If you take a couple of Motrin before you fire it up, it helps with the headaches.

:D

These pretzels are making me thirsty ... er I mean this thread is making me hungry! :p:

:lol2:

The entire Cellar is on a roll today!

We say that at my family get togethers all the time, about the pretzels.

$5.99 version probably doesn't work exactly as well

Oooh, I think those are hard to use. When I waitressed at the country club I used the regular "key" for opening wine. Otherwise I'd be standing there like an idiot, grunting and pulling. I'd have to sit on the floor and hold the bottle with my feet as I tried to disengage the cork. When said cork came free I'd probably fly across the room.

(Otherwise I'd be standing there like an idiot, grunting and pulling.) Oh my, that doesn't sound very professional. :D

:rotflol:

Oh God, me too!

I use one of those cork screws with the arms that are up in the air and then you pull down on them to lever the cork out. It might take 2 extra seconds, but no brute force needed. Very civilized.

That one is my saving grace, too.

Those are really easy to use, and I used them at the neighborhood bar, but we weren't allowed to use them at the Cuntry Club. Not dignified enough, I guess. They like grunting and pulling from their servants. :p:

I stopped using the grunting kind of corkscrew after learning from a mistake in my teenage years.

I was soaking a bunch of wine bottles to get the labels off of them. I was saving all these labels as souvenirs of our time in Germany and all the wines we drank. Somebody had put the cork back into one of the bottles, and it wouldn't sink into the bathroom sink. It just floated at the top.

So I got a regular corkscrew and started pulling the cork out. When you are pulling a cork out, you have one arm pulling on the bottle and the other arm pulling on the cork. They cancel each other out until the cork breaks free. If you aren't bracing the bottle against something, it swings suddenly down and smashes apart the porcelain sink. And the cork is just fine, safely contained on the corkscrew in your hand. Your parent's aren't too happy with you, because they have a hard enough time in a foreign country ordering cold cuts at the supermarket, let alone finding a plumbing supply place and finding the exact model of sink needed to match the other sink in the two sink bathroom.

You're lucky you didn't cut your arm off! :lol:

Great story.

AH-SO Cork Puller - the name sounds like a Chinese insulting.

Actually, I have the cheap one. I aspire to the Williams Sonoma version. But I have to break the cheap one first.

Simplest cork puller ever to use, never breaks the cork. Rock in, twist out.