Making Do With What You Have

The other day my mom gave me an antique memento from my great-grandmother on my Dad's side of the family.  There's no telling how old this thing is, but something about it just makes me smile.  So what is it, you might ask?  Well, the best we can figure, is that it is a homemade nutmeg grater.

In THIS ARTICLE on the Internet, I found the following quote:

The systematic production of silver graters for nutmeg began in the late seventeenth century. A revolution in manners then gripped colonial America, as sophisticated Britons on both sides of the Atlantic began serving punch - a brew of rum or brandy, fruit juice, sugar, and water laced with grated nutmeg and sugar - and a nutmeg grater became an essential addition to the ' punch equipage '.

A photo from the same website

Although the nutmeg grater from the website is made of silver, mine is not!  But the idea is basically the same.  Notice the attention to detail in the craftsmanship below.  There are 11 nails that hold the 'grater' to the carved piece of wood it is attached to.

If you are wondering what the nutmeg grater is made of and think you have an idea, you are correct! It is made out of an old tin can - the #10 sized cans that they use at school cafeterias.  I think they call them institutional sized cans.  Rather than throwing out the can in the trash, someone saw a "diamond in the rough."  Someone had a vision and some creativity and rescued the can from the trash can.  They painstakingly used a nail or a punch to drive a huge number of holes from the backside of the can to the front.  This must have taken them hours!  In so doing, the nail pushed out sharp pieces of tin that serve as the grating mechanism against the nutmeg.

When all was said and done, a kitchen utensil was created that was used, I'm sure, but more importantly, has stood the test of time.  It hangs in our kitchen as a reminder of the ingenuity, thrift, work-ethic, and vision of our forebears.

In the disposable world we live in today, it also stands as a testimony of the truism that "one man's trash is another man's treasure!"