Confessions of a Grandma

For years and years I have burned my fingers getting things in or out of the oven.   I've written about that before . Well, why didn't anyone ever tell me about this handy little kitchen thingy: It pulls out the oven rack or pushes it back into the hot oven.  Genius!! I pulled out some baking ravioli to sprinkle on some cheese, pushed it back in to brown, pulled it out again...AND never once burned a finger. It's the height of strawberry season here in Florida--although, in truth, we have been eating Florida strawberries since January.  We get nice, sweet strawberries in Vermont.  The season lasts about three weeks.  And usually they do not get to monster size.

Has anyone ever successfully mashed potatoes with a plastic potato masher?  What is the point of such an object?  This one didn't even come from the dollar store.  It wouldn't necessarily snap in two if you tried to use it, but it wouldn't mash a  potato either.  Hence, I suppose, "smashed potatoes."  I suppose that these are meant for use with those pots that have the stick-free coatings that you have to baby or they might give you serious medical problems.  Maybe no-stick is not entirely useless, but I prefer my cast iron fry pans and my two All-Clad pots.  With a good seasoning, cast iron pans are pretty stick-proof.  I do clean mine with salt and hot water once in a while and re-season.  They are heavy and they can leach some iron into food (which may be good or bad, depending).  All-Clad is expensive, but I pretty much use two pot sizes so that's all I invested in AND I got the larger size at a deep discount because it ...