ScrippsNews:
First there was the cooking gear that she sells outright for the Pampered Chef.
For that she smashed the handle of a chopper, cutting onions into smaller and smaller pieces, like the star of an infomercial. She showed how a cutting board had a built-in measuring cup, just for those onions.
“That’s something,” Belva Johnston said as she watched Bennett measure right from the board. “Yeah, that’s pretty slick,” said her friend, Patty Scales. Neither woman bought the board.
But Bennett also was selling her job, or one just like it, as a representative of the Pampered Chef, which has shows in people’s homes that are sort of a remake of the Tupperware party.
Her pitches for both were made in the kitchen of Rene Carr’s home in North Huntingdon, Pa.
As children rode scooters outside, 18 friends, co-workers and relatives of Carr sat in the kitchen and living room watching as Bennett, in her backless high-heeled sandals and capri pants, sliced peppers to a uniform thickness with her $59.50 Ultimate Mandoline.
Bennett then put them in her $149, 12-inch, nonstick skillet to be used in ground turkey Italian hoagies. The skillet, she pointed out, can go in an oven up to 400 degrees and has a stay-cool silicone handle for use on the stove. It is, what she called, the right tool for the job.
Logo from Pampered Chef