Haute Cuisine

Oh I really must protest today! Whatever happened to the butter knife? Or even the dinner and luncheon knife? Why does one never see these around anymore? As most women will attest, it's a rare thing to see a man holding a knife at the dinner table anymore, unless he's about to stab a side of beast.

Well, I'll tell you what's happened to the lowly knife. It's been replaced by a peanut butter and jam spreader.

Yes, I saw it this morning and will paste it here if you don't believe me. I saw it, of course, in the Globe and Mail's Style Counsel, which starts off the sales job with this line:

Sometimes it's nice to own things you don't actually need.

Judging by the state of the landfill sites, we all own way TOO much of what we don't actually need. (Dinner knives notwithstanding.)

The Style Counsel goes on to say:

It doesn't, for instance, take much to make a classic PB&J sandwich: the two namesake ingredients, some bread (sliced diagonally, crusts on) and a utensil to do the smearing. But Cuisipro, the Canadian maker of kitchen gadgets for every purpose imaginable, has designed a Peanut Butter and Jelly Spreader that is too adorable to resist.

And just in case you don't know how to use it, unlike, say, the regular garden-variety kitchen knife, they explain:
It looks like a distant cousin to a kayak paddle, with rubbery silicone ends colour-coded to remind you not to cross-contaminate.

Isn't cross-contamination the whole point of PB&J?

The ad goes on and on -- after all how much can one say about a PB&J spreader and still fulfil the word count necessary for advertising this item?

They say it's packaged with "all the necessary ingredients" -- what more does one need? -- and "it's a deconstructed housewarming gift that's far more creative than towels."

I say, bring on the towels!!!!