A few weeks ago my fairly new (bought on Thanksgiving) food processor broke.  Often I think it must be because I use things more than average that they break, but lately I’ve thinking more and more often that it’s because things aren’t made to last.  It bothers me that things are made so cheaply nowadays, and that it’s expected that you’ll just throw the old thing away and buy a new one – they call it ‘planned obsolescence’.  My last food processor lasted for 9 years, and was just an average model; this latest one was supposedly a much better one with more bells and whistles, but never worked as well as the old one.  And to top off not working well by breaking when never mishandled is really annoying. 

I use a food processor alot since it makes chopping or grating all the veggies we use for a meal a breeze – if I had to do it all by hand, we’d just eat veggie sticks.  I considered getting a food processor that wouldn’t need electricity, remembering I had seen something in the Lehman’s catalog.  I pulled out the catalog and when I saw the price (something like $189) I decided being power free wasn’t that important to me!  But it got me to thinking and researching, trying to find something else. 

I found remarkably little available, but I did find this.  I did some research on it and found it for a cheaper price, and decided to get two – one for dairy (so I can make shakes with milk or kefir) and one for meat.  Since I never did get my Bosch mixer repaired after my ds broke it when making a mega sized batch of chocolate chip cookie dough for his cookie business, I’ve been managing without it.  Surprisingly to me, it hasn’t been much of a loss – it’s not a big deal to mix bread dough in a large bowl by hand, we don’t make many cakes, and basically, I really don’t need it.  But the one thing it did that I sometimes miss having the capacity for is beating egg whites.  This little hand powered mixer does that, which is why I got a second one for non-dairy dishes.

It is a simple device, but works remarkably well.  The only down side I’ve so far experienced is it doesn’t beat things for a shake as smoothly as a blender would, and it doesn’t have a shredding capacity (which I knew when I bought it) – just chops- but it is easy to use, easy to clean up, and even the younger kids can use it by themselves.  A couple of days ago ds15 used it to chop four heads of cabbage and 15 large carrots, and he said it was great.  Not as fast as an electric model, but that’s okay with me; it’s still a LOT faster than chopping by hand.

I would have liked to have gotten two different colors so the meat and dairy mixers could be easily distinguished, but it only comes in red.  Not a big deal, we just marked one with nail polish.  I’d also like if it had a suction on the bottom to hold it down on the counter better. 

Now if the cap and trade bill passes (I think it’s a disaster and am perturbed that our government leaders think it’s a good idea to do this at a time of national financial distress; the president himself said, “”Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket.”), lots of people are going to be looking for ways to cut power costs.  This is a simple little solution for one appliance and I’m glad to have it!

Avivah