Measurements and Kitchen Gadgets

As part of my latest box from Mary’s Secret Ingredients, there was a set of measuring spoons that the Accidental Locavore initially just laughed at. I’ve been using a set of Tupperware spoons since I got them and they worked fine (come on, what does a measuring spoon have to do but measure stuff?), were a good color and clipped together easily so they were easy to find in the drawer. So when I saw this mess of spoons from POURfect and a strange stick that was attached, I was a little resistant. After reading that they were in Braille and metric, along with English, and had spoons for a drop, smidgen and pinch, skepticism reigned supreme!

Part of it is probably because I don’t bake, so the accuracy of a pinch isn’t as much of a priority as finding the room in my height-challenged drawer for a big set of spoons. A pinch to me is as much or as little of the particular item (usually a spice) as I like. As for a smidgen — really?

This morning, I had to admit to being a little hasty in pre-judging the spoons. I was making a recipe for baked cauliflower that called for 2 tablespoons of oil to be drizzled over the cauliflower. Large bottle of oil in hand, doing it without making a mess was going to be a challenge. Then I remembered the set included a 2-tablespoon spoon and soon my perfectly drizzled cauliflower was on its way to the oven and the only thing requiring cleaning was the spoon.

Since the pinch and smidgen spoons turn out to be in milliliters, they may come in really handy when I start cooking from my new (autographed) copy of Nopi. It was hand-carried over from London (thanks to Bob and Edesio!) and is all in metric, so now I don’t have to keep Googling conversions!

And the weird stick? Turns out to be a leveling tool—clever!