Mmmm... cherry jam...

I’m flipping through the new Williams-Sonoma catalog that came in the mail today. I love Williams-Sonoma, but some of the things they sell seem just a little TOO specific… a little TOO tailored to the requirements of preparing one single particular dish. For instance, on page 18 I came across a recipe for “cherry jam-filled ricotta pancakes,” which sound really good. And the recipe seems simple enough – I’m fairly certain I could create a respectable reproduction of what’s pictured in the catalog, but there’s one problem. To make these cherry jam-filled ricotta pancakes, I would need a filled-pancake PAN. And how often, in the course of my entire lifetime, am I going to make filled pancakes? Is it enough to justify buying a pan that can ONLY be used to make filled pancakes? I’m not sure it is… (but I wouldn’t mind buying a jar of the sour cherry jam they’re selling on the same page…)

What I DO need from Williams-Sonoma is a cutting board. I used to have a cutting board – it was a really nice wooden board, and I only used it for fruits and vegetables. (Never meat, of course, because that would just spread salmonella all over the kitchen… but discussing my OCD tendencies isn’t really important right now…) But somehow, when we moved back to Texas from New Jersey, I lost my cutting board. I’m sure I packed it – I can remember standing in my kitchen in New Jersey and tossing it into a box, probably quite unceremoniously. It was just a cutting board, after all. But after a few weeks in my new house here in Texas, I realized that my cutting board hadn’t turned up. It always takes a while to unpack every box when you move to a new house (in fact, I THINK there may be a box in the bedroom that was never unpacked… we might be using it as a table for the phone… maybe… that’s not crazy, is it? Nah, of course not…), but even once I’d opened every box marked “kitchen,” the cutting board hadn’t surfaced. (And no, the box in the bedroom isn’t marked “kitchen”…)

And what’s even more interesting is that in my search for “kitchen” boxes and the missing cutting board, I unearthed a box of perfectly practical, never-once-opened glasses that someone gave us as a wedding gift. Yes, eleven years after I got married, I found an unopened wedding gift. (That’s not crazy, either, right? Nah, of course not…) These glasses made the move from our first apartment to our second apartment… then to our first house in Texas to our house in New Jersey… and then finally to our new house in Texas. And not ONCE did I notice them. Or maybe I just figured I had plenty of glasses already. I can’t even remember who they were from… I’m not sure it was anyone I actually knew personally. But whoever it was, I’m pretty sure they didn’t get a thank you note. Oops. My bad. And I DO use the glasses now, so feel a slight twinge of guilt every time I fill one with water or orange juice or soda… years ago, someone out there assumed I just couldn’t be bothered with penning a thank you note for their lovely gift, when in reality I just didn’t NOTICE their lovely gift. (Wait – which one of those scenarios is better??)

But even though I found a box of “new” glasses, I was never able to find my cutting board. I’ve looked through every box I can find, even the ones in the garage that seem to be filled with random junk. The cutting board – and whatever else I packed in that box – has disappeared. I’ve been chopping vegetables on dinner plates or paper towels or the countertop, always wishing I had my nice wooden cutting board again. How does a cutting board vanish into thin air?

Oh well – at least it gives me an excuse to browse through the Williams-Sonoma catalog. And when I buy my cutting board, perhaps I’ll go ahead and invest in one of those filled-pancake pans… I do like cherry jam...