Cross country trip a lesson in kitchen efficiency

Despite the number of tools in the home kitchen, there’s but a few that are used regularly. So what if they’re electric?

I write to you from on the road, quite literally. I am in the car somewhere on Interstate 90 between Missoula, Mont. and Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. We are on a road trip where, unlike the pioneers that forged the West, we are stretching the limits only of our tolerance for long car rides rather than our endurance. It is on the winds and bends of the long and desolate stretches of roadway, punctuated only by dotted clumps of grazing cattle that I start to think about what we can do without. After all, even in our current state of car camping comfort, there is a fair amount of letting go of what we normally consider necessities and making do with what you have on hand.

It’s hard not to think about it in relation to the kitchen in particular as we pass through the mountains, plains and valleys where pioneer women made do with a pot, a crackling wood fire and a wooden spoon. We have passed through state after state in much more splendor and comfort than they did of course, but we have scaled down. Our road kitchen consists of three things: “The Fridge” (an ice-packed cooler); a soft-sided cooler known as “The Pantry” that contains dry goods, tableware, cups and so on; and a sack, dubbed “The Kitchen,” stuffed with a burner, a camp percolator, a table cover, garbage bags and a small whisk broom. The whole idea behind it being that there are just three things to deal with when you set up camp.

It is in stark contrast to my kitchen at home, which, although it is a source of endless chagrin and complaint, is stocked with everything that I could ever need and more. In fact, it is so stocked that I often have trouble finding the thing that I’m looking for, like the spatula. And while I am not a total culinary gear head, I do flirt with that trait. I have been known to covet thy neighbor’s (actually, my really good friend’s) green Le Creuset stockpot. I have touched, examined, priced out, and sometimes purchased everything from a copper Kitchen Aid mixer to a high end, does-everything-but-cook-for-you Cuisinart food processor. After seeing my brother-in-law’s mango slicer, I stood with one in my hand at Target for a good five minutes before deciding that slicing approximately half a dozen mangos a year doesn’t require a special tool.

Although I didn’t get the slicer, I do have gadgets and gewgaws galore, many of them the finest of the low end: a heavy-duty cherry pitter; a whiz-bang apple corer; and a Foley food mill (which I couldn’t live without, especially during apple and tomato season). I seem to have gained a reputation for being somewhat of a kitchen-implement dork among family members who have given me a quesadilla maker, a chocolate fountain, a bread maker and other such items during the holidays. I have also been known to be seduced by the siren song of RonCo infomercials and have hung slack jawed at the chop-it salsa-making booth at the Minnesota State Fair for longer than is seemly for a sophisticated foodie.

Yet despite the variety of tools at my disposal, I tend to rely on just a couple. One is my elusive red, heat-resistant spatula. Another is Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything,” referenced often enough to transcend cookbook and become a kitchen tool. Perhaps the two most relied upon are my Little Oscar and Seal-A-Meal. They are at the opposite ends of the spectrum in many regards. The Oscar is a quarter-century old mini food processor that I inherited from my grandmother. Yellowed with age and use, it’s seen action for everything from everyday events to dinner parties and high-holiday events. It’s whipped up homemade pasta dough and buttery piecrust as well as endless batches of pesto and chopped zucchini during the height of the summer garden harvest. The Seal-A-Meal is another tool that my mango-slicing brother-in-law had. We borrowed it long enough to enter into a common-law relationship with it and finally purchased our own. It’s new and though it may fall under the category of gadget, it has made putting up food from our vegetable garden into a rapid task instead of an endless chore. The Little Oscar keeps on ticking and has saved me the $200 that a Cuisinart would have cost me. The Seal-A-Meal is the more modern version of canning and preserving that were a necessity rather than a nice to do back in the days of manifest destiny, and also saves me more than a few bucks over the course of the year.

These little shreds of thrift are a far cry from the practical values that drove the pioneer women who came before me, but I like to think that they have more in common with their values than with those of the over consumptive habits of my modern self. Plus, I’d be willing to bet that if they’d had electricity at their campsites, they would toted both tools along.