I was doing something in the kitchen the other day which involved the food processor. I can’t remember exactly what but it probably involved apples because I haven’t done much in the kitchen lately that hasn’t involved Bramleys. The tree has been dripping with them this year and it suddenly feels like a year when we mustn’t waste them. Basket after basket after basket appears at the door and I drag them in, set up my wonderful whizzo new peeler and either set to freezing or wash and wrap them to store.
We had an ancient one of these long gone so I bought a new one off eBay for £7ish post free and was not expecting anything like the lovely thing that arrived.
Sturdy metal, suction base that actually suctions, and sharp blade that whips the peel off in a very pleasurable single corkscrew.
It was the peeling that always did for me, now I’m racing through them and we will have apples all winter. My challenge is to make something different each week . It really would be the worst thing to find myself buying cooking apples in January given the bounty. Likewise the eating apples. We have a tiny little orchard of twelve trees including Sunset and Discovery and they are the sweetest they have ever been.
Anyway, this started with the food processor and as I switched it on and set it churning (it was breadcrumbs for Nigel Slater’s crumble topping, I remember now)...
I suddenly had a several deja vue moments rolled into one giant realisation that this Braun machine must be over thirty five years old, was probably state of the art in its day and that I’d cut my thumb washing that blade more times than I can remember.
It’s so old I used to purée baby food in it. It’s tempting fate to say more than that so I won’t because I use it a lot and I’d hate it to conk out.
Then I looked at the food mixer and realised that’s at least twenty five years old and suddenly I felt old and had another of those tempus fugit in a flash moments. And then I remembered those moments in my mum and dad’s kitchen where I’d open the drawer and there was the potato masher that had been in use as long as you could remember, and now my kitchen’s the same because there’s the cake knife still going strong that was a wedding present forty-four years ago
And now I’m thinking I bet your kitchens are all full of these sort of things too. The stalwarts that have seen you through years and years of use and that you couldn’t possibly part with...
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