It doesn’t get much more useless than this
By Christa TerryI buy my flour in bulk from King Arthur Flour, which means I get a new catalog in the mail every month. It never ceases to amaze me how many one-off gadgets and appliances are sold by a company that ostensibly caters to series bakers.
The most recent example of flagrant pointless was the peanut butter and jelly spreader. It has a spreader on each end so you can avoid contaminating your peanut butter with jelly and vice versa. I personally prefer to use a knife in the PB and a spoon in the J, but that’s just me. I’d watch out if you’re using a runny jam, lest you find your fingers gunked up by sweet stuff when you turn it over to scoop your nut butter.
Then there’s the S’mores maker, which unfortunately did not come from King Arthur Flour. Back in my day — I can’t believe I just wrote that — we used a plate if we wanted to microwave up some s’mores. I’m guessing moms prefer washing a plate to scrubbing the defibrillator hands of an anthropomorphized…something.
Who buys these things, anyway?
August 12th, 2008 at 9:54 am
But surely everyone puts the peanut butter on first?
August 12th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Pfft! Clearly you are a child. Back in my day, we used a campfire to make s’mores, period. S’mores were not home food, they were Girl Scout Camp food. Microwaves and homemade s’mores were unheard of.
Okay, microwaves came along before I quit Girl Scouts, but they didn’t exist when I started.
Besides, I was the childhood heritic who couldn’t stand marshmallows. Chocolate? Awesome! Graham crackers? Yummy. Marshmallows? Why would I mess up perfectly good chocolate and graham crackers with them?
No wonder I was desperately unpopular in my Girl Scout troop.
That s’more defribulator really is disturbing, and not just because of the memories it evokes of horrible nights around a campfire between my terror of fire, my nightblindness, and the unabashed hatred of a whole bunch of little girls who were masters of expressing their disdain for me whenever the leaders (including my mother) turned their backs. Lousy times, lousy times.
I remember seeing that two-ended peanut butter and jelly spreader and wondering who on earth would buy one of those.
August 13th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Ash: Honestly, it all depends on what vehicle I am using for my PB and my J. If it’s a tortilla, then PB definitely goes on first. If it’s bread, I spread one slice with PB and one slice with J in whichever order is easiest. Who knew sandwiches were so complicated!
Twistie: Eek, you make me glad I quit the Scouts after seeing how boring Brownies was. Brownies never did anything except for little sewing projects. Booooring! I wanted to camp…but now I’m kind of glad camping was something I did with my family rather than with a gaggle of mean girls!
August 14th, 2008 at 7:09 am
Can’t you just wipe the PB off the knife on the clean slice of bread and then use it for the jelly?
August 14th, 2008 at 9:02 am
Yes, class-factotum…yes, you can. And I often do!
August 14th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
And for the truly inept/lazy among us, you can now buy frozen PB & J sandwiches with the crusts pre-cut off and microwave pre-assembled smores. Who needs campfires or specialized tools! Just a freezer and radiation source. OOOOoooWhooo!
August 15th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Hey, Manolo – Thanks for the link, anyway. Appreciate it. Even bad PR is good PR, if you know what I mean… PJ Hamel, King Arthur Flour test baker/blogger