worked great for years. No need to use anything else. Of course, I’d like to have about half a dozen dishers. Probably wouldn’t use them much for ice cream, though.

I’ve been working around, over, and next to what’s probably the most expensive thing in the drawer. Besides getting in the way, it only does one job. It pounds stuff, meat in particular. It’s Italian. I paid probably too much for it in a gourmet store about 15 years ago. Don’t even want to think what they’d want for it now. (Another reason to stay out of the mall.)

There’s a pie server that’s covering up two nutcrackers. I used to make pies because Ernie loved them. The nutcrackers were used most often as other tools. The nutcrackers used to belong to my father. That one little section is my memories and may stay there forever.

Behind the Italian meat pounder the plastic dry measure cups hide thermometers. All anolog. One huge, slow oven-type that used to get a workout in the oven and the gas grill. Now it just sits in the drawer. I used to have five instant-reads. All but one of them were stuck in the air-conditioning vents of various vehicles. Now there are only two. Uh-oh! It’s 84 degrees in the drawer!

Think I'll quit for a while and finish this drawer if it ever cools down at night.