Does anybody remember this blast from the past? I’ve always been a foodie and back in the early 1970’s, Graham Kerr’s tv show “The Galloping Gourmet” started the trend, he was the first cooking show I ever watched.
He was this goofy English guy who cooked food that I would never make, but he did have great wooden kitchen spoons that he called “Spurtles.” They even gave them away in cereal boxes, but I bought a set of them from an address he posted on his show. They’ve always been my favorite kitchen tools and they’re still going strong all these years later.
Pictured above is my collection, and yes I use that Bakelite Grease Jar. I low carb, I always have bacon grease. I’m going back to my roots, people, my mother always had a jar of bacon grease next to her stove, I bet yours did, too.
But back to the Spurtle. I’ve picked up additional sets and individual pieces when they’ve been available on eBay through the years and now have quite a collection. Some of them have holes in them, some are shorter, some are angled,one is a spatula, but the traditional Spurtle is the one I use over and over again. It’s the long one with a curved bottom and straight side. They all have the GG Emblem burnt into the handles and they’re my treasures, I’ve used them daily since the 70’s.
If you do nothing else today, click and watch this video below, and if it doesn’t make you laugh until tears roll down your cheeks, something is seriously wrong with you.
Oh, The Galloping Gourmet, he was one of a kind, there were no retakes on this old television show, what you see is what you get. Funniest thing I’ve seen in ages.
And finally, if all this talk of spurtles is making you think you have missed out all of these years, you can still get one. Not the original, but this guy on Etsy has copied the design and is selling them for $20.
Here’s the click, I would so invest $20 in one of these if didn’t have my original collection. What’s so good about them other than nostalgia? They are just designed so well, they have a curved bottom that gets in the corners, a straight edge that cleanly stirs sides of pots. Oh, just buy the damn thing, trust me it’s a good thing. ~ Jan
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