Sunday, May 13, 2018

Occam’s knife

Scott Goldsmith is the owner of S. Feldman Housewares, our favorite housewares store. I was happy to see him quoted in an New York Times article, “All Those Kitchen Gadgets, But a Sharp Knife Just Might Do”:

Mr. Goldsmith’s long retail career spans decades of gadgetry — including truffle shavers and cherry pitters, Salad Shooters and spiralizers — and traces a history of ingenuity, optimism and sheer whimsy. If the invention of defoliating devices for cruciferous vegetables causes you to think the makers of kitchen gadgets have finally and collectively lost their minds, Mr. Goldsmith will remind you that his store has been in business since 1929.

“Between you and me,” he said, “most of these things you can do with a knife.”

comments: 3

shallnot said...

Mr. Goldsmith has answered the question: what was the greatest thing before sliced-bread?

Chris said...

As a vegetable gardener I got a chuckle out of "defoliating devices for cruciferous vegetables," although I suspect the point isn't to remove the leaves but to remove the tough stalks of kale etc.

Did you catch the allusion to Occam in The Shape of Water?

Michael Leddy said...

Yes, if you want to keep the leaves, defoliating is a strange word here. We tried that gadget with herbs (the tiny holes are for thyme, rosemary, and so on) and found that it doesn’t work well at all.

Occam is the company or lab or whatever it is where the creature is housed, isn’t it?