Until You Try

I’m the opposite of an Early Adopter, Reader. While this information may come as a surprise to you, because some of my actions may at times be described as impetuous, I take a very long time in deciding to try new fangled gizmos. I’m sort of like my grandmother in that respect, who had zero interest in a microwave oven until she actually got a microwave oven and learned she could cook a potato in seven minutes instead of using up all that gol’dern expensive electricity baking a potato for an hour.

I’m sort of like that.

I’m usually skeptical that something would be as great as the hype and so I just stick with my old fashioned stuff that’s doing the job just fine, thank you very much.

Take, for instance, the Kitchenaid mixer. Now, I’ve had a little hunger in my heart for a stand mixer for years now – years, I tell you – yet I’ve never felt the actual need to push the button on Amazon Prime and just buy one already. Because how great can it be, really, and I already have a hand mixer that I can shove in a cabinet when I’m done with it and not have it sitting out on my counter day in and day out.

You know, Reader, despite the clutter that resides on my kitchen counter at any given time, I really cannot and do not want to have big permanent things sitting there. It makes my heart heavy to even think about it. It’s all I can stand to have my Instant Pot Wife and my Vitamix sitting out there.

I used to have a toaster sitting there, too, but that’s another story, one which involves one of my three cats actually peeing in said toaster –  somewhat recently – and so it was thrown in the trash.

By the way, guess how you discover your cat has peed in your toaster?

Also, guess what smells great with coffee on a Sunday morning, Reader?

Hot-cat-pee toast. That’s what. In case you hadn’t guessed.

So now we don’t have a toaster, which made me really sad because this thing was an old-school Black & Decker 4-slice number from the 1970’s that looked just like something that Alice would be using to make those Brady kids breakfast.  And it worked amazing. Rugged. Not the flimsy crap they make nowadays. But alas, it wasn’t tough enough to recover from the cat pee. Well, maybe it was, but there was no amount of cleaning that could happen that would ever make me slide another piece of bread in there, toast it and then slide it into my mouth. Not after the pee lived in there. We have standards around Chez Bang Bang, is what I’m saying. They are very loose standards, but hey, we draw the line at ingesting cat pee. Except for that one time, when Kitty Purry backed up against me in bed and peed on me and it ricocheted off my butt and a drop or two landed in My Mister’s mid-sentence  mouth and he sputtered, “Wha…why…..did something wet just land in my mouth!?” about the same exact time I was wondering why my back was all wet and there sat Kitty Purry looking all, “Finally! I got these motherfucker’s attention!”  And then she was all:

That’s the one and only time anyone here has ingested cat pee. So far.

But back to the story about how I’m not an early adopter and even though I think I want to try some new stuff sometimes, I’m also quite happy not trying them.

The Kitchenaid stand mixer finally made it’s way here because it was a great deal on Amazon Prime Day, and I was almost fifty years old, for chrissake, and thought to myself, “If I don’t buy one of these damn mixers by this point in my life, I may as well just give up this dream already.”

So I did. Not give up the dream, but instead added it to my cart because Pinterest is all about telling us not to give up on our dreams, so I didn’t and I bought it. In red, of course, which matches my kitchen not at all exactly, with my cornflower blue countertops. So even if I talked myself into letting this sit out on the counter there’s no good way in hell I could do that, because red mixer + blue counter is awful and why oh why, Me, didn’t you buy the stainless color??

I don’t know why. I guess I like red appliances.

But the purchase was made. And then it arrived.

And then I had the regrets to the extent I couldn’t open it up, because I was for-sure sending it back. And the bigness of it all was overwhelming. It just seemed like so much damn work. Too much.

It was going back. No doubts about it.

Except.

I procrastinated. And it sat in my garage for a few months. And sat. And sat. And then I’d finally had enough and went to Amazon to initiate the return and guess what?

So much time had passed, they were not accepting returns.

After I was done harumpfing around about how dare they not accept returns months and months later, I left it to sit in the garage some more.

I just…couldn’t.

I didn’t want it.

It was too heavy, too big, too red. And all that was decided before I’d ever even opened the box.

And then one day last weekend I decided it was time to open that fucking box. I had cleared a space under my cabinet where I could shove it, so I wouldn’t have to have it on the countertop.

I decided while I was unboxing it I may as well test it’s amazingness by making a batch of the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies in the World.

I fully expected to be disappointed. Not in the cookies – those are never a disappointment – but in the mixer.

This damn appliance was so complicated I had to watch a couple of Youtube videos to understand how to switch out the mixing things and lock the bowl in place. The entire time, I was cursing me for buying this ridiculous monstrosity that would no doubt be a giant waste of money and effort and space.

And then?

It started whipping that butter and sugar into a light and creamy confection with zero effort from me.

And I started to soften, like room-temperature butter.

By the time I’d added in the flour and it had mixed and stirred and blended that recipe into perfect consistency batter, I was in full-blown love.

Where, oh where, Kitchenaid Stand Mixer, have you been all my life??

Making this cookie dough became a cinch. And it was fluffier than I’ve ever made it using a hand mixer.  And clean up was also a breeze, by the way.

I left the batter to rest in the fridge for a week or so, which only makes this particular recipe better, FYI. Letting it rest and meld together is one of the reasons these are the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies in the World.

This morning I finally baked up this confection of delights and we had them with coffee. Which is a lot more delightful than making cat-pee toast to go with our coffee.

I’m now fully committed to my mixer and am sorry that I let this lovely appliance sit in the cold uncaring garage for months on end.

Stop in, Reader. We can get plump and happy eating baked treats together. Don’t fret, I won’t be serving toast.

p.s. Despite peeing on me – three times – and inadvertently in My Mister’s mouth once, Kitty Purry still gets bundled and cuddled and kissed just like she’s a good cat. Because we’re idiot assholes here, Reader, and they rule the roost. Apparently.