Confessions of a Feemster fan

I found this picture on ebay showing two Feemster peelers for sale
for $9.99. They were advertised as "Great-grandma's potato peelers".

I have never had one like that shown on the left, (sorry, I don't know how to crop or enlarge photos) but the one on the right is my potato peeler. This is the kind that I learned to peel potatoes with as a child. I was often pressed into helping make supper and since we had meat and potatoes at every meal, I peeled a whopping lot of potatoes during my youth.

When I became a "housewife" (ugly term) I got my first Feemster to peel potatoes. Over the years I tried other types of peelers but found them so awkward that I always returned to my old faithful. To this day, I find it almost impossible to peel potatoes without my Feemster.

When my mom died ten years ago, I inherited her potato peeler (actually, nobody else wanted it). I had the luxury of two of them in my utensil drawer. I felt so secure having a backup one.

One day recently, I discovered one of them was missing. I was worried sick. I was down to a single ancient Feemster--what if it broke? What if that one disappeared? Thinking I might have accidentally thrown it away, I pulled the plastic garbage bag out of the waste basket and carefully sorted through potato peelings, coffee grounds and various un-recyclables. It was a messy job but darn it, my Feemster was at stake! I searched through all the kitchen drawers several times and racked my brain over where it could have gone. I was discombobulated--I was living on the edge of disaster.

Several days later I was digging something out of a lower cupboard and noticed some baggies had fallen out of the drawer above. This rang a bell in my cluttered brain. I went over to the lower cupboard under the utensil drawer, and there, behind the bread pans was my beloved potato peeler! I had found it!

OK, so this was not an earth-shaking moment, but coming to the end of your supply of something nearly irreplaceable is scary. There's something sorta apocolyptic about it. Therefore, I write this post in the calm assurance that there are two Feemster potato peelers safely tucked away in my utensil drawer.