One of those "when I get around to it" household projects many of us think of when Spring Cleaning rolls around, is the organization and streamlining of our kitchen utility drawer. Often times this drawer becomes a catch-all for a number of dubious utensils, twisty-ties, rubber bands, little packets of spice mixes and soy sauce and other less savory items I'd rather not think about.  
 
In California's San Joaquin Delta region, peat dirt islands which help to make up the Riparian feature known as 1,000 Miles Of Waterways, alternately flood and serve to provide the ideal growing medium for one of local agribusinesses major vegetable crops, the asparagus.  
 
For many consumers, this King of Spears is only known as a canned product, to be served chilled, in aspics, (feh!), or salads. Others, encountering the raw variety with its woody base, scaled stalk and feathered head, may be unsure just what to do with it. Which leads me to this niche tool, someone's clever idea, when to my mind a simple 4" paring knife or slightly larger utility knife would do.  
 
Cooking.com Stainless Steel Asparagus Peeler and Tongs  
 
Cooking.com is a fine website, with all sorts of pots and pans and baking supplies. Like many more esoteric cooking supplies companies, this site offers a mind-boggling array of single-use cooking tools. Such as this one.  
 
Pluses include relative low cost, and easy care stainless steel. Three finger grips make this feel vaguely like a cross between a pair of scissors and tongs in the hand. A separate blade serves to peel off those nasty purplish and papery scales from the stalks, and does this with dispatch.  
 
There's no need for your hands to touch the blade, and even people with impaired eye sight, (thinking of my elderly parents here, who were 'gifted' with this contraption, touted as perfect for people who have everything), can make safe use of this 7" gadget.  
 
The 5" tongs are cunningly shaped like a pair of asparagus spears, and joined on one end. There are some nooks and crannies that require a bit of extra cleaning, and a bottle brush could be put to good use here.  
 
The tongs supposedly adjust to lift, remove and transport a variety of spear diameters, but did not work on the pound of freshly steamed "jumbo" spears one of my Dad's Island buddies gifted us with just this past month. I found no benefit to using these tongs over the usual variety of open or solid metal "pincher" type tongs you can find in an housewares section of local department stores.  
 
The very short length actually works against these tongs, as your hand is exposed to more steam, and conducted heat than with a longer, (standard 9" to 12"), pair of kitchen tongs. This is especially true if you use the tall inserts that most cookware brands tout as asparagus steamers.  
 
My advice? You will do just as well, if not better, with the sort of small knife mentioned above, a standard, swivel peeler, (the Oxo cushion-handled one is dandy), and garden-variety kitchen tongs, probably already in your cooking arsenal. Save the $7.50 plus shipping/handling charges from this Internet shopping site for something better-like maybe a luscious box of chocolates! 
