Useless F***ing Object

I’ve always wondered about U.F.O’s. By attending a Pampered Chef party or roaming through a kitchen utensil store, you can open the door to a new world of objects that make your life easier.

Walking down the aisle, a myriad of gadgets and gizmos serve as constant amazement at the ever striving need to combine and make simple tasks easier.

A utensil clip can hold your stirring spoon to your pot. Plastic handle helpers go on hot pots and pans, so you can lift them without burning yourself. And there are a couple dozen objects you can use to cut, zest, slice, dice, crinkle, peel, core, wedge, scoop, chop, grate, seal and spiralize your fruits and vegetables. What will they think of next?

I’m dating myself, but back in the day, a sharp knife did the work of all of those objects.

In the small appliance category, you can fill an entire cabinet or two or three with a steamer, pressure cooker, air fryer, special toaster, breadmaker, rice maker, Instapot, popcorn maker, pizza maker, pasta maker and cooker, griddle, electric indoor grill, panini maker, juicer, food processor, rotisserie and a fancy sous vide water emersion cooker. Or you can have a pot, pan and an oven.

You can use special dishes for tacos, chips and dip, brownie bites, waffle sticks, miniloaves, granola snacks, pizza stone and minimuffins. But a larger kitchen is inevitably required to make your life easier… in the kitchen.

Comedian George Carlin used to talk about the endless amount of stuff humans accumulate, requiring bigger houses to store all the stuff. He could’ve stayed in the kitchen and started a whole new routine.

Now, I’m not a gadget person, obviously, and my view of cooking is anything that requires more than 30 minutes, start to finish, isn’t worth eating. But my husband, who loves to cook, is also addicted to the latest and greatest machinations to make a 10-minute task take 5 minutes less. I wonder if it occurs to him and his fellow thingy users that all the time it takes to clean all these objects may make up for the few minutes saved. And you wouldn’t need such a big kitchen. Silly me, he never cleans up anyway.  

One time, I fell into the trap. I started to make smoothie shakes and while I do own a blender, I saw this doohickey that you can blend and drink in the same container—and it was really fast.  So, I bought it. The first time using it had a bit of a learning curve. You fill the container and screw the blade mechanism on the bottom, then invert the liquid container to blend and pulvarate. BUT…you need to make sure the seal is tight on the blade mechanism or you have a big flying leaky mess.

After a few uses, I was a pro and happy with my purchase…until, the cog, wheel, gears or whatever started to wear down from use…after six whole months.

So, I went on their website, called and otherwise dogged every interweb avenue for a solution. I was told.

“It’s just wear and tear, but you are welcome to buy a new one at a discounted price.”

And that was it. In the garbage it went and just like that, I was cured. No more useless f***ing object U.F.O’s for me. Even if P.T. Barnum didn’t say it, I agree with the sentiment. A sucker is born every minute.

© Suzanne Rudd Hamilton 2022