Objects of Use features beautifully-crafted vintage-style tools and furniture. Like grandma’s but more chic.

In this technicolor age where every conceivable item in your house and garden, from cleaning to tech gadgets to tools, comes in screamingly loud shades and busy patterns – and often (although, thankfully and increasingly less so) made of plastic – a bit of aesthetic simplicity and craftsmanship solidity come as a soothing tonic.

Whether it’s old-fashioned kitchen scales using weights, 20 different types of brushes (including one for cleaning the radiator and another for the computer), a Japanese planting trowel or a mid-century-style chair, Oxford-based website Objects of Use offers high-quality, highly desirable artisan products. Many are gorgeous and some downright unusual, like a vintage-style French soap dispenser and (below) stoneware berry bowls.

The retailer’s gardening section would impress any green-thumbed friend (yes, Christmas is still months away, but bookmark this site). We heart this exquisite set of five Dutch hand tools, but you might prefer the various shears, sickles, hoes, picks and pruners. Ever heard of a dibber? That’s a pointed stick for making a hole in the ground.

As the name suggests, these are not pointless, purely decorative knick-knacks; each has a specific purpose in mind. All are made using low-impact production methods and locally-sourced, natural materials like wood, bone and jute. You won’t find any plastic here. The useful objects of Objects of Use are built to last, not to throw away.

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 Why must everything come in packaging that’s seemingly ready-made for nuclear meltdown?

The clamshell isn’t finished, but perhaps it has met its match in the flesh-eating Pyranna, a wrap rage coping tool with teeth to cut ridiculously over-packaged goods. Evidently, manufacturers are more focused on anti-theft and cost saving plastic than consumer convenience. We are especially reminded of the wasteful abundance when seeing the hordes of back-to-school shoppers lining up at Office Depot with carts of protractors and mechanical pencils housed in impossible chambers of reconstituted petroleum – which includes anything related to a computer, music device or phone.

Instead of weapons for assaulting a plastic seal with the zeal of man eating fish, how about an industry wide replacement of wasteful packaging with containers that let us get to the goods without wrenching our necks, as I once did with an envelope of sliced turkey on a lunch break. Who knew fowl dangers lurked beyond the occasional Cargill Inc. bird?

I’m ashamed to admit I find myself at times relying on my teeth like some kind of primitive cave babe, emulating the piranha to no avail as the kid looks on with disdain.

We all curse those hermetically sealed ester-oysters that seem immune to ripping and stabbing, the ones that send well intentioned consumers to the emergency room for gashes, sliced fingertips and severed tendons. As we seek more responsible and sustainable packaging technology, it doesn’t appear to yet be a priority of the manufacturing world, which instead focuses on anti-theft measures at the lowest possible cost.

“History shows consumers will pay for convenience and if you eliminate difficulty opening packages at the same time you reduce the amount of package materials consumed in manufacturing, you’re winning on multiple fronts,” observes Bill Perell, whose company, PopPack, offers manufacturers an eco-friendly, Bubble-in-the-Seal® solution, a seal alternative engineered to give consumers, especially kids and seniors a break. Perell’s own father, a surgeon, resorts to a medical knife to cut his way through products.

His methodology of popping eliminates both challenging cartons, caps and wasteful tabs. “We did a study of Kellogg and General Mills and weighed the film tab on the cereal boxes and it is a third of an ounce and in the aggregate that creates a lot of waste,” he says.

The following is our list of the worst offenders.

Item: Audio CDs

Best Tool: Open Smart – One of several teethy tools on the market for slicing CD shrink wrap.

Solution: There are still people who have not learned about iTunes? Help these poor souls.

Item: Sauce Packets

Best Tool: Common, newly sharpened scissors  – which you may or may not have with you when eating sushi on the run.

One of the downsides to getting sushi to go is wrestling with those sauce packets which are torture unless you can find the sweet spot that may or may not indicate you should “tear here.”

Solution: Opt for sustainable sushi splurges prepared fresh at your nearest Japanese restaurant.

