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Jewish World Review Oct. 11, 2006 / 19 Tishrei, 5767 A whirl of praise for a precious processor By Karen Heller
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Appliances serve a purpose. Which is to break our hearts. The refrigerator chose to go on strike two summers ago, during a heat wave, naturally, inviting a cavalcade of surly repairmen, each more smug and useless than the last, until one expert discovered that the fan was installed backward, granting him the privilege of feeling superior to his brethren. The dishwasher represents a moment of unadulterated stupidity, chosen solely for the aesthetics. The thing remains a stainless, quiet, mercurial box of beauty, cleaning when it so chooses, every rinse cycle a crapshoot, which, trust me, sounds more exciting than it is. So you learn not to get attached though, occasionally, an object can astonish. The other week, during a rare onset of baking — perhaps I was coming down with a fever — I reached for the Cuisinart food processor only to discover that the locking mechanism wouldn't work. I was about to lapse into Rant No. 6, the one about machines being cold and uncaring, brutal lotharios all, until it dawned on me: The Cuisinart has always worked. As in forever. Now I am prone to exaggeration, especially if it will make a story funnier, but here I do not exaggerate. When I say forever, I mean 25 years. Nothing lasts 25 years. We're all about the disposable. People don't want houses entering adolescence or vehicles once they've lost that new-car smell. Many relationships fail to cross the five-month mark, let alone 25 years, especially those involving seven-cup Lexan mixing bowls, Lexan being highfalutin for Plexiglass-like. Even stuff we love gets replaced. I've easily bought six copies of Emma, but this Cuisinart is the only one I've ever known — unless you count my mother's, with which she regularly and gruesomely sparred, especially during moments of emotional stress. The food processor has traveled with me everywhere, occupying every apartment and home and, so far, it has outlasted all relationships with non-Lexan bipeds. And it shows. The seven-cup mixing bowl, which began life transparent, is foggy and scarred, as though it had pulverized rocks for years at a time. The plastic knob atop the stainless-steel blade, the one shaped like a vicious petal, long ago turned an unfortunate yellow due to a Craig Claiborne curry that remains in heavy rotation in our menu repertoire. On clothing, the yellow is unbecoming. On plastic, it's monstrously unbecoming. And, still, it's served me well. When the locking mechanism failed to catch, I was at first upset, then bewildered and, ultimately, thrilled that anything had worked so well and long, providing good food with no little ease onto my various tables. Ultimately, my husband was able to get the thing to work, but it's exhibiting signs of mortality, which is completely understandable. In appliance years, the thing is 306. I could solve the problem by purchasing replacement parts for $60. For not much more, $90, I could buy a new one entirely and replace this one dating to the early bloom of the Reagan administration. The food processor was a present from my Uncle Al, who like many beloved relatives was one by choice, not blood. Employed in the restaurant trade, a bachelor until his 80s, he ate out every meal of his long life, never preparing anything more challenging than Dewar's and water. Still, the Cuisinart makes me think of him. I have an aversion to throwing out presents from people well-loved and long gone. Over the years, Al gave me jewelry, scarves and many a meal, but the Cuisinart trumped them all, proving, in the end, to be the most meaningful and enduring gift of all, something I never thought I'd say of a now scarred, curry-yellow appliance made of Lexan and steel.
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Karen Heller is a columnist for Philadelphia Inquirer. Comment by clicking here. © 2006, The Philadelphia Inquirer Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
