Too cool.

You know how it goes – you’re researching legitimate things (in my case, a mini fridge that would be suitable for my office) and end up bamboozled by something else (in my case, this jaw-dropping über-cool {pun intended} French-door Refrigerator/Freezer.

Let’s just dream for a second. This baby, from the Samsung Chef Collection, sports 34 cubic feet of storage space. That means it can hold (hold onto your hat) 34 bags worth of groceries. It has an LED display on the door that lets you know the temperature inside, is lined with stainless steel panels to lock in the cold, offers zoned temperature and humidity control, and can produce chilled still or sparkling water at the touch of a button.

 
Yada yada you say. And, I agree. There are many lovely-such cool boxes in the world. But, take a look at that freezer down there. Yes, lookie! The French-door freezer has six drawers and six shelves, which, to my mind, makes me inclined to let the refrigerator tag along, if I were in the market for a new refrigerator/freezer (and not just an office-sized number). Such organizational potential! I can almost see my little containers of frozen pesto, frozen stock, and frozen pie crusts neatly arranged and cataloged. But, I really do not need a new refrigerator/freezer and have no intention of buying one anytime soon. But, I do wonder, friends, if any of you have such a freezer? And, if so, is it as cool as I think it would be?

A Bowl of Cherries

I love summer because summer means fruit and fruit means breakfasts of fruit and yogurt.  I have lots of favorites, but one of the top fruit contenders has got to be fresh cherries.  Nothing beats the ripe red goodness of sweet firm cherries swimming in a sea of creaminess.  But, the logistics of cherry eating often kept me from partaking of them in the a.m.  I would sometimes plunk the cherries, whole, into my bowl of Greek nonfat, but then breakfast became a search and rescue mission of carefully gnawing my spoonfuls of yum in order to find all the pits before they chipped my teeth.  My other alternative would be to cut cut cut cut around each cherry about 38 times in order to slice the fruit away from the pits.  My fingers would be stained, the cutting board would be stained and it would take me an inordinate amount of time to cut up enough fruit to do the yogurt justice. 

“Haven’t you ever heard of a cherry pitter?” a relative finally asked me.

I heard angels singing in the clouds.  A what?  No, I had never heard of such a thing, but if it was any relation to the apple corer/slicer and/or the melon baller (both of which I bought and never used) then no thank you.

I was soon convinced of the superior benefits of a cherry pitter and vowed to get me one of those.  I shopped and purchased and stood, the other morning, poised over a big bowl of fresh, firm cherries.  Zing ping – the pit popped right out!  Zing ping – another did.  It was so fast and efficient.  Look, Honey, I called to my husband, look how fast and easy!  I was popping out pits faster than a machine.  Pretty soon, the whole bowl was full and I covered the pitted mound with yogurt dollops.

My smart relative was right!  A cherry pitter was fantastic.  I smugly gobbled down my breakfast thinking I was all that, now that I had a cherry pitter and knew how to use it.  I could be on an infomercial.  I could sell these things at the state fair. 

“What happened to your shirt?”  My husband asked when he came into the kitchen.  I looked down at what used to be my favorite white tee shirt now splattered with 10,000 tiny specks of red.  Pitiful.