Simplicity isn’t always about buying something new or “green” to make your life easier.
The other day, I whipped up a batch of traditional chocolate chip cookies from the recipe on the back of the yellow Toll House morsels bag. I always make stuff like this from scratch, instead of from a tube of factory-made dough or prepackaged mix, because it doesn’t take that long and the final results taste better. Besides, I hate paying a premium price for someone to do something for me that I can easily do for myself, unless I have a darned good reason.
Anyhoo, things went just fine until it was time to add the cup of chopped walnuts.
I got out my (nearly new) nut chopper and remembered it was broken. I’d only used it three or four times when one of the tabs/slots that hold the clear plastic nut container on the bottom cracked and broke off.
Well, what to do? The obvious solution was the simplest one: “chop” the walnuts with a hammer.
For a long time, I’d used this technique. Measure out a heaping cup of shelled walnuts, put them in a tough zip-type plastic bag and hit ‘em with a hammer. (A rolling pin or wooden spoon might work too.) This actually works very well. You have a lot of control over how fine they get smashed and you can do a lot at once with the broad side of the hammer. Or you can focus on one nut by hitting it with the business end normally reserved for nails. If the bag is a heavier one, the nuts stay perfectly clean and can be reused multiple times.
The problem is, this simple solution wouldn’t be considered acceptable by a lot of consumers. One must own a “proper” nut grinder, or else what would the Joneses think? (Think of it! Oh the humiliation!) I fell for this myself (old habitual thinking is hard to break), hence my purchase of the the nut chopper that broke after just a few uses. I mean, every cook needs a nut chopper, right?
The reality is, for the number of times in a year that I actually have to chop nuts (five? six?), the hammer smashing method works just fine. Who cares how they get smashed if the ooey-gooey cookies taste good?
Now I wouldn’t mind an old-fashioned glass jar nut grinder like my mom has – the kind that had the screw-on grinding mechanism where the metal blades rotate through a slotted metal top. You hold the grinder upside down, turn the handle, which rotates the blades, which chop the nuts. (This actually takes longer than the hammer technique, by the way.) You collect the nuts in the small cap that came with it or let them drop into a measuring cup. It works great…and I don’t own one. I’ve looked for them online but these days, they all seem to be cheap, made of plastic and probably wouldn’t last any longer than the other one that broke. Maybe I can find a good sturdy older one at a garage sale. Or, since my Mom doesn’t bake much any more, she’ll let me take hers. I’d like it for sentimental reasons. (Hint, hint Mom!)
In the meantime, the plastic bag is folded, wrapped around the nuts with a rubber band and stored in the fridge until next time. (Nuts stay fresh longer if they’re kept cold.)
As I said, simplicity isn’t always about buying something new or “green”. So often the purchase doesn’t make life simpler, it just complicates it with added expense, clutter and frustration when it doesn’t work as advertised. How often do we make the knee-jerk decision to try and solve our immediate problem with a purchase instead of simple old-fashioned low-tech resourcefulness? Very often the “greenest” purchase is no purchase at all.
By the way, I finally threw out the broken nut chopper. Another piece of busted plastic consumer junk, manufactured at the expense of global resources and now added to the landfill.
Sigh.
I will try not to make that mistake again.
(Forgive the strange post title, but at least I didn’t inflict my first idea – ‘Nut Whacker Sweet’ – on you. You’re welcome.)
