1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to manual kitchen tools, and more specifically to manual food preparation devices adapted to prepare and augment salads and similar foods.
2. Description of Related Art
Salads are a staple of the cuisines of many parts of the world. Often a leafy green vegetable such as spinach or a form of lettuce (hereinafter “lettuce”) is used as a base material, and other ingredients such as other vegetables, fruits, nuts, and cheeses are added. A dressing, typically oil-based, is applied thereto for flavor. In addition to being widely prevalent the world over, salads are typically extremely healthy portions of a meal, often containing significant quantities of fiber, vitamins, and minerals.
Yet, as popular and healthful as salads are as a course in a meal, they can represent a significant and inconvenient amount of work in terms of preparation and clean-up, for several reasons. First, the lettuce must be washed thoroughly to get rid of bugs, sand, dirt, and other undesirable detritus. The lettuce is typically washed by hand under water, and it is often dried by being spun in a salad spinner. A conventional salad spinner includes a colander-like inner holder rotatably disposed within an outer bowl-like container. The lettuce is placed inside the inner holder, a rotating or vertically hinged and reciprocating actuator is placed atop the outer bowl-like container, and as the actuator is operated, either spinning or by reciprocation, that mechanical movement is translated such that the inner holder is rotated rapidly like a centrifuge to spin the water out of the lettuce. The water collects in the outer container, and the contents of the inner container are transferred to another salad bowl. After that, vegetables such as cucumbers, tomatoes, and the like are typically sliced with a knife on a cutting board or a plate and then transferred to the salad. After that, optionally, cheese may be grated into yet another bowl using a cheese grater and then dispersed atop the salad. Additional ingredients may require additional steps and additional surfaces and/or utensils, all of which will require cleaning after the preparation of the salad.
One advance in the art is a table top mandoline slicer, which can quickly create slices of vegetables with regular thickness. Yet, even this device requires the slicing of the food in question over a plate or cutting board and subsequent transfer of the sliced food to the salad.
Overall, the vast amount of preparation and subsequent cleanup required to make a reasonably respectable salad often makes the process too labor-intensive for many people who have neither the time nor the inclination to invest in a segment of a meal that is not even a main course. Yet, since many people do not each sufficient quantities of vegetables or fiber, it would be desirable to encourage people to eat more salads, and thus it would be desirable for such salads to be easier to make and clean up after. Accordingly, there is a long-felt need to create a device or system that enables people to prepare salads easily and efficiently using fewer tools and surfaces while creating less concomitant kitchen cleanup.