CCE
(Keyrock the unfrozen caveman lawyer; your world frightens & confuses me)
1
This image below is a Yaxell Gou carving fork. I find the design elegant and more than a little pretty to look at. It usually retails for $160 according to Cutlery & More.
I want to buy it.
I don’t need it. At all. I rarely use a carving fork, and even when I do, the not-so-elegant one I have performs as well as I think this one would.
So I won’t buy it. Even though I want to.
I can’t think of anything in the kitchen that I’ve bought just because it was so pretty, but there’ve been plenty of times I wanted to buy something that was pretty but would not have brought one ounce of function to the party vs. the uglier cousin version I already have.
What about y’all? Any lusty purchases that really don’t function any better than a plainer version?
looks to be drop forged, not stamped. that’s a quality feature.
I have a drop forged Wuesthof “carving” fork, since 1985 . . .
I’m betting less than 5% of the time is it used for “carving”
a “fork” is a very useful utensil - I poke potatoes, steaks, roasts, etc etc with the fork and have thru experience ‘calibrated’ my ‘poking senses’ to still-rare, medium, and over-done.
frankly, I trust my poke sense more than a thermometer…
Absolutely. I have certainly bought things which are more than simply functional. If you remember, I have bought a couple of donabe. Are they better than my electric rice cooker? Probably not, but the notion and ability of making rice and other dishes in a clay donabe is attractive to me.
Even more than that… are my teapots. I have several nice teapots.
Would a $10-15 mass production teapot do a similar job? Most probably. I also have some nice ceramic bowls and plates.
I think a difference is that I did not buy these for their “beauty” per se, but more about the perceived history and uniqueness.
To be honest, I think almost all of us do what you have said … it is just that everyone has a different recognition of that cutoff.
The teapots are serving pieces; of course the appearance matters. I suppose the carving fork is as well, but is the appearance of the $160 one more than five times as attractive as the $30 one?
My whistling kettle
A big bright orange le creuset.
But I don’t regret and I use it every day.
My biggest problem is buying those handy gadgets that I just have to have. Esp when I see them on holiday. Like my Vietnamese clay pot (never used) Thai noodle basket thingy (never used)…
At least I use my cleavers, knives and pestle and mortars
Those LC kettles do look beautiful on the stove And I say this as an owner of two of them.
I could heat water in a saucepan, but why settle? These pots are gorgeous, serve an aesthetic purpose and will last for many years. Worth the extra money to me.
I would actually think that it’s only form over function if it looks stunning, but actually doesn’t work that well.
Like my pepper mill that looks like a little mailbox but actually struggles to grind pepper
I collect a fair amount. While my main passion is cooking, reinforced by not holding onto a kitchen item that goes unused for more than one year, I have loads of form over function items such as a pomme vapeur, a daubiere, South American clay baking dish, various baking dishes from Pillivuyt and Apilco, and a trompe l’oeil terrine that looks like a duck baked in a molded crust. The PV could be replaced by a steamer basket, the daubiere by a cheap slow cooker, the various baking dishes with Pyrex, and, as often as I have pate, the terrine by a trip to Central Market. However, I have a kitchen where most things are on shelves where I can see them, and they provide a lot of fun. You could argue my espresso maker was form over function, but I have never tasted better espresso. I am confident it was more a function of the way it works (lever) than the copper and brass. Other than the terrine, my form over function items get used very frequently.
I still have no idea what is MNSRRN. I do know Amazon randomly highlighted this electric kettle to me. It took me forever to find out what that other thing is. This diagram seems to suggest it is a fancy looking water pump/outlet.
It has a modern art look. I think it is supposed to act as a knife and also a food scoop too. It is also inexpensive too: $32. Not sure how good they work.
These dining knives and forks are interesting looking too.
