Must-have kitchen tool: Ice cream spade

If you're like me, you LOVE ice cream. Especially when pregnant. When my husband and I first got married it was soon decided (by me) that if I was going to do most of the cooking, he was going to be responsible for making the coffee and scooping the ice cream. He did all right with the coffee-making (despite making an unholy mess every time he did it, ha!) but the ice cream scooping? The man turned out to be a complete WIMP! I have never heard so much whining about ice cream IN MY LIFE! You'd think a man who can bench press more than 200 pounds wouldn't have trouble with a tub of ice cream, but you'd be WRONG. He struggled terribly with the cheap traditional scoops we'd received as wedding gifts. And he WHINED.

Lucky for him I found this little beauty at TJ Maxx Homegoods: a KitchenAid ice cream spade. This spade is much like the scoop of my childhood (my mother is ice cream's #1 fan and has been known to take out an entire half gallon container BY HERSELF in two sittings. I am NOT exaggerating. Anyway, she has one of those old-school all-metal spades like they have at Coldstone or Marble Slab and it's the way we scooped ice cream every night at my house for my ENTIRE LIFE) only better! It slices through ice cream like butter, and has a very comfortable handle. I will never "scoop" ice cream again!

I used our spade for the first time in a long time (thanks to Weight Watchers I'm not eating so much ice cream anymore. Sigh) and I was reminded of how awesome it is! Hopefully I can find an ice cream that won't cost me too many points so it can go back on duty this summer!