Ah. This is the thing I use to cook ground beef. A potato masher.
I have 3 meat grinders around here somewhere with all the different grinder wheels and so on. My mom used to make cranberry-orange relish every Thanksgiving and Xmas with it and I think when she used to can a lot she used the grinder. I have 3 of them b/c she inherited her mom’s and another one, and I got all 3 when she passed away.
We have a bacon microwave tray around here somewhere and a double boiler too. I’ve got a whole box of weird kitchen stuff I need to go thru that’s stuck in a back closet here in the house. Hmm. I should go thru it and see what interesting things are in there!
Fourteen years ago, I moved into an apartment that came complete with it’s own electric wok. When exactly were those ever thought to be a good idea? We made popcorn in it once. Once.
:eek: Suddenly I am eleven years old again, and my hand is stuck to the ice cube tray.
You are evil. Thank you for resurrecting that particular memory.
Not.
Just last week the Better Half and I were discussing the joys of dorm life with La Principessa, who, being a senior in high school this year, is currently considering the merits of various colleges. And we were waxing nostalgic about the Popcorn Parties we experienced back in the early 1970s, where everybody brought their own Hot Air Popcorn Popper–which was state-of-the-art back then, no more having to make popcorn on top of a stove with an actual flame, and oil and a pot–to the commons room and made popcorn together.
Our child sat there with a perfectly blank look on her face. “They didn’t have microwave popcorn back then?”
“Um, no.”
We struggled to explain what a hot air popcorn popper was, while her face got more and more skeptical. It all sounded unbearably primitive to her. How could homo sapiens possibly have survived without microwave popcorn, especially since the hot air popper popcorn was admittedly punky in texture when you compared it even with Jiffy Pop?
We didn’t get as far as explaining what Jiffy Pop was, as she was clearly tired of discussing the Pleistocene Era.
I have the most obsolete and useful apple slicer/corer in our kitchen. That one is a Volvo design, I have an American Studebaker practical casting, much lighter and sturdier.
It also has a wider corer, and only 8 sections as compared to the volvo ten slicer, it makes ther best fall applee pies. Large wedges, sugar, cinnamon, a bit of flour to thicken, and the best crust. That’s apple pie.
Those are obsolete? I have one of those. They sell them at the supermarket. Just the thing for a snack of apple and peanut butter.
…but is it an 8 popper or a 10 popper?
And who really makes a good scratch apple pie, anymore? I want to try a crust with lard sometime…
Trivia–the valve thing was called a “squeeter”.
I don’t know the English word for it, but my moms generation used to make all their own babyfood with a “passe vite”. Any soft or softened food would go in it and come out as puree. I don’t know if moms nowadays still use them; I think everybody just buys prefab babyfood in little glass jars.
My MIL also made her own preservatives, using veggies and fruit from the garden, in one of those big pans and the special re-usable glass jars with red rubber rings.
These are as easily done in the microwave. Candy making has gone from a pain in the arse to ‘easy’.
My first ex-hubby still has his Air Popcorn popper, and AFIK he’s still using it.
Maastricht, ladies here still use those old canning jars, altho I’ve found that freezing (with the advent of the vaccuum “seal-a-meal” type things) works as well.
Maastricht, I’ve canned food, but I mostly use what we call “canning jars” or “mason jars” - picture is here. The seal is created through heating the jar up; there’s a thin layer of wax or plastic or something on the disposable metal lid insert that goes on top of the jar and under the reusable rim. Just pickles and jam, and I stopped a couple years ago, though I have my eye on a pressure canner. I use the jar you linked to mostly just for storing dry goods securely - flour, pasta, rice, that kind of thing.
You don’t need to own a special designated double boiler. You can rest one pot inside another (though depending on their design it might be precarious), like in this picture, or rest a large metal mixing bowl into the opening of a pot of water, making sure the water level doesn’t touch the bowl’s bottom. The only thing I’ve done with chocolate lately is to melt down baking chocolate for brownies, and I did that in the microwave in a Pyrex bowl.
A pastry cutter. I asked for one when I was married - my ex looked at me like I was from Mars. I don’t use it often, but man is it great when I need it.
VCNJ~
You call that an apple slicer? That’s not an apple slicer: now, this is an apple slicer.
My mother has both a bean slicer and a boiled egg slicer in her kitchen drawer (neither which have been used in decades but just help fill the junk drawer) surely they are both obselete.
Boiled egg slicers work great on white button mushrooms. I use mine all the time.
That looks like what we called a ‘Foley Food Mill.’ Come to think of it, it may be that the ‘Foley’ part was a particular manufacturer, it’s just that it was always referred to by all three words by the households I grew up in. Hmm. Yup, some googling shows there are also Oxo, and Sunbeam, and MIU food mills at least.
Learn something every day.
For those not familiar with them, basically they look like a pot that has a zillion perforations on the botton, something between a sieve and a cheese grater in size. A sloping metal blade with a hand crank is attached by a screw to the inside center of the bottom and attached to the same screw on the outside is a narrow ‘scraping’ wire/blade that presses against the bottom of the pan. As you turn the crank the rotating blade presses whatever is in the pan against the holes and the scraper frees to drop into the bowl or 2nd pan you have the food mill atop.
Basically you end up with a beautifully smooth puree of <whatever> while the skins/stems/seeds/etc. remain in the mill for disposal. Very neat and fast.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s wonderful for creating applesauce. Also for tomato purees to freeze for later use if (like us) your tomato plants produce a huge crop of tomatoes, all in one week.
So am I the only one who considers this part of the fun of electric knives? It’s the best part, really, doing the Frank impression while carving the turkey.
Same here. How else do you slice hard-boiled eggs for a chef’s salad?