Mystery Illustration 45

LSD?

Two pages down: "Kitchen Tools: Most homes have too many."

I see nothing has changed since 1946. Every time I turn around my wife has bought more pots, pans, and dishes and is trying to cram them into our long-suffering cabinets. I attempted to throw away a bunch of old pans several years ago and nearly precipitated a divorce. One opposes the female nesting instinct at great peril.

The article on kitchen utensils is way off. Example: a box grater is "bulky, hard to store, and difficult to clean." Single-sided are worse -- you need three of them and a mandolin slicer to do the same jobs. That takes up more space, and they invariably bang against each other in the drawer, dulling their cutting edges. It's a little harder to clean a box grater, but you can put it on a plate so what you're shredding is in a neat pile rather than being thrown around all over the place (Q: Is it better to clean one utensil or everything within three feet of where you worked?). Most of the other things in the article are similarly short-sighted, ill-conceived, or just plain wrong.

@A Nonny Mouse -- You'd probably start tearing your hair out if you saw my kitchen. Example: I have four 6" skillets: cast iron (sunny-side-up eggs), Revere Ware (pocket eggs and omelets), non-stick (scrambled), and stamped steel (mixing stump remover and sugar to make smoke bombs). Each one is just enough better at something to justify the apparent duplication.

Have you seen a movie titled "The Philadelphia Experiment"? It's the USS Eldridge!

The rust inhibitor described sounds very much like a modern product named POR-15, or Paint Over Rust, that I've used to coat slightly surface rusted sections on my Volkswagens where it is not possible to use a wire brush in tight areas. There are portions of the interiors of my cars painted 30 years ago and still look the same as when I coated them.

Nonny Mouse: on the one hand, since she cooks for you, stop whining. On the other hand, if she buys parsley cutters instead of good knives, you have a slight point. Pans, though? What else would she fry an egg in, your bare hands?