3000 Yen Well Spent (2007-05-25)
With that 3000 Yen I won, I decided to spend it on kitchen stuff, my favorite shopping items. Speaking of kitchen goods shopping, let me tell you my shameful shameful past.
When I was in Sydney, I could be called the "Queen of Kitchen
Gadgets And Appliances Big And Small". You name it, I probably
have had
gotten one. I was the pioneer in acquiring the newest products on
the market. To name just a few, I've gotten a bread machine and a
brand new electric carving
knife just to cut neat slices of freshly made bread before bread
machines were ever popular. I've gotten a big juicer for
"regular" juices
(during a time when I was really into healthy food) AND a separate
CITRUS juicer just for lemons and oranges (Yeah, I was that
pathetic). I've gotten an electric egg boiling machine for gosh
sake. Who needs that when you have a pot? Apparently I
did! And I also had a bunch of other "useless" machines stuffed
way back in my cupboards.
And gadgets? There were so many that I forgot the existence of
half of them most of the time. Things that normal people would
not forget but I would such as the pasta machine and egg slicer.
I don't even know why I bought the pasta machine, it's not like I
cooked pasta a lot, not back then anyway. The funny thing is I
decided later that dry pasta has a better mouth feel than fresh pasta
which explains why I almost never used the pasta machine after the
initial novelty feeling wore off. I remember the melon
baller was particularly stupid as I only used it once after finding out
it's really hard to make perfect balls without wasting heaps of melon
in the process. The plastic ring thingie with slots in which
you put potato slices to make fat-free chips in the microwave had seen
more usage--like four times--before I deemed it useless and banished to
the cupboard forever. Fat-free potato chips for me? Who was
I kidding? And of course I had to buy a mandolin to make paper
thin slices of potato for the ring thingie. The meat tenderizer
thing that works like a stamp with a row of needles punching tiny holes
in the meat was pretty much a joke too. Buying a better cut of
meat is way better than stabbing a tough piece of meat a thousand times
with hardly any result to show for the labor. I can't believe I
spent twenty bucks on it, through a TV shopping channel no less!
I would buy things by the sets, not one at a time. Hey, why waste money on just one when you can squander on an entire set? I bought sets of glass bowls, measuring jugs, wine glasses (even though KL and I don't drink!), canisters in different material and sizes, even a set of soy sauce dipping dishes. An extravagant purchase was the full set of Le Creuset pots and pans which cost a fortune but produced very few memorable dishes due to my lack of cooking skill. I bought an entire set of CorningWare casserole dishes because the pattern looked cute and not because I cooked so much that I needed casserole dishes in forty different sizes. Do you see the problem here? I was letting my kitchen shopping run amok. I believe my kitchen was well stocked to the point only second to that of Le Cordon Bleu culinary school! Seriously.
Before we came to Japan, I posted a list of things for sale to my
workmates at rock bottom prices (like 90% off retail) and almost all of
them were snapped up within a week. We sold all our furniture,
big appliances and most of my kitchen stuff. What was left was
either given away or stored in my parents' and younger sister's
place.
What I learned from that experience is: I've been mad crazy
overbuying kitchen stuff, ABSOLUTELY STUPIDLY CRAZY. Over half of
the small appliances I had were used a few times, stowed and never to
see the light again. The bread machine, the juicers, the egg
boilers etc were enjoyed enthusiastically at first and then it was just
"I couldn't be bothered". I must have a DISEASE. There must be a
medical term for people like me who shop and shop for kitchen
stuff. They have a term for everything now.
Since I've gone wiser and tens of thousands of dollars poorer, I've
promised myself not to be sucked into the gimmicks of manufacturers and
marketing ploys. I'm not saying all kitchen things are a fraud,
there are plenty of gadgets
which are truly helpful to a cook (A peeler's good. You really
need a peeler). I have acquired everything I need for our humble
kitchen in Tokyo by now (I even have TWO battery-operated pepper
grinders, but that's a story for another time), so before I make any
more purchases these days, I always ask myself, "Will I use it more
than three times a week?". If the answer is no, you can be sure
it will not come home with me. There must be a medical term for
people like me who's CURED.
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