This Week's Find: Cheese Graters

If you are someone who is always looking for new ways to use old things, then cheese graters are something you need to look for. Sure, you can buy them brand new at grocery stores like King Kullen in Blue Point, but if vintage ones are what you want then you have your pick of them at Country Junque or the 

The box ones are the most popular kind to find in antiques stores with the plane graters coming in second. You mostly see stainless steel graters in the antiques stores since they were the only ones available until the plastic ones came on the scene sometime in the late 1950s or early 1960s. Rotary graters and electric graters are much harder to come by in antiques or thrift stores, so we will just focus on the box and the plane ones. Each of these designs comes in a variety of sizes.

Graters are not just used for cheese. Chocolate, nuts, hard spices like nutmeg and cinnamon and citrus peels can also be grated with either the box or plane grater, but the plane one is the more common choice for nuts and spices. Graters are very affordable, thanks to the durability of stainless steel and the fact that so many homes had at least one so they are not too hard to come by. If you do not think that is true, go into the kitchen the next time you are at an estate sale and see how many of either grater you find.

The concept of the cheese grater was to stretch the amount of cheese you had on hand. The invention of this kitchen tool goes back to 1540s Paris, France when Francois Boullier invented it as a way to use cheeses that became hard after they were stored for long periods of time. At that time there was a surplus of cheese available, but once that surplus was gone, so was the need for a grater.

Fast forward to America during the Great Depression, when everyone was trying to serve less food to save money. At that time, Jeffrey Taylor read about Boullier's invention, then made his own version of the grater with the metal holes even sharper than they originally were. When he demonstrated the product for housewives, they saw how it made the food volume look greater than it was, so the product and the name to describe it took off.    

You can use antique graters to decorate with.  They make great wall art, whether they are lined up in a kitchen soffit, placed on shelf or mounted directly to the wall. In fact, no screws or nails are needed to hang them.  Thanks to their lightweight design, all you need is some blue painter's tape (available at Brinkmann True Value Hardware in Blue Point) and you can place them anywhere you want without making holes or dents on your walls.  Of course, they can still be used for grating, but depending on their age, they are probably not as sharp as they once were. I admit I prefer to keep the antique ones for display only.  I keep a new plane grater on hand to grate my spices, nuts and citrus peels.

One of my favorite ways to use a cheese grater is as a tea light candle or votive candle cover. A few of them look great on a table while dining Al fresco plus they stop the wind from blowing out the flame. You can also place a few of the candle/grater combinations along the rails of your deck to bring some soft mood lighting to an evening dinner party. You can even use them inside to provide some warmth and ambiance. The reflection of the pattern looks so pretty on a wall or ceiling. The only caveat is that the handle and the sides of the grater gets too hot to touch almost immediately, so use a pot holder before you touch it and keep it away from children.

I also love cheese graters because they take me back to the days of the big family dinners that took place in my house when I was growing up. A box grater and a block of Locatelli romano cheese was always front and center on the Sunday dinner table especially, since that was always macaroni day. Sometimes we would also have a block of mozzarella cheese, and that was easy to grate too, especially on the sides of the box grater. If you find an antique that makes you feel that way, that alone is worth the investment.