If you’ve ever been to France, or Italy, or any of those other places in downtown Europe, you’ve probably seen the denizens of those locations utilizing a particular kind of barware, eating-at-a-table-ware, and restaurantware.
It’s a glorious, fuzzy tangle of contradictions. It’s solid, but you can see right through it. It’s round, but somehow it’s able to stand up and not roll away. It’s able to contain liquids without getting your hands wet. It’s miraculous, but, for some mysterious reason, ubiquitous.
But this object’s multi-purpose utility doesn’t stop there.
You can serve panna cotta in one, or a gelato gianduia, or a bunch of stupid olives. You can use one to serve a serving of little tiny adorable baby peas. Many of the more chic eateries in Madrid actually use this object for serving individual portions of gazpacho Andaluz.
You can use one to contain things, like a measure of flour or 1/3 cup dry white wine which you will use for cooking something. You can store a small helping of beans in one when what is called for is the storage of a small helping of beans.
And that’s just the beginning. You can not only contain liquids in one, you can also drink those liquids, one sip at a time, at your own pace. (Many Europeans do this many times in many places, in stylish cafes and top-tier restaurants all over the Continent of Europe.) The circular shape of this vessel assures that liquids, when poured from it into the mouth of one’s face, conform to a convenient, narrow shape for drinking.
Moreover, each one is able to contain, in addition to whatever beverage you choose, a form of frozen water called ice. This substance, when rendered as cubes or crushed into an aggregate of splinters, has the effect of actually lowering the temperature of the liquid in which it is immersed. The result is a refreshing coldness—a coldness you can feel through the vessel itself, in your own hand.
You can, if you are lucky enough to possess more than one, and you are lucky enough to possess friends, distribute them among your friends, dole out a small quantity of a delightful (and yet surprisingly affordable) wine, and conduct a “toast” to the idea, person(s), institution, or occasion of your choice, and tap them against each other, yielding a pleasingly percussive note.
And after? They are—amazingly—dishwasher safe. Simply hand them to your dishwasher and watch, as he or she washes them in perfect safety (while observing a small number of easy-to-heed cautions, such as not breaking them). Then, simply dry them—with a towel, in the sun, overnight by the process of evaporation, or with a hand-held hair dryer—and place them on a shelf. Because, yes, they are re-usable.
We’ve been lucky enough to obtain a limited supply of these extraordinary vessels, which we now offer to our readers at the surprising price of a million dollars each. They’ll probably sell out in a week, so act now.
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