Unusual & mysterious kitchen gadgets

[liuzhou]

26 minutes ago, chromedome said:

To me it looks like a carpet knife, which would certainly not be out of place in a hardware store. Perhaps it just got mis-placed in the kitchen section by the receivers?

 

My experience may be limited, but in my sixty plus years I've never seen a carpet knife come in a box marked TS Kitchenware. Also, people here don't have carpets, which limits the demand for carpet knives.

 

It's a kitchen knife!

Edited September 27, 2017 by liuzhou (log)

[rotuts]

well after you dispatched the day's throats

 

using the same motion

 

you could cut the tops off  ' tough fruit '  such as pineapples ?

[blue_dolphin]

I can certainly see something like that being used to carve fruits and vegetables into fancy shapes.  Very much like the bird's beak knife I linked to above.

 

[Tropicalsenior]

4 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

t's a kitchen knife!

Okay, you've got my curiosity up, too. I was going to wait until later in the week to go to my Chinese store downtown and get my tea but I'm going to download this picture and go right now and ask my Chinese restaurant supply man if he knows.

Edited September 27, 2017 by Tropicalsenior
Self editing (log)

[liuzhou]

2 minutes ago, blue_dolphin said:

I can certainly see something like that being used to carve fruits and vegetables into fancy shapes.  Very much like the bird's beak knife I linked to above.

 

You could be right, but it seems to be more curved than any bird's knife I can see on the interwebs.

[liuzhou]

2 minutes ago, Tropicalsenior said:

Okay, you've got my curiosity up, too. I was going to wait until later in the week to go to my Chinese store downtown and get my tea but I'm going to download this picture and go right now and ask my Chinese restaurant supply man if he knows.

 

 

I'll be interested too hear what he says, but I've been in hundreds of kitchen supply shops here in China and never seen anything like it.

[blue_dolphin]

1 minute ago, liuzhou said:

You could be right, but it seems to be more curved than any bird's knife I can see on the interwebs.

 

Yes, yours is more curved than any I have seen.  Perhaps that means it has a much more specialized use than carving.

[Smithy]

Would that knife be useful for peeling palm to get the heart?  My first thought was a bamboo peeler, but I've never heard of eating bamboo that large.

[liuzhou]

3 minutes ago, Smithy said:

Would that knife be useful for peeling palm to get the heart?  My first thought was a bamboo peeler, but I've never heard of eating bamboo that large.

 

Edible bamboo does come much larger than that knife would cope with. It is usually cut or peeled with a cleaver. In fact, most  people of my acquaintance only have one type of knife - a cleaver.

[dcarch]

Can be very good for opening up pork intestines, scaling small fish, scraping meat off bones.

 

dcarch

 

 

[andiesenji]

Grape knife.  Use for harvesting grapes.  I have one I used to use when I had currant bushes, perfect for cutting the bunches off at the stem. 

A similar knife is used for cutting greens.  

I know they grow a lot of grapes in your area because there was a segment on PBS "slow food international" about the grape harvest in a tourist resort that has a grape tasting event.  

Found a reference to it.  

 

Edited September 27, 2017 by andiesenji (log)

[liuzhou]

35 minutes ago, andiesenji said:

Grape knife.  Use for harvesting grapes.  I have one I used to use when I had currant bushes, perfect for cutting the bunches off at the stem. 

A similar knife is used for cutting greens.  

I know they grow a lot of grapes in your area because there was a segment on PBS "slow food international" about the grape harvest in a tourist resort that has a grape tasting event.  

Found a reference to it.  

 

 

 

 

Despite that rather strange report, grape production is negligible here. I'm sorry but your information is bunk. The overwhelming majority of grapes in China come from Xinjiang in the far west of China which is nearer to Europe than to here. 

I visit the town mentioned in that link at least two or three times a month. Never seen grapes or heard anyone talking about them. I think someone has swallowed an over-optimistic press release. Your link is to a notorious government owned propaganda site full of happy smiling peasants.

I would bet everything that it isn't a grape knife. Who is going to manufacture and sell a grape knife targeted at a place with next to no grapes?

Edited September 27, 2017 by liuzhou (log)

[Tropicalsenior]

4 hours ago, liuzhou said:

I'll be interested too hear what he says, but I've been in hundreds of kitchen supply shops here in China and never seen anything like it.

