The Ultimate Kitchen Companions

Brando and Gracie, our well-fed long-haired miniature dachshunds.

The food-obsessed obsess, amongst other things, about ultimate kitchen companion/s. A trusty Solingen-forged high-carbon steel knife, say, or a heavy duty stand mixer, feature in many a list. Tools, gadgets, and other paraphernalia aside, I must confess to feeling somewhat odd when Brando isn't waiting by the counter for errant parmesan shavings to fall into his anticipatorily open jaws like proverbial manna, or Gracie isn't curled up next to the oven waiting for cookies to emerge.

I am afriad, like all adoring dog owners, I am prone to projecting human-like personas unto my pets. Call me crazy but I do think of Brando as being the more persnickety, a true gourmand, if you will - Gracie is, for lack of a better description, more dog-like. Having been brought up pretty much in the kitchen, it's as if the hunting instincts encoded in Brando's DNA have transmuted into an innate discernment, the ability to sniff apart the Worth-Begging-Fors from the Gracie-Can-Have-Its.

Anyways, a day in the kitchen without my ultimate kitchen companions is like a dish without salt - forlorn and a mere ghost of what it should be.