Unsung Heros: Our Kenwood Mixer

Have you ever wondered how we manage to make two loaves of bread a week? Or How we can make over 100 cupcakes in one sitting? Because, as anyone who has seen us will know, the answer is not upper body strength. It's one of those unglamorous details that often gets forgotten about in the rush to post the cute baked goods. It's our best friend, our constant kitchen companion, it's our Kenwood Mixer.


You could say that it is a second generation Kenwood mixer. Stephen's parents have one too and while I was content to carry on with a wooden spoon and a hand mixer Stephen didn't want to go into our new flat without one. It's quite possibly the single most expensive thing we bought when moving in (aside from, you know, the flat) and it's proven it's worth. Sure I could manage without this beast but...

Well it makes us cakes and bakes us bread. It has some great features that make mixing quick and easy. It came with three attachments: the traditional balloon whisk, the dough hook and the K (which stands for Kenwood, not any other popular manufacturer of stand mixers...) It also has some really clever tricks like how if the arm is completely down it won't start spinning. The mixer doesn't just move around in a circle, which misses bits out, it changes it's orbit slightly so everything in the bowl gets equally mangled.

And aside from the mixing it also does a lot of other labour intensive, arm killing jobs for me. Sure, it doesn't look that attractive with a food processor on the top but here it is, grating carrots for Carrot and Raisin Muffins.

The top off the processor pops off and a citrus press pops on. Then I can have freshly squeezed orange juice to put in the smoothies that I make in the attachable blender. Magic!

Optional, for more cash, are the Centrifugal Juicer and the mincer. But I already have a juicer and... well you can imagine why I don't want a mincer.


It's not all appliance porn though. I've made chocolate mint cupcakes as a thank you present to take into work tomorrow. The recipe is, as always, taken from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World and the frosting from the bowl of our Kenwood mixer.

Space and aliens

All is not well on the balcony. Since noticing the first lot of greenfly we've found quite a few more. The mint has recovered from it's infestation but now I have aubergine, pot marigolds, strawberries and borage full of them.

I've been manually removing them and giving them a good spray with a mix of washing up liquid (of the environmentally friendly variety) but now I'm sticking to just manually removing them at the moment because we have some lacewing larvae coming. They were kind of pricey (we could have bought a Girlguiding UK centenary rose for that!) so I'm hoping to encourage the adults to hang around and lay (?) more without our intervention. We have an insect house set up for them. But what else would they like? What do they eat?

Until then our plants are over here in the naughty corner. I'm hoping they don't pass the green fly on.

In other news we where so incredibly lucky yesterday. Walking back from a trip to Cockington we found a skip. It was time for a good root. We where soon joined by another bloke who filled us in. From the 'for sale' sign we'd already guessed that this was a house clear out and we where right. The lady who lived their has left. There was plenty of good, almost new furniture in there. Like an almost new (still had it's energy efficiency sticker on it) washing machine.

We took two shelf unit things. I'm guessing they where shoe racks. Thinking they would also make good veg racks we carried them home. After a scrub with some soapy water and drying off in the Devonian sun we fitted them into one of our cupboards.

This rather large cupboard gets no heating, and there is no window. It was put on the plans to conceal the water pipes (which had to be re-routed at the last minute) Right now it's around 12°, the rest of the flat being 20°. We've kept our potatoes in it for a while but the shelving makes it a proper pantry. Well... if we took the coats out.

Right now the bottom shelf is the gardening shelf (it's perfect to keep seeds in) and the top three are for food. I know it's a little empty. We aren't due another box until thursday.

Cures for Anxiety

I worry about the plants. Well of course I do, it's 8:22 and already I've hyperventilated today. But I worry a lot about the plants.

How can those tiny stems, only now poking up through the soil turn into a beetroot before winter? How can that green blob at the top of my soil grow leaves, start climbing and produce beans?

They are so small, so delicate. How am I ever going to get food from something so tiny?

Yesterday the tomatoes relived me of my worry. The beautiful yellow blossoms have been spotted. Hey, