Meat!

I have to admit that the long, long queue for World of Warcraft does allow me time to blog, for which I might not otherwise think I had time!

You may wonder what a girl like me has on her Christmas list. Then again, if you've been reading this blog, you may not wonder at all. Last year, I asked for an immersion blender. I got it, too. As J likes to remind me, it has officially passed its usability statute; that is, I haven't used it within a year of receiving it as a gift. This is not entirely my fault. J is one of those who really likes things "country style." You know country style? I means that while I like my potato and leek soup and nice creamy smooth texture, J specifically requests that it have lumps. So lumps I leave! And then I started buying cans of chopped tomatoes instead of only whole and ... Well, you get the idea.

So, anyhow. Back to my Christmas list from this year. It had only one item on it. A Waring Professional Meat Grinder. And if you peek down there at my equipment sidebar, you'll see that I got it!

This sleek, shiny aluminum body (maybe it's steel, what do I know?) is so pretty. I washed it all last night and dried it to keep it happy and rust-free. Today, I put it together carefully in anticipated of my first meat grinding! I love how things always snap together in place. I remember grinding meat with a meat grinder when I was little. Actually, I considered asking my mom for her grinder since she doesn't use it anymore, but one of my primary reasons for wanting a meat grinder is to make...

SAUSAGE!!!!

Right. So mom's meat grinder doesn't have a sausage attachment as I remember.

Flip switch on. WHIRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrrr... Drop in chunks of meat, and out like worms they come! It's probably incredibly loserly for someone to feel as happy as I did when the meat starting coming out of the cutting thing.

Then I cleaned it all out carefully. You know, they say that you should push some stale bread through the grinder to help clean it out. Maybe my bread wasn't stale enough though I know it was certainly old. (I don't even remember when I bought it.) But it still gunked up the cutting plate and the rest of it, I feel, is easy enough to clean.

Oh. I should mention that I cleaned it twice. I was grinding meat for meatloaf and after I did the first batch, I put in my not-so-stale bread and ran it through. Then I mixed in my chopped onions, two eggs, s+p, and ketchup. But there wasn't enough for my little loaf so I cleaned out the whole thing and ran through more meat.

So the second time I cleaned the grinder, I soaped everything up and all. And again, I used a toothpick to clean the cutting plate but in running water and that was just fine for me. And no wasted bread! Then I soaked my cutting blade and plate and wrapped them in parchment paper like a good little kitchen underling.

Have you ever wanted to hug an appliance?

No? Oh. Well, um, certainly me neither.

So far, I have only one problem with my meat grinder: where to put it. I have temporarily ousted my flat bottomed wok-like skillets (what are those things actually called?) and banished them to sit on top of my small cast iron skillets so the meat grinder can have their prime real estate location. This is really a dumb idea because I use the skillets really often and the cast irons somewhat often, and I don't know how often I use ground meat.

I plan to reorganize my cabinets anyway -- the benefits of reading a book called The Itty Bitty Kitchen -- so I can move the things I never use and make use of that space. Then I will reorganize my tupperware and stop spending exhorbitant amounts on it and instead go to usplastics.com and buy those very sturdy Chinese take-out soup containers for like 55 to 85 cents. And then, my little meat grinder will have a home.

I'm so pleased that I may give it a name.