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appliances

Kitchen ghosts

By October 30, 2013 Life

Red Chronicle readers know I am currently at work on a sweet project, one requiring hours in my kitchen with this shiny red toy.

My KitchenAid mix master was a recent Christmas gift in that infamous year, when the Friendly Greek asked for ideas and I wrote down a list full of irony and longing. Xmas morning dawned with everything on my list but world peace wrapped up.

Hate me, go ahead. It was my own Christmas miracle. He doesn’t do dishes. This is a good trade, no?

Midway through this year’s Thanksgiving pie blitz, my Kitchen aid broke down. The motor didn’t stop, but the beaters just stopped whirling. No amount of cajoling or holiday inspired invective got the machine going. It just sat, pumpkin-rum mousse drooping in the bowl. Four pastry balls rolled, baked and primed for filling waited nearby.

This is when all you non-bakers stare me down and point to the psych ward. Excellent pies are everywhere, made by professionals in this city. Go forth, Fool Wearing Apron!

  They don’t know about my back-up!

Just kidding. No shots just yet.

Rescue instead came in the form of an old General Electric hand mixer from my grandmother Bama’s kitchen.

It is hard to match the woman in this photo with any kind of kitchen appliance.

Bama, in front of her house in Toronto

Bama was our champion. Named by my oldest sis Mary as a toddler struggling to sound out “g”, Bama failed to be “cross” with our steady mischief, in all her 90 years. She smelled of cocoa butter and wore a steady collection of elegant hats tipped just so. Lunch invitations meant crystal and china, in her dining room, or outside where we clinked glasses on the lawn in her beautiful garden. Any formality was twinkled away with a ready smile at our havoc. Surely she was with me that day in my curse-laden kitchen as I peered into the mess of appliances, pulled out the same mixer she used for meringues and cake icings, and went to it—whipping, marvelling, muttering:the perfect trifecta for kitchen brilliance.

No hats worn that day. Still, I tipped an invisible one in her honour as my family devoured the pies at Thanksgiving dinner.

As for my own blasted machine, customer service at KitchenAid washed their hands of me. Try the yellow pages, they said. You make the thing!, I sputtered incredulously. Several phone calls, $180 later, with the help of a local small appliance doctor, I am back at work, my mother’s daughter now when I say,

They just don’t make them like they used to.

For more ideas from the sweet spot, see:

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