What you didn't know you need...

This, my friends, is a string holder. You may or may not have ever seen such a thing, but I'm here to sing its praises. Now, I don't use kitchen twine all the time, but when I do, I want it to be convenient. I don't want to chase the darn thing around the kitchen as the ball unwinds on me. I don't want to have to worry about contaminating the rest of the ball with the raw meat juice that invariably gets all over my hands as I truss that darn chicken up. Or prime rib. Or whatever the heck else needs trussing.

I used to be string challenged. And how do you store a ball of string in the kitchen anyway? Mine always ended up wound around the handle of every kitchen gadget known to man. As a result, I avoided trussing recipes like the plague.

But, hark! There is a solution. This little gizmo is made of cast iron, so it is heavy enough to hold your string wherever you put it. Simply tug on the end, and the string feeds out like magic. I love it. And it looks darn good sitting on the counter, too.

My mom got me this one. There were a lot of these made "way back when" and you can often find them in antique stores. My mom was visiting me in Ohio and we went antiquing and came across this beauty. My birthday was coming along in the near future, so my mom said she would get it for me. Apparently, we hadn't given it a very thorough inspection at the store because after we got home and flipped it over, we saw - gasp - a "TAIWAN" stamp in the bottom!! It wasn't an antique at all but a reproduction. That's OK. It still works the same and looks the same AND it means that you can find one easier and cheaper.

See? You never knew you needed one, did you?