I received a fun holiday present – a set of metal cocktail picks. They are very pointy, which I like, but this very feature raised a dilemma: where to put the darned things?! In a drawer is no good – you’ll get poked when you reach for the pastry brush.

I looked around the kitchen (a good way to get ideas) and my eyes lit on the salt shaker. Perfect! Food snobs that we are, our pepper lives in a grinder, not in a shaker. That meant there had to be an extra shaker somewhere, and (miraculously enough) I managed to locate it. The picks dropped right into the holes – clearly it was designed for this very purpose.

Should you not wish to sacrifice the mate to a pair, lonely salt and pepper shakers are readily available at garage sales and thrift stores. On the other hand, if you have a cheapo set of shakers like these, maybe you do want to sacrifice them and upgrade– there are all kinds of interesting shakers out there, whether you’re into bikes, Lego, carnivorism, architecture, bathroom humor, modern design, or chemistry.

Next, I’m going to start looking for a parmesan shaker for our barbeque skewers.