What’s your most-used kitchen utensil? Most people would probably say a chef’s knife, or a wooden spoon, but those in the know? They’ll say spurtle, every time. But we don’t blame you if you’ve never ...

A friend of mine once came home from a year spent in Edinburgh bearing a gift of a curiously carved wooden stick. “It’s a porridge-stirrer!” she declared, and while it went into the jar next to the ...

Recently, I participated in a Secret Santa gift exchange. A colleague gave my friend a turned piece of wood which looked like a wooden flute that someone forgot to drill a hole through, or like a ...