In general, I am against kitchen tools with only one designated purpose, such as (and I am not making these up):
garlic press, tomato corer, avocado slicer, cherry pitter, apple corer, mushroom slicer, lettuce knife, pickle picker, potato masher, citrus zester, strawberry huller, orange peeler, cookie dough scooper, chili twister, truffle shaver, ice cream scoopers (that’s what spoons are for!), and those little things you jam into the ends of corn-on-the-cob
I will make allowances for pizza cutters and cheese slicers, and I will even condone the use of a vegetable peeler as it is a multi-use utensil. In the past, I placed melon ballers in the former category of needless tools with limited purposes, but now I see it is a tool with immense possibility.
10 things to do with a melon baller:
Scoop melons (duh), as well as soft cheeses, butter, and ice cream (take that ice cream scooper!)
Seed melons, cucumbers, zucchini, squash, peppers, and pumpkins
Core pears, apples, and even pineapples if you try hard enough
Remove pits from peaches, plums, nectarines, and apricots
Measure ground coffee
Plant seeds
Create perfect cookie dough balls (talk about portion control)
Make twice baked potatoes
Use as a tool to make sand or snow sculptures
Shape meatballs
And the 11th thing to do with a melon baller…
Stir tea when you run out of clean spoons
October 7th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
Jen you crack me up!
October 7th, 2007 at 6:57 pm
Good to know I’m putting that fancy college education to use, huh?
October 7th, 2007 at 7:17 pm
Well I did think that the writing was outstanding.
October 7th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Why, thank you. Hey, what do you think about having some kind of dinner for your birthday? Maybe Chicken Fettucine?
October 10th, 2007 at 8:25 pm
Sure, sounds good. You cookin? Can we make it low cal?
October 11th, 2007 at 7:55 am
Well, that rules out chicken fettucine, but I’m sure we can make something healthy…I get a lot of recipes from Cooking Light magazine.
October 11th, 2007 at 6:40 pm
okay. I love the essay on the web site.
October 12th, 2007 at 6:15 am
What essay?
December 11th, 2007 at 5:31 am
[...] I take back everything bad I ever said about cookie-dough scoopers (see Ode to a Melon Baller). This little device is awesome! If you are fed up with the two-spoon tango of drop cookies, try [...]
October 8th, 2009 at 5:07 am
[...] items, like cherry pitters and avacado slicers, so I am always delighted to find ways to re-purpose items like melon ballers or cookie scoopers. The way I see it, if I can find 10 uses for a melon baller, I am getting much [...]