One What?

For Christmas, my sisters, brother, and I all received an odd looking pasta scooper with mysterious holes, presumably for measuring amounts of spaghetti into a pot. I felt this was a useful tool, because I often misjudge the required amount of dry pasta when cooking. These holes are labeled “1/2”, “1”, and “2” respectively. The only question is, “1 what?” Serving? Ounce? Cup when cooked? We knew not, and there was no indication to give us any kind of clue on the packaging.

Yesterday, I set out to resolve this mystery which I am sure has been eating away at the minds of my siblings daily. First, I measured out how many “1’s” there are in a standard 16 oz box of angel hair pasta. The answer: 6. Hmmm…this means it is not ounces, not servings, and the only way to find out if it is cups when cooked is to cook a “1” and see what I get. Or, perhaps the “angel hair” circumference is not the proper pasta configuration for this tool. I decided to try the cooking thing some other day – in the meantime, I plopped myself at the computer to have a look at the world wide web.

I wish I could say the web was useful. Instead, I wasted approximately half an hour searching through pointless drivel. Of course, I had actually lost interest shortly after beginning this exercise, but it became a matter of principle. It should not be this hard! The product is made by Chefmate, so I assumed a quick entry into Google would have this mystery solved in just a few seconds. It turns out Chefmate does not have its own website, but chefmate.com redirects users to an Indian cooking recipe page. Curious. Another resource stated that Chefmate is made by ECKO, and yet another that it is made by Nestle. Neither site has this pasta strainer on it, and the search features come up blank.

I did find a very cool Twirling Spaghetti Fork though. Imagine. Twirling spaghetti manually for all these years, when I could have been using this gadget. Like many things, the ability to twirl spaghetti will soon become an obsolete skill.