As I said a couple of posts back, I’m having to move from my previous registrar and hosting service, SFF.net, to a new one. Well, the move is in progress, thanks to my new web maintenance person (web guru, as I prefer to call her), Karen Shull. Things have been sent thither by ftp, yesterday, and testing will begin this weekend, as I understand it. That site is not live yet, and won’t be until the DNS change gets itself sorted out. In the meantime, I do not know if posts and comments here will wander over there or not, or whether we’ll have a gap in this blog once it’s settled down.
So if I say anything that you think is so profound (!) that you need to keep it forever, grab it as it goes by. I don’t expect to say anything profound until I turn the book in, if then. The new ending is going to be better than the previous unfinished one, and you should be glad you don’t have to read the partially finished other one.
Also–decided that the stress of end-of-book, the new Congress & Administration, and having to move all the websites quickly justified a pause this afternoon to make cookies from scratch. Chocolate chip, from the Nestle Toll House cookie recipe. I had forgotten (on purpose?) how much better homemade cookies are than most commercial cookies. Even from bakeries. It’s the warm from oven thing. AND you get to smell them from the mixing to the cooking. It does take awhile, and my old mixer (wedding present, 1969) is showing signs of aging (“You want me to mix that much flour in without any liquid? Are you kidding?”) but wow.
You’re right about the cookies. Good luck on everything else.
A couple of years ago I finally broke down and started watching the prices on Kitchenaidpro stand mixers. (My inherited mixer was making grinding noises that were alarming). Finally found a good deal on a red one -guess the colour wasn’t popular – and bit. It is the first machine that I have ever named: Bucephalus after Alexander’s horse. Just the dough hook is a marvel. And the grinder sure makes marmalade easier. The only caveat I have is that just beating a couple of eggwhites doesn’t go well. But the hand crank beater makes short work of those.
tuppenny: I love the red color, but it’s not in the catalog I was following. Oh, well. I need another good saucepan (3 quart) and–too tall or not–I think I need a new mixer. Maybe.
Not only is your mixer old enough to vote, but it is showing signs of senility. time for a retirement home.
Jonathan in New Hampshire where it is a snow day – no school.
Hope you’ve enjoyed your snow day, Jonathan! We had one here, near Seattle, Washington, too; but I bet it took more snow to get yours. We seldom get snow and aren’t equipped to handle it, so about 3 inches is usually enough to start shutting things down. My friends from Alaska and Colorado find it quite amusing.
I actually used my grandmother’s Sunbeam mixer that she bought probably in the 1950s until we decided to spring for a Kitchenaid so we could knead bread in the mixer rather than by hand. The Sunbeam was mailed to a cousin in Texas so as far as I know it’s still up and running.
My mother had a Model 1 Sunbeam mixer, pre WWII I think, that finally wore out before I inherited it. You couldn’t make bread in it, but it was superb for cake and cookie batter. My wedding present mixer was never as sturdy as the old one, but has done a fine job with egg whites, whipping cream, cake mixes, and such for almost 48 years now. It creamed the butter & sugar for this batch of cookies with ease, and only grumbled about the amount of flour it was expected to mix in. And I chose to finish by hand rather than speed it up (it might have done OK at a higher speed.) Besides the fact that the Kitchenaid won’t fit in the same cabinet, one of the things I like about the Sunbeam is that the head tilts back and there’s more access to the bowl. The Kitchenaids are less convenient in that way, with the fixed head position low over the bowl. I expect I could get used to that, though.
I have a green Sunbeam of all said generation. It’s still going strong. Though I haven’t used it much the past half dozen years. I’ve found hand mixing works better for much of what I’d been using it for. Though I’m starting to think with that much more time through these wrists it may be time to bring it out soon.
Daniel…I do hand mixing of most things but boy does it help to have the Kitchen-Aid’s power to make the Toll House cookies. The final stirring in of chocolate bits and nuts is hard, and having to cream the butter and sugar by hand and then work in the flour…not sure I could still do that.