Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 (Tek) 9/26/83; site orca.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ucbvax!ucbcad!tektronix!orca!ariels
From: ariels@orca.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.cooks
Subject: Re: "Food Processor" vs. Electric Mixer
Message-ID: <623@orca.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 24-Feb-84 12:25:06 EST
Article-I.D.: orca.623
Posted: Fri Feb 24 12:25:06 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 26-Feb-84 00:29:25 EST
References: <2613@fortune.UUCP>
Organization: Tektronix, Wilsonville OR
Lines: 43

I may be old fashioned, but I think that food processors are just
another gadget.  I can't imagine making cake batter or cookie dough
in a food processor.  I cut my vegetables with a knife (though I'm
thinking of getting a chinese cleaver now that I've started doing a
lot of stir frys). I make bread by hand when I make it.  I use a
little hand grater made by the Mouli company in France to grate
cheese and anything else that needs grating.  Mouli makes a bigger
"food processor", non-electric, that I'm considering so that I don't
have to cut things up so small to put them in the hopper.  I whip
eggs and beat cream with a mixer (I also use a mixer for cakes and 
cookies).  I don't have a blender, but then, I don't make milk
shakes, so I don't miss one.

I think that electric food processors are too limiting.  You can
only cut things to the shapes and sizes allowed by the blades.  The
only use I've ever found for a food processor is grating the
potatoes for potato pancakes.

However, I'm a "make do" cook if ever there was one.  I just bought
a toaster after 3 years of toasting my bread on the burner of my
electric stove.

The kitchen "gadgets" that I wouldn't want to be without (in no
particular order) are:

An electric mixer
A garlic press
2 or 3 good knives
A cutting board
A cheese grater (but not the knuckle-eating kind)
A cheese slicer
A potato/carrot peeler
A set of wooden spoons
A rubber scraper
The usual contingent of pots, pans, woks, bowls, etc.

After all, people have been without electricity for the majority of
the species life on earth, and if they could manage it, so can I
(except for the mixer...if you've ever tasted a hand mixed cake made
by someone without arm muscles, you know why).

Ariel (mistress of make do) Shattan
..!tektronix!orca!ariels