skinny girls & mayonnaise

I have a bad habit of bringing my favorite cooking utensils places, and leaving them there. You may remember the sad saga of my favorite wooden spoon which got left in a ski cabin at Big Bear. Similarly, I left my favorite tongs at a cooking lesson I was giving for my friends’ gourmet girls group. And then I left my next-favorite tongs at the Steve McQueen beach house in Malibu.

A man cannot live long without tongs.

So it was that I was out at Target, shopping for a new pair of tongs amidst the long aisle of mostly useless cooking gadgets. The very same day, I received the first of what will undoubtedly be a “Summer is coming” onslaught of emails from Sur la Table, Williams-Sonoma, Cooks.com and other helpful sources touting this season’s newest and greatest tools and resources for the outdoor cook.

A perfect opportunity for another edition of Good Gadget, Bad Gadget. I think I’ve exhausted the “good gadget” category, which tends to be the old faithfuls which have been around for generations — tongs, wooden spoons, garlic presses, potato ricers, etc. But the “bad gadget” world is a self-renewing well that never runs dry. So here today you get just the bad and the ugly — you already know about the good.

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A variety of exciting new hamburger patty presses, because that old tried-and-true standard, “the hand,” just doesn’t cut it anymore:

This nifty job has a reversible handle top that allows you to make an indentation so you can stuff your burger. It’s called the “Stuff-a-Burger Press”.

The “Press and Store” enables you to press several burgers and store them in your fridge, eliminating the need for a plate and foil.

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Here’s a great new gadget to make you more effective in your grilling this summer:

This is not workout equipment. Nor is it a car jack. Give up? It’s a “potato cutter & wedger”. I have a more primitive potato cutter & wedger. It’s called a knife.

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I don’t know how I lived without this one all these summers:

Chili pepper corer

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And finally, this:

“Pork Buttons” — to tell when your grilled pork chop is done.

*I would like to thank Sur la Table for this round of can’t-live-without grill gadgets. Williams-Sonoma, you’re up.