SMALL KITCHEN APPLIANCES – Living Retired #114
My wife and I are on a mission.
Jan’s job is to redecorate the kitchen eating area. Presently, she is in the critical first stage: ‘picking her colours.’
‘Picking her colours’ is a two-part process.
The first part involves sticking millions of postage stamp-size Benjamin Moore colour chips on the walls. Then, and this is quite amazing, over a glass of French Viognier wine, her ‘colours’ become clear! Go figure.
My job is to de-clutter our granite kitchen countertop. This involves millions of small kitchen appliances with electric cords attached to extension cords that fit into a heavy-duty surge protector power bar, which goes directly to the Niagara Falls power generating station.
Here’s a little known fact: kitchen countertop installers report to the Small Appliance Producers- SAP- whose mission is to sell SAP’s like me seldom-used small kitchen appliances to clutter the countertop!
There are two types of small kitchen appliances.
There are the ‘under the cabinet’ small kitchen appliances such as electric can openers and microwave ovens. These appliances are attached underneath a cabinet. They open soup cans and heat water into third-degree burning cups of coffee.
The other category is the ‘on the counter’ small kitchen appliances. They are a member of the rabbit family– they propagate as soon as an area of countertop becomes bare!
A popular ‘on the counter’ kitchen appliance is the 12-speed, multi-purpose, deluxe blender– complete with ergonomic handle and smudge proof faux finish.
Blenders stir, chop, mix, liquefy, slice, dice, mash, purée, pulverize– even vaporize vegetables– faster than you can text ‘OMG! I sliced my fingers!!’
Our blender has a 24-page Operators Manual. It includes recipes for making relishes and, trust me on this one, something the offshore translators called ‘finger foods!’ What’s missing is a roll of gauze, a tourniquet and a gift certificate for plastic surgery.
Kitchen blenders have more speeds than Lance Armstrong’s bikes, but without the drugs. However, your surgeon will provide drugs– when he reattaches your fingers you lopped off while washing the blades.
Another popular ‘on the counter’ appliance is the 2-speed handheld immersion blender; professionally-designed to permanently scratch your kitchen pots. Chefs use a handheld immersion blender to purée soups; home handymen use it to mix wall paint.
There is also the professional-model food processor.
Food processors are given as wedding gifts. Then, they are ‘re-gifted’ by people who remarried… and received another professional-model food processor.
Beware. Many ‘on the counter’ kitchen appliances have sharp blades…
Take the finger-removing mandolin shaver that does a terrific job pulverizing cabbage to smithereens! This baby is worth it’s weight, err make that fingers, in gold for cooks on a purée diet recuperating from hand amputation surgery.
Everyone enjoys waffles– twice a year– when your kids make breakfast on Mothers Day and Fathers Day. This explains why every kitchen has an electric waffle maker, an electric nonstick frying pan, and a stovetop waffle grill!
Our party-size stainless steel toaster is another countertop-consuming small kitchen appliance. We use ours to toast bread, burn buns… and insert bagels that we remove with a sharp object.
Jan is adamant that our toaster is far too valuable to discard. She insists that it maintains a prominent place on the kitchen countertop… because we use it to test our smoke alarm.
