The Vegetable Juice Can Massacre

By Phyllis Nash

I had a difficult time last week. All I wanted to do was pour some V-8 juice over two stuffed peppers. Since I try to go vegetarian as much as I can, this is one of my favorite dishes along with tofu stir-fry with fried rice.
The expression, “No wine before its time.” makes for successful dining, but shabby kitchen gadgets couldn’t care less and they like to fail at the worst time and sour an other wise gala event.
We’d never gotten a superior can opener or vegetable peeler for years, nor did my Mom or Dad. I remember the difficulty that my Mom went through with her can opener. It had a wooden handle with red paint peeling off and a claw on the end. One levered it up and down around to can to open it. I still have a metal opener with a claw that might punch a hole in a milk can in a pinch.
I don’t know of a household today that never had a metal can opener with the rotary wheel that turned while one cranked around the handle. These work a while and likely keep people from starving for lack of open cans, but they will eventually freeze up too—for spite, I always suspect. There must be legions of them in landfills, secreted away in the backs of drawers. Maybe in frustration they have been flung violently out of vehicle windows into cornfields or even tossed into out houses.
I ardently hoped for a less inferior opener and peeler, so I was pleased when my oldest son got me an electric can opener that worked well until it wore out!
Before Indy became my home, my husband had gotten me a pair of wonderful manual openers from a thrift sore. We only needed to use one of them, which we mounted on the side of wooden cabinet. It cranked easily and never wore out. Possibly I have them somewhere, but don’t know if they should be mounted on a metal cabinet. My youngest son was dubious about an electric opener from a thrift store. He thought that I could only use it temporarily.
I’ve heard that a couple of prison inmates invented the pop-top cans, so for a time now openers are rarely needed. Whoever it was that invented the pop top cans saved home cooking from becoming extinct. If not for these pioneers, cooks enmasse would have left their kitchen stoves and country to visit Borneo or some other country or at the least hole up at Wal-Mart never to return home! Many times I’ve given up on a can or jar and just fixed something else!
So going back to the stuffed pepper supper day, it turned out to be a long evening. Somehow I’d failed to position the 64 oz. juice can properly underneath the opener. It only pushed the can and would do no more than open a small hole. I next turned the can upside down, hastily sticking a bowl underneath the can as the juice squirted into the sink and I pushed the lever. The opener whined and got stuck on the can and wouldn’t release no matter how I pushed and pulled. I got most of the juice out of the can, through the small hole, but it was tough going. Eventually, I got the peppers prepared and refrigerated them. The juice can stayed stuck on the opener all night.
My son came over next day and easily released that can. I pushed the lever and the opener missed a few beats like it always does, but then it made cooperating noises after the rough start. Funny how I’m soothed by knowing the opener seems to be rejuvenated and that I can keep it!
The stuffed peppers turned out well, but no one but me seems to like vegetarian Mexican rice stuffed peppers with pepper jack cheese.
Now, whenever possible, I buy pop-top cans. It used to be that was all one needed. I want to avoid buying a “soda can opener’, which was advertised as “a safe easy way to lift pull-tabs!” God knows that I’ve tried, but a tin can lid graze and cut stings and can take forever to stop bleeding, just like a paper cut! Not to mention plastic and cardboard container packaging that can cripple a person trying to open them!
Things are looking up though. There is something out called a “jar opener” being sold in hardware and building supply stores. More and more Aladdin like packages can be opened like magic! Many more times when I pull up the plastic tab on the half & half carton or the bleach bottle it lifts neatly off the container oftener instead of separating from the seal (whereby one has to poke with a spoon handle to get at the product.) I find comfort that all can be opened for now!