The perfect ice cube

In our mid-fifties, with many of our life-choices having been made, Ronda and I have settled into a fairly comfortable routine. Days roll into weeks, weeks into years. We've turned our attention to the things that repeatedly crimp that daily rhythm, things that cause needless frustration and dissatisfaction.

We realized one day that the pair of scissors we had been using in the kitchen irritated us every time that we used them. They were common, cheap scissors with inferior blades and plastic handles. They cut very poorly. We had had them for something like twenty years. No more! We tossed them and bought a pair of Kitchen Aid shears. These shears are a pleasure to use. They will cut just about anything, from chicken bones to that tough plastic packaging that encases many small articles that we buy these days.

And again, I was making a lentil soup one day that called for a food processor. Our food processor was too small to handle the recipe adequately. We had received it as a hand-me-down from one of Ronda's friends, again, twenty years ago. We replaced it with a professional model Cuisinart.

I consume a lot of ice; with iced tea and lemonade during the day, and in my Scotch at night. When we bought our refrigerator, upon moving into our house, we selected one without an ice maker. I disliked having a machine that idiotically cranked out ice into a bin whether I wanted it or not, to become a mass of solidified cubes that I would have to defrost periodically. The aluminum ice-trays of long-ago, with their levers for freeing the cubes, had given way to plastic, flexible trays that still produced uneven results. Sometimes I would get good,solid cubes, but more often the cubes would break up when I flexed the trays, forcing me to break fingernails or even use a knife to remove them from the trays. I decided that I had had enough. Surely, I said to Ronda, there must be a better way. Ronda discovered the Tovolo silicone ice tray. These ice trays are wonderful. They produce gorgeous, crystalline cubes of ice! It is a bit of work, thumbing them out of the tray, but it is worth it.