Never break Rule # 5

I should have known better.  I broke my own rule #5: never go to Williams Sonoma alone (we can discuss rules 1 through 4 another time).  Actually I broke #3, too : never take your credit card into a cooking store.   Williams Sonoma is, for me,   like chocolate chip cookies for others: irresistible and never enough.

I went in looking for  a new Y-peeler.  That's all I needed.  Let's face it, W-S is not dumb; their merchandisers know about people like me, that's why they group all the gadgets together in enticing displays.  Reaching for a peeler, I realized I could, instead, get three for only a few dollars more:  a straight, a serrated and a julienne peeler in a set, and in bright colours.  And only $15.  Such a deal.  Why shouldn't I  treat myself?  After all it's a lousy, hot, humid day, a storm is threatening,  and I deserved something .

No sooner had my hand closed on the peelers, than my eyes zeroed in on the Dial-a-slice apple gadget -- the one all the foodie magazines have been raving about.  I just had to have it (even though I can't remember the last time I made an apple pie and I'm perfectly capable of coring and slicing an apple with a knife).  Who wouldn't want a gadget guaranteed to produces two sizes of uniformly sliced apples:  16 thin slices or 8 thick wedges.  No kitchen would be complete without one of these.  And I might want a pie sometime soon….

By now my hands were full, so I needed a basket.  Rule #5: if you break rule #4, NEVER, NEVER pick up a basket.  The basket looked a little empty, and I didn't want to embarrass the helpful ladies at the checkout, so I ambled through the store, adding this and that.  Nothing extravagant, mind you, just a gadget here , a mix there , a bottle of demi glace, some fleur de sel and herbes de Provence (I was running low on both, so these were actually necessities, not splurges).

Twenty minutes after I entered the store, my basket had a satisfactory heft to it.  And then I spotted the food processors.  The rest of this story is not for the faint of heart.

No, I did not succumb to temptation and buy a new $200+ machine, but I wanted to.  Instead, I assuaged my baser urges with, you guessed it, more gadgets.  A new set of (square) biscuit cutters, dulled the pain of resisting the processor, but  the shiny, new grill brush actually made me smile.  So what if I went in for a $4 peeler and came out with a Visa bill I'll be paying off for months?  I was happy.

Now if I just had enough money to buy something to slice, julienne, salt or grill, I'd have it made!  But I'm still smiling every time I look at my nice, new grill brush.  As soon as the storm passes, I'm ready!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Where do you find your characters and plot?

Chicken or Egg, Book or Movie?

An Interview with Pat Deuson