Hubby flips over new kitchen tool

By June Mathews
Columnist

Ever since he discovered the original “Iron Chef” on Food Network several years ago, Jimmie has become increasingly fascinated with cooking shows. Not that I’m complaining, mind you. Better food shows than the endless sportscasts and freaky sci-fi stuff he tends to watch otherwise.

Besides, the more he watches Food Network, the more inclined he is to cook, and except for the major messes his efforts produce in the kitchen, that’s fine with me. When he cooks, I don’t have to.

And as he began spending more time in the kitchen, his affinity for kitchen gadgets grew, too. While we’ve always had plenty such things to make do with, never has the collection been so large and diverse as it’s become since Jimmie became a foodie.

Instead of squeezing lemons by hand as we once did, we use an industrial-strength metal juicer. We used to cut pizzas with a plain old knife, but now one of those heavy-duty wheel blades does the job. We also have food thermometers, canning equipment, an egg slicer, a potato dicer, an apple peeler, a rotary cheese grater, a peppermill… Well, you get the picture.

Shoot, before Jimmie started amassing all these fancy schmancy kitchen gadgets, I figured if we had a peanut butter spreader, a few spoons and a can opener, we were good to go.

That said, I guess it should have come as no surprise that he would be thrilled with the latest addition to our kitchen arsenal, a tool that recently came into my possession through rather unconventional means: My friend, Karen, flagged me down in a grocery store parking lot, pushed a flat, rectangular box through my open car window and said,

“Here, take this home to Jimmie.”

“What th…” I said, somewhat startled that a package had suddenly landed between me and the steering wheel.

“It’s a spatula,” she said cheerily. “I bought several of these for next-to-nothing, and I’m giving them away.”

Karen, you see, loves a screaming deal as much as I do – no matter what it is – and in this case, she was gleefully sharing her latest find with a few random friends.

And yeah, it’s a spatula alright. A spatula on steroids. Seriously, folks, it’s the size of a platter. Big enough to turn four or five hamburgers at a time.

Pleased to be the co-recipient of such an unusual and delightfully unexpected gift, I thanked Karen kindly and did as she instructed: I took it home to Jimmie, dropping it by his TV-watching chair on my way to the kitchen with the groceries. When he saw what was in the box, his face lit up like a kid’s on Christmas morning.

“Really? She GAVE this to you?” He said it as if Karen had handed me a diamond-encrusted bagful of hundred dollar bills instead of a gigantic pancake flipper she’d paid only a couple of bucks for. He was gazing more fondly at that dang spatula than he’s looked at me in years, and he couldn’t stop smiling.

He was so taken with it, in fact, that he lugged it to work the next day (I mean, really, who takes an oversized spatula to work for show-and-tell? Answer: Jimmie), and it reportedly caused quite a stir. Somebody even offered to purchase it from him at a premium price.

I never dreamed there’d be a market for spatulas that could flip a house, but there apparently is. I’m betting if Karen had played her cards right, she could have made a fortune off those things. I wish I’d found them before she did. I could be raking in a lot of cash right now…

Oh, hey, anybody wanna buy a giant spatula?

Email June Mathews at jmathews120@charter.net.