Item: Sliced Packaged Cheese

Those sealed 36-packs of cheddar are impossible without a pair of sharp scissors handy, so if you drag these to that family reunion picnic, better bring sharp scissors. This container is only rivaled by string cheese packets.

Best Tool: Sharp scissors

Solution: High quality cheeses from the local natural foods store or farmers’ market wrapped in wax paper or less plastic. It’s really not so hard to slice, is it? Certainly easier than getting those string cheese packs open.

Item: Oral B Electric Toothbrush

No one gets a charge out of trying desperately to crack open these packages to simply brush your teeth with that new dentist-recommended tool. Gillette opted for the ridiculously stiff plastic clamshells, but Procter &  Gamble has since created a cardboard box alternative. Arthritis sufferers must be overjoyed to be able to get to the product at last.

Best Tool: Sharp scissors

Solution: A standard tooth brush works just fine for most pearly whites. Go for a recycled plastic variety.

Item: Green Light Bulbs

It’s just so counterintuitive when you need to order a tool from Amazon to open your green light bulb. The light is on but nobody is home at the factory, as it were.

Best Tool: Zipit battery operated device from Amazon

Solution: How about simple recycled cardboard like the housing for the conventional bulbs?

Item: The Common Computer Mouse

Whether wireless or for the desktop PC, it shouldn’t be this hard to get to the mouse. The trap? The ubiquitous clamshell requiring tearing and cutting.

Best tool: Zipit battery operated device from Amazon or Pyranna

Solution: Bribe a child to open it.

Item: All Natural Frontier Sea Salt

So what could be so daunting about this little shaker of fine grind? The grinder is a nightmare, composed of a thick rim of impenetrable plastic with a small hole that must be punctured with anything but the human body. Jeez, I just wanted to flavor my chard.

Best tool: A sharp little knife, a steady hand and accurate eye

Solution: Luck.

Image: Pyranna; Amazon; Pink Moose; Peyri: Costco; Oral B: Zipitopener, dylancantwell, nioxxe, espensorvik

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ColumnDo we really need all this stuff?

I think there should be a special place in hell for single use kitchen implements.

Bagel slicers. Avocado slicers. Egg slicers. And those are just the slicers. Who likes these bulky, cheap plastic uni-purpose utensils cluttering up the kitchen? Someone must, because marketers work themselves into a froth trying to convince people that they need a special appliance or tool to accomplish each kitchen task. And they’re upping the ante, with celebrities putting their names on everything from skillets to spatulas to food. Yes: Paula Deen has her own ham.

Here are my top nominations for most useless kitchen items:

Rachael Ray Garbage Bowl: (shown above)

I received a press release the other day that breathlessly informed me that a Rachael Ray “Garbage Bowl” would “reduce wasted time in the kitchen.” Rachael’s technique of keeping a bowl near your prep area to gather scraps and dispose of them all at once is a good idea, though hardly original. But I take issue first with the construction of this argument. Saying it “reduces wasted time in the kitchen” implies that all time spent in the kitchen is wasted. I just don’t believe that. Some people like to cook. Secondly, won’t any similarly sized bowl in my kitchen cupboard do the trick? Well, according to the press release, no.

Here are the selling points of this glorious bowl:

It’s lightweight melamine so it’s never too heavy to lift.

As regular bowls are too heavy to lift when full?

It can be easily cleaned by hand or in the dishwasher.

So amazingly versatile!

The retro speckled design hides unsightly peels and other scraps.

Are onion peels and carrot tops really more unsightly than that weird, flesh colored bowl?

A rubberized base keeps it from skidding off counters or tables.

Good point. You never know when a bowl is just going to up and skid off the counter.

In the event the Garbage Bowl drops to the floor, it won’t break.

Why not make everything plastic so it doesn’t break?

For cooks who are growing vegetables and composting this summer, the Garbage Bowl provides an aesthetically pleasing way to carry food scraps from the kitchen to the garden.

They’re serious. I think.

Hot Air Popcorn Poppers:

I thought those enormous, electric hot air popcorn poppers had gone the way of Fantasy Island, but evidently not everyone is eating microwave popcorn these days because they are still manufacturing them. Let’s not even talk about why people can’t make popcorn on top of the stove.

