Do you have a well loved kitchen tool or gadget, one that would be hard to live without?
One of my early home investments was to purchase a Kitchen-Aid mixer. I had used one at my first restaurant job and found it to be a workhorse of a tool.
Rick and I had moved to Leavenworth for the winter to work and save up money to fund our farm habit. Okay, my desire at that moment was not on making the land or tractor payment. I used that first paycheck earned working at a pie and sandwich shop, to buy the mixer.
Purchased in 1983, it is the same machine we have now. At that time you could also purchase an attachment kit that contained a meat grinder, a shredder, and a fruit or veggie strainer. They all seemed like necessary items so they went in the shopping cart along with the mixer. Each of them have been used, used up, but never replaced.
Everyone who came to our early sausage fests and the early farm workshops had a chance to push stuff through the grinder. Who knows how much ground meat that grinder produced? Pigs, lambs, goats, it is always up to the task, except for the time we wanted to make hamburger from our old milk cow, there was so much sinew we gave up on that task! (and started dreaming about getting a commercial meat grinder)
Each fall the veggie and fruit strainer comes out for tomato processing season and later for getting the peelings out of the applesauce. The roto shredder wore out from grating hard aged cheese, it stripped the metal where it attached to the hub!
This old Kitchen-aid mixer has been a powerful helper in my life. Yes, it seems to be temperamental, sometimes it just won’t work. Wait a while and it comes back to life. I won’t trade it in for a new one, even though she has a lot of rotations under her belt. I have heard that the new Kitchen-aid mixers are not made as well and cannot holdup to the action that this old girl has endured.
What kitchen tool do you have that shapes your dining experiences?