Well I hope this helps. When I showed him the picture he took me straight to this knife.

It's not as curved as yours but it is similar. He said his mother in China had one with a metal handle just like yours and it is a fruit knife. She uses it both to cut up fruit and harvest fruit out of the garden. the young man that works in the shop with him said that his family had a farm that grew something that he could only describe as mustard, and that the children were given the knives with wooden handles to harvest the plants. I have no idea what part of China they are from. Stupid me, I didn't ask.

Now I have one for you. This little Gizmo was right in the middle of the knives. I had to ask, but can you tell me what it is? It would be considered restaurant equipment.

And they had my tea. all I had to do was show them the translation you sent me and they got it for me. I'm anxious to try it. Thank you so much.

 

[Tropicalsenior]

58 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

Who is going to manufacture and sell a grape knife targeted at a place with next to no grapes?

The Costa Ricans would do it. A while back, I came across a sale bin here that had ice scrapers for your windshield and furnace grates. There's not one furnace in the whole country.

[liuzhou]

6 hours ago, Tropicalsenior said:

He said his mother in China had one with a metal handle just like yours and it is a fruit knife.

 

Thank you. Yes, a fruit knife was my first guess.

 

I'm sorry, I have no real idea what your find might be.  A menu card holder?

Edited September 28, 2017 by liuzhou (log)

[gfweb]

13 hours ago, liuzhou said:

In the course of my perambulations around the city centre today, I came across a small hardware store which is closing down. They mostly stocked kitchen gear of average quality. Of course, I had a look. Everything was the same price. ¥2.00 (30 cents USD). They had little I wanted , but I did pick up a pack of three self-adhesive hooks, then I saw this knife.

 

 

It is sharper than I would have guessed but I have no idea what its intended use might be but at that price, I thought "why not?" The young girl who relieved me of two pictures of Chairman Mao had no idea either. She has been taken on temporarily by the liquidators.

The blade is about three inches long. Here it is in my average size hand.

 

Suggestions as to what it might have been designed for would be very welcome, thanks.

 

 

 

Barrowing hogs

 

[Tropicalsenior]

59 minutes ago, liuzhou said:

A menu card holder?

Yes, exactly right! Although, why it was in with the knives, I have no idea

Edited September 28, 2017 by Tropicalsenior
Addition (log)

[Tropicalsenior]

This one will probably be an easy one for some of you. I took a picture of this one in the store because I had one and found it to be completely useless. I gave it to the same friend that got the waffle iron.

[dcarch]

Toilet paper holder!

 

 

dcarch 

[Tropicalsenior]

24 minutes ago, dcarch said:

Toilet paper holder!

Not in my kitchen. Sorry, no.

[Smithy]

Paper towel holder?  I've seen some similar, but they usually have a central spine to fit up the cardboard roll, and no circular holder at the bottom.

[Tropicalsenior]

17 minutes ago, Smithy said:

Paper towel holder? 

No, sorry, not even close. I thought that this would be an easy one.

[quiet1]

3 hours ago, Tropicalsenior said:

This one will probably be an easy one for some of you. I took a picture of this one in the store because I had one and found it to be completely useless. I gave it to the same friend that got the waffle iron.

 

'Looks like a spoon holder I have, but mine has a little dish that sits in the base to prevent the spoon dripping on the countertop?

[Thanks for the Crepes]

8 minutes ago, quiet1 said:

 

'Looks like a spoon holder I have, but mine has a little dish that sits in the base to prevent the spoon dripping on the countertop?

 

I know what you mean. Like this. I don't think @Tropicalseniorwould withhold a component of the device, though, and it looks sort of tippy to be a spoon or ladle holder without a counterweight. Or maybe the Chinese, practical souls that they seem to be, expect one to provide one's own drip bowl/counterweight?

 

I can't even guess what the device would be useful for otherwise, but I could see it holding a ladle or spoon with a heavy bowl put into place on the top "rack" ring above the "foot". Okay, you know what, it still seems really tippy on that narrow foot. I don't think it's a spoon holder, or else I can really see why she gave it away. 

 

[Lisa Shock]

A canning jar lifter?