Pittsburgh

If I could add a follow up question to that, what things do you keep on hand all the time. Garlic sure, you mentioned Chimayo chile, salt and pepper etc. Do you find you keep a lot of herbs and spices on hand? Vinegars? Oils? Hot sauces? Dozens of small jars in the fridge of various provenance? Sometimes I feel the need for a lot of these things and other times I think I could make do just a few baiscs. Jeff

I have one of the Kyocera yoke peelers, and frankly I never use it. There's something about it that just doesn't work with my hand. And the blade seems too loose in the handle (i.e. has too much play). I much prefer the yoke peelers from Kuhn-Rikon. I saw recently that Kyocera now offers a similar handle. However, using a gift certificate I got for my birthday I recently bought a Kyocera slicer. Basically a plane that's about 6 inches by three inches with a handle; it has a ceramic blade in the middle of the plane. The thing is amazing. I've been using it constantly to create really really thin slices of vegetables etc. since I got it. The sharpness of the ceramic blade is a real plus here. Jeff