1If you're anything like me, you woke up on New Year's Day, took one hard look at your wooden cutting board, and knew it was time to make a change. Mine was a long way from the idyllic cutting board I had pictured in my head: A smooth surface with a bronzed-blond coat hong kong apartments, primed for dicing onions and chopping kale. I'd tried buying food-grade mineral oil before, following guides about how to keep the things well-lubricated, and failed drastically--I didn't like the way the stuff left my kitchen smelling.

Enter Board Rub, an inexpensive product from Portland-based home store Beam & Anchor. The rub's got a Vaseline-like consistency and is made from beeswax, mineral oil, and essential oils of grapefruit and lavindin (a close cousin of lavender, with a similar smell). Place a couple tablespoons worth on the board's surface, rub it in with a dry dish towel, and you've got a food-safe, well-sealed cutting board and a kitchen that passes the scent test.

So, yes, we'll keep this process up for the rest of the year, breaking out the board rub every six weeks or so. But the real discovery? The stuff works wonders on any wood kitchen utensil in your arsenal PCoIP Protocol, from spoons to spatulas.

Like most people, I tend to treat wooden spoons like we Meryl Streep treats Oscar nominations, by moving onto the next one without too much thought. They get nicked up and I pitch them because spoons are so cheap and readily available that it honestly doesn't seem worth the trouble. This is the case with almost any wooden kitchen utensil. Spatulas? Replace them. Slotted spoon? Toss and repeat. That flat sided one you scrape up the crispy bits of paella with? I'll buy a new one when it gets warn looking A Bar.

Luckily, board rub works just as well on any of these other pieces of equipment. This year, whenever I bread out that small jar to treat my massive cutting board, I'll make sure to pull out the rest of my forest's worth of wooden utensils along with it.