Julie Jams Seattle Washington Food Cooking Blog: To cog or not to cog

One of the perks of being a critically acclaimed food writer (haha) is that companies send products to my house for a review. A couple of weeks back, I was overjoyed to see a package on my doorstep. Usually, I receive some sort of consumable, but this time the box contained two kitchen utensils...Herb Scissors and an Ice Cream Scoop from the website Useful Things.

I've had a busy couple of weeks and was unable to plan anything requiring herb scissors (the only fresh herb I'm using right now is parsley). As far as the ice cream goes...we don't have a lot of that laying around at the moment, either.

I did use the scoop the other night to plate some rice for a stir fry dish. It worked really well for that purpose. But I thought that the company might want me to review the product for its intended use.

Endurance is a line produced by R.S.V.P. International, Inc., a Seattle based company. For a moment, I thought about handing out a bunch of points for the sheer localness of the company. But, as it turns out, these items are manufactured in China like everything else. Oh well, nothing new.

The ice cream opportunity knocked last night. For a few months, my oldest daughter has had a couple of wiggly teeth. Her first ones! I thought, for sure, they'd be out by Christmas. But she isn't the maniacal tooth wiggler that I was as a child. She was perfectly content to let it work itself out. Fine by me...I didn't have dreams of the "door slam" technique or the giant pair of pliers so loved by certain parents I know.

But, then, the new tooth started growing in right behind it. Through a recent tooth discussion with a mom from my daughter's class, I garnered that when this occurs, its time. My grandma tried to do the honors the other day (I think wiggly teeth and hair in the face are her a couple of her biggest pet peeves), but my little girl would have none of that. She'd been recently frightened by the loose tooth escapades of Ramona Quimby.

You know, there's just no convincing a 6 year old drama mama that having your tooth pulled isn't as bad as you think. So I merely asked to look at it and touch it to check it out. With a quick twist, I surprised her at how ready it was to make its escape. We were well on our way now!

A few minutes later, I had convinced her to pull it out (nothing like a tooth facing backwards to get you ready). After the deed was done we had to call all sorts of important people to share the news of this coming-of-age event. My sister, being the fun and loving aunt she is, asked if my daughter had tried to chew anything yet. She then suggested that my daughter should probably try out some ice cream, just to be safe. How about yogurt, I suggested. Too creamy, was my daughter's reply.

So, we sent daddy to the store for a couple of pints of Ben and Jerry's. Finally a chance to test out my new "#12, ice cream size, ...cog regulated, spring released blade for dependable and lasting durability."

I let the ice cream sit out for a few minutes to soften it up a bit, but it was still pretty hard when, having been asked if it was ice cream time for the hundredth time, I decided to go for it. The beautiful shiny handle was actually really hard to grip. I kept accidentally squeezing the cog regulated spring. I'll bet this devise makes beautifully shaped scoops when using very soft ice cream. I tried just grabbing the scoop part, but it was still to difficult. I'm sorry to say that I finally just switched to my trusty non-cog regulated Zyliss scoop. I'll keep the Endurance scoop for shaping lovely rice mounds.