Electric Muffin Maker:

Are we now so incredibly lazy in the kitchen that we can’t make muffins or cupcakes in tins in the oven anymore, nor time their readiness? This snippet of sales copy should tell you how stupid the manufacturers think people are: “A red power light lets you know the unit is on. And a green light tells you it’s ready. So simple to use!”

Electric Pancake Maker:

Since it’s admittedly taxing to flip pancakes over after you cook them on one side, you’d better make sure you put a pancake maker on your wedding registry. And, since whisking, measuring, and ladling is such an unnecessary pain, this wedding gift wouldn’t be complete without a couple cans of Batter Blaster.

Recloseable Can Toppers:

For those times when you just can’t finish a can of soda or beer, here are these nifty toppers that make the cans look like bottles! And they’re colorful!

Countertop Paper Towel Holder:

One of this aesthetic train wreck’s crimes is overdesign. Look at all the parts on that thing! Do we really need our paper towel dispenser to help us tear it right, every time?

Leave a comment and tell us about your favorite wasteful or just plain silly gadget.

This is the latest installment in Vanessa Barrington’s weekly column, The Green Plate, on the environmental, social, and political issues related to what and how we eat.

The post The Rachael Ray Garbage Bowl, and Other Ridiculous Kitchen Products appeared first on EcoSalon.

My best friend got the holiday bonus gift she dreamed of from her dentist employer this year: A new food processor. It replaces the worn out one that came with her husband when she got married 20 years ago.

Susan is a great cook, but so much of what she grinds in her processor is better done without electricity.

Enter the mortar and pestle, said to date back 5,000 years when hungry people figured out grain could be separated from chaff to procure digestible food. It has since been used by apothecaries to grind medicines and by foodies everywhere to pulverize grains and herbs to fully release the oils and flavors of a substance.

The logic: The rough surface of the interior takes hold of what we need to crack and crush, allowing us the traction for the pestle to do its job of amalgamating ingredients, reducing herbs and spices, defoliating stems and turning nuts to powders and pastes.

“If you enjoy cooking, using a mortar and pestle will simply be part of your craft of food preparation, but if you just need to get the job done, reach for the food processor, ” says Gourmet Sleuth, which opines that marble is the best choice for a versatile mortar and pestle. That’s because marble won’t absorb odors from garlic and other foods and is a hard surface for grinding, as well as easy to clean and maintain.

Are you ready for more hands-on food prep? Do you want to appear as if you are well equipped in the kitchen? Either way, here are some bowls and bats (including modern renditions) you can score for your own kitchen:

The Swiss designed Kuhn Rikon Eco Mortar & Pestle is made of bamboo with a porcelain bowl. It features a teardrop shaped porcelain hole, a modern approach to an age-old staple. $50.

This classic and affordable white marble Mortar and Pestle has a smooth shape with a contemporary clean style. It holds about 6 ounces. $14 at Olive Barn.

Le Creuset Stoneware Mortar and Pestle in Caribbean Blue (comes in other delicious shades, as well) has an unglazed interior and pestle tip to create the perfect surface for efficiency. The virtually non-porous stoneware is fired at 2156 degrees F, giving it unmatched strength and durability, making it resistant to chipping, cracking and staining. The enameled surface makes it easy to clean and resists scratching. Capacity: 20 ounces. $38.

Carved out of natural volcanic stone, The RSVP Authentic Mexican Molcajete from Chef Tools is the traditional Mexican version of a mortar and tejolote, or pestle is also included. This is the tool of choice for authentic moles, salsas and fresh guacamole. Includes a booklet with steps to cure and clean your molcajete as well as recipes for authentic guacamole and salsa. The molcajete is 5″ tall and the tejolote is 4.5″ long. $57.

Helen Chen’s Asian Kitchen 4″ Bamboo Mortar and Pestle works well because of the straight-up bowl and wide pestle designed for quick, efficient grinding. Bamboo is less absorbent than wood and therefore easier to keep clean and sanitary. Dimensions: 4″ tall. $13 at Chef Tools.

Main Image: Chef Tools

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