Est. 1998 — 27 years of woodworking knowledge
Ever used tools for food preparation?
Denis Ch�nard, Orl�ans, Ont.
>I did tonight.
My wife was carving pumpkins with the kids, and we were having ham steaks for dinner. I'm the one cooking.
As I was watching them go at it, I thought the kids would find it cool if their steaks were "pumpkin-faced" (the steaks were roughly round in shape).
So I went to the shop and retrieved a 1/2" chisel, with which I carved a pumpkin face in the steaks, then cooked them. The kids loved it...
DC
Re: Ever used tools for food preparation?
Gil Mitchell
>not personaly,but a buddy of mine used a machette {sp}to cut his wedding cake back in the seventies and they are still together today believe it or not.
Re: Ever used tools for food preparation?
Garrett in Victoria
>I once cut a couple of steaks off a frozen roast using a bandsaw. A few days later it took a while to find the source of the foul odour. There was a pulsating mound of "beef dust" lying on the bottom of the lower cabinet. Yech.
Cheers, Garrett
Re: Ever used tools for food preparation?
Paul Kierstead
>Yeah, I sliced some frozen smoked salmon on the BS. Wasn't the greatest of ideas, I'll tell ya.
Think I'll file that under "Don't do it"
Neal (San Jose)
>
Wasn't there a thread on this a few months back?
Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA
>As I recall, it got kind of silly toward the end - as so many threads do here...
Re: Wasn't there a thread on this a few months bac
Frank D. in Montreal
>Yes, this subject regularly comes up. I think I contributed to that thread, right at the beginning...
My favorite is cutting Franch baguette with a Japanese ryoba, I can both rip and crosscut.
Re: Ever used tools for food preparation?
Jack Guzman from Maine
>One of my first jobs was as a restaurant laborer.I remember cleaning out the chef's bandsaw of bone dust mixed with meat and blood.The first time I did it the thing was loaded with maggots.You definitely don't want to do this to your bandsaw.---Jack
I know of one...
Steve Kubien
>A lady I know was splitting from hubby (he left). Before he could get all of his stuff out of the house and shop, she used his bandsaw to slice and split turnips, pineapples, roasts, chickens...well, everything. I can't imagine the smell afterward.
Steve Kubien
Oh yea!
Scott Burr in Ben Lomond CA
>I shave choclate with a spokeshave all the time...
Re: Framing hammer
Jay St. Peter - Southern MD
>My wife used to regularly borrow my rubber mallet from my toolbox to pound chicken breasts flat. One day I came home and saw my framing hammer on the counter ... she couldn't find my rubber mallet. Surprisingly there were no dents in the counter tops and appliances. Not long after that she got a proper meat mallet.
Jay St. Peter
Re: A Wiser Man then I
Paul Kierstead
>
Didn't Todd just mention......
Cooper Suter
>...some preliminary tenderising he did on a deer w/a ball pein hammer once?
But how do you know which direction
Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA
>the grain runs in bread?
And, do you get a lot of tearout with multigrain bread?
Bill, trying to get a rise out of this group
Re: Ever used tools for food preparation?
Marion R.
>I once made eggnog with a cordless drill. My cordless mixer had died and we needed eggnog for party. ;)
Re: Ever used tools for food preparation?
James Watriss
>Not necessarily prep, but I now keep a card scraper in the drawer for cleaning off the ol' butcher block. I read a thread in here one day where some unfortunate gentleman had been hospitalized after running a sander over an old butcher block, and got a lung full of all kinds of unholiness I don't even want to think about. So I decided to keep my block clean, to keep the bacteria from getting too bad... and to use a card scraper to do so, since it makes shavings, instead of dust.
Oh... I don't think Jack O'Lanterns count as food, but I used a power drill to make those yesterday. Needed a wide-eyed screaming look, and the round holes did just the trick. :)
Re: Ever used tools for food preparation?
R.J.Whelan
>Back in the "old days" of Badger Pond we used to joke about using our most dear and collectable planes to make super thin slices of pepperoni for pizza - I don't know if any of us ever actually did it .... rj
Pumpkins and Chisels
Brad in Ottawa
>I used my brace and bits to carve my pumpkin too! The neighbours thought it looked cool because it looked like someone shot the pumpkin up to make the face.
On a food prep note I do use an old but clean screwdriver along with a hammer to help in the kitchen. Sometimes to separate frozen burgers or chicken breasts a little encouragement is required. I find a well placed screwdriver and some force can pry apart frozen objects quickly. Just need to convince my wife that we need a bench vise on the kitchen counter to help hold the suckers!
Brad
Re: Ever used tools for food preparation?
Philip Duffy
>My best performance was when my brother and his kids showed up as scheduled one day when my wife was traveling. They ate their way thru the scheduled dinner like it was a snack. Bewildered for a moment, I thought about the lasagna in the freezer, took it out to the bandsaw, cut it into 2in squares, mircrowaved to heat and slapped it all back together and served it up. No one was for the wiser and it was a huge hit. Saved a piece for myself. Delicious! Some members of my family still are laughing over that solution. Phil
Face or tail vise?
Steve Kubien
>
From the "Don't try this at home" department.
Mark Harrison -- in Sydney, Australia
>I didn't do this. This is a copy of a note from David Eisan from rec.woodworking (courtesy of Google groups):
David F. Eisan
Apr 2 2001, 4:28 am Dear All, This afternoon I was foolishly left alone in the kitchen with a seemingly simple task, whip some cream. It all started when I was attempting to whip some whipping cream into, oddly enough, whipped cream with a hand whisk, and it seemed to require far too much effort on my part. I am sure a Neander would be quite happy with a hand whisk, but I was looking for a Normite way to get this done. Now I realise that most people have a power hand mixer, or what ever they are called, but I don't have one. I started thinking, hmm, how much different could one of those things be from a router. All a hand mixer is, is a motor with a Jacobs chuck like socket for whisks. Now if you think you know where I am going with this, you are probably correct. I got out the dial callipers and the shaft of the hand whisk was exactly 1/4". Woo Whoo, first problem solved, I can use the standard 1/2" to 1/4" bushing. I go out to the shop and take my three and a quarter horse Hitachi M12V out of the router table and back into the kitchen. Using my 21mm and custom ground thin 23mm Craftsman wrenches, I chuck up the whisk. Next problem, speed. I measured the diameter of the business end of the whisk and consulted my router bit speed chart. It said I should use 18,000 RPM. The only question left was technique, clockwise or counter clockwise. Since I was doing an inside cut, I decided on the standard counter clockwise. I fired up the big green monster. Good thing the M12V has a soft start feature, because even with my elbows braced on the countertop, this is a heavy and unwieldy router to freehand in the air, but the torque was still more than I was prepared for and I almost lost it. Okay, here we are, full power. There was a quick blur of chaotic white liquid filling the air and as the blur subsided I quickly realised the bowl that previously held two cups of whipping cream was now virtually devoid of cream. I powered down the router. My face, glasses and upper body were covered in cream, as were two thirds of the kitchen. My better half, alerted by the unusual tool noise and loud cursing coming from the kitchen, walks in to ask just what the hell I thought I was doing. I wipe off, change clothes and come back to explain myself and clean up a very large mess. Once I explained what I was attempting to the young lady I thought was about to become my ex-wife (I could see it in her face, as she thought, I cannot believe I actually married someone this stupid, Dad was right), who is standing in front of me with a look of such total disbelief that I would have previously thought impossible to display, I was told that 18,000 rpm was a little too high an rpm for a whisk, and that a variable speed cordless drill would have been the correct choice of tool for this task. We were out of whipping cream at this point, so I will have to wait until after I have a chance to go to the store tomorrow to find out if the cordless drill works any better. Damm, now that I think about it, it would seem like the drill press is the way to go, then I could be just like Martha Stewart, Emeril or the Cute short blonde lady with the bob haircut who has two shows on the food network and have one of those big stationary Kitchen Aid looking mixer thingies, Hmmmm..... Live and learn. Thanks, David.
Newsgroups: rec.woodworking
From: "David F. Eisan"
Date: Sun, 01 Apr 2001 17:28:03 GMT
Local: Mon, Apr 2 2001 4:28 am
Subject: Router Accident in the Kitchen (long)
What I really can't believe...
john jesseph
>What I really can't believe is that he would admit to doing it, and post it on wreck.wood.
I'm glad he did..
Jack Guzman from Maine
>I really got a good laugh out of it.My wife did too.---Jack
Re: I'm glad he did..
john jesseph
>I really think he should have just chucked it into an eagbeater drill...
I can't believe...
Steve Kubien
>some people's children! I think it is time to thin the gene pool.
Steve Kubien
Ajax, Ontario
P.S. Besides, everybody knows a MF #5 eggbeater would be the tool of choice.