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Good choice, bad choice
Jul. 4th, 2014 11:38 amI do have trouble making decisions. I know only two ways to do it: to let others tell me what's best (essentially, outsourcing my need to choose) or else dithering long, considering and reconsidering and finally just snatching. Even my spur-of-the-moment choices tend to have been mulled over for days.
The internet, of course, is full of advices. And I should probably stop reading one-star reviews, yes?
Anyway: as you know, if you've been following along, when I moved from the UK I left all my electrical gear behind me. They have different electricity over here*. Among the abandoned was a vintage Kenwood Chef that I used seldom but loved none the less.
I wanted a replacement over here. Can't get Kenwoods, don't know why. Nothing else seems to have the power, but people said KitchenAid was best. On the internets, people said "Get a vintage model, they last for ever; new ones blow up with monotonous regularity."
In the end, that's what I did. I E-Bay'd, and bought an '80s model, and it was splendid.
For, um, almost exactly a year.
Today is 4th July. And my half-birthday. All America rejoices, yay. We invite people over (I am 55.5!). I have a vasty hunk of pork smoking slowly on the grill outside; I have a big pot of chilli bubbling gently on the stove, and it's not even midday yet. What more do we need? Breads, obviously. Bread buns, for pork sammiches and so forth.
I go to mix my first batch of dough in the KitchenAid - and it makes a horrible noise and stops working.
Oy.
I am remembering how to knead bread by hand, and why I stopped doing that, because ouchie. The bread'll probably be fine, but the mixer won't. If we weren't expecting guests soonest, I'd be off down to Macy's to see if they've got a deal on a new one, right this minute. It's probably just as well that guests are coming; it should certainly wait till one or the other of us has an income again. *twitch*
On the other hand, at a previous Macy's sale I came home with a 6-quart enamelled cast-iron pot, because I'd nearly broken my old 4-quart and it was bigger and brighter and and and.
And I was assembling the chilli in the 4-quart which isn't quite broken after all, and thinking "Oops, this really is getting to be over-full, it'll spit and splash when it comes to the boil - oh, wait. New one!"
So I decanted from that into this, and now I have a margin of an inch or more between food and lip, and all is well. Best fifty bucks I spent that day, yay me. But that was an example of the other kind of decision, where I'd been dithering - "do I really need another bigger cast-iron pot?" - for two years already, every time Macy's had them on sale. (And I'm still dithering about the eight-quart. It's beautiful. But do I really need it...?)
*I don't think it's as good, but hush. Mustn't say so.
The internet, of course, is full of advices. And I should probably stop reading one-star reviews, yes?
Anyway: as you know, if you've been following along, when I moved from the UK I left all my electrical gear behind me. They have different electricity over here*. Among the abandoned was a vintage Kenwood Chef that I used seldom but loved none the less.
I wanted a replacement over here. Can't get Kenwoods, don't know why. Nothing else seems to have the power, but people said KitchenAid was best. On the internets, people said "Get a vintage model, they last for ever; new ones blow up with monotonous regularity."
In the end, that's what I did. I E-Bay'd, and bought an '80s model, and it was splendid.
For, um, almost exactly a year.
Today is 4th July. And my half-birthday. All America rejoices, yay. We invite people over (I am 55.5!). I have a vasty hunk of pork smoking slowly on the grill outside; I have a big pot of chilli bubbling gently on the stove, and it's not even midday yet. What more do we need? Breads, obviously. Bread buns, for pork sammiches and so forth.
I go to mix my first batch of dough in the KitchenAid - and it makes a horrible noise and stops working.
Oy.
I am remembering how to knead bread by hand, and why I stopped doing that, because ouchie. The bread'll probably be fine, but the mixer won't. If we weren't expecting guests soonest, I'd be off down to Macy's to see if they've got a deal on a new one, right this minute. It's probably just as well that guests are coming; it should certainly wait till one or the other of us has an income again. *twitch*
On the other hand, at a previous Macy's sale I came home with a 6-quart enamelled cast-iron pot, because I'd nearly broken my old 4-quart and it was bigger and brighter and and and.
And I was assembling the chilli in the 4-quart which isn't quite broken after all, and thinking "Oops, this really is getting to be over-full, it'll spit and splash when it comes to the boil - oh, wait. New one!"
So I decanted from that into this, and now I have a margin of an inch or more between food and lip, and all is well. Best fifty bucks I spent that day, yay me. But that was an example of the other kind of decision, where I'd been dithering - "do I really need another bigger cast-iron pot?" - for two years already, every time Macy's had them on sale. (And I'm still dithering about the eight-quart. It's beautiful. But do I really need it...?)
*I don't think it's as good, but hush. Mustn't say so.