If you’re like me, this sight will bring tears to your eyes.

Have you ever had the feeling that you had a super-power and then lost it? Maybe you were a superb orator, effortless distance runner, or spectacularly limber, and suddenly – WHAM! – with no warning, what once came naturally has you grimacing in effort and frustration.

I am not naturally athletic or gifted in the arts, but, though obscure, my super-power was immensely useful given my passion for cooking. It was the ability to chop onions endlessly and never shed a tear. Odd? Yes. But unusually impressive as a live show. I would be in the kitchen chopping 5 cups of onions with glee while friends were seated in the living room, coughing and rubbing their eyes from the sting. Nobody could understand how I could chop them with such mirth and no aid to reduce the burn.

Doubleboilers (both real and makeshift) enable you to melt chocolate to a perfect, luscious consistency.

The state of the economy is more than a little frightening these days, and most people are feeling a compulsion to behave with a modicum of prudence and a careful eye for value.

Given this environment, it seems odd that the product development teams at Williams-Sonoma, All-Clad, and the like are working double time to produce ever-more specific, and by nature, less useful kitchen utensils. On the WS homepage, a glaring image beckons me to their “More than 250 New Items for Winter.” I am hardly a model of restraint and do love to moon about in WS with lofty fantasies of ever-grander, cleaner, and better-stocked kitchens, but even I have to question the utility of a Classic Soda Siphon or a Crepe Pan Kit in these uncertain times.

I think that there is a misconception out there that only men are attracted to loud, dangerous machinery – the kind of contraption whose weight alone tells you that you need some serious skills to wield it without losing a limb (or a digit, at the very least).

I, for one, adore my noisiest and most menacing kitchen gadgets – after all, the deafening grind and capable-sounding whir tell you that they’re working, right? Right!