They all have the same contents, and in fact they all almost always look the same. Pastel baskets with plastic Easter grass, crammed full with chocolate footballs, malted dino eggs, and nondescript jelly beans. If there's a gift to be given, my rule of thumb is this: make it unique. Break the rules. Conforming to convention is boring. I did use a basket, yes, and I did pay hommage to the basket stereotype by including chocolate. At Christmastime, I had searched out the proper container to deliver the news of our trip to the Myrtles -- a French Press coffee maker (I love reusable packaging). Wondering why we hadn't yet used the French Press for Sunday morning java, I learned that no tea kettle was available. Blaine isn't a tea drinker, so not having a proper kettle is excusable, and also a good thing, because it allowed me to extend the Christmas gift to another holiday and create a gift around the missing element. I envisioned a basket with the kettle as the focal point, surrounded by an assortment of unlikely Easter sweets: a Toblerone bar, Ritter Sport Mini Squares, Lindt truffles, chocolate covered pretzels. The sugar was rather easy to locate. The kettle was the hard part.
I don't know what it is about kettles. Most everyone has a decent one, but shops don't always carry the ones you're looking for. The utilitarian campfire kettles, the miniature ones, the decorative ones are ubiquitous. Remember, I'm not in for the cliche. I want something different, stylish, unusual. Regarding my own kettle, I had hit pay dirt at a department store Calphalon close out sale about a decade ago when I picked up a sleek, oval model with a slanted lid and handle for about 20 clams. I've never seen another like that. Department store kitchen departments can be hit and miss. Back then, it was hit, but with Lafayette traffic, the season what it was, and my depleted stamina and patience for unruly crowds, a trip to the shopping mall would be tantamount to water boarding. There is one kitchen shop in Lafayette. Only one, and it's snooty. I don't like snooty. Snooty is tiresome. Snooty is an attitude that can set in when a gal marries up, bids adieu to the Rustling Pines Mobile Home Court, gets the mullet restyled, and switches her chew from Bazooka to Dentine.
I parked in front of the shop -- This was my second trip here, ever. The first was for an offset spatula one Christmas when I had been called upon to produce two Sachertorts. That time, I had to do everything short of drawing a picture of the thing for Ms. Bubble to understand what it was I needed. The weird thing about this place is that they have everything, and usually a good selection of everything, but the employees obviously have no more knowledge about a kitchen other than it's where the help cook the grits. Gird your loins. The place had expanded its floorspace since my last visit. Two gum smackers were perched on stools behind a long counter. "You need somethin?" one of them asked, breathless. Her late afternoon gossip had been interrupted by a customer. How annoying is that? "Yes. I need a tea kettle." "A what?!" She wrinkled her face in seeming disbelief, as if I had just asked her for a gift-wrapped turd on a sterling platter. Her mullet was showing (and so was her Walgreen's color). She looked over to sisterwife and nodded in the direction of retail floor: "you going?" Her friend rolled her eyes, slid off the stool, and schlepped herself around the counter. I followed. She may as well have been the ghost of Christmas future, hooded, boney finger. She stopped in the center of the store, said absolutley nothing, lifted her arm, extended her index finger, pointed to a cabinet, turned and resumed her perch behind the counter. Good thing she had interpersonal skills. I'd hate to know what she'd do if someone needed help finding something here.
I dug around in the pile of tea kettles and found the one that was right: the Le Creuset Zen. I took the box to the gum smackers. What they had lacked in customer service, they well made up for in cash register usage. I was impressed. I really should have asked the smacker with the boney finger how to use the kettle I had just purchased. "You wanna bag?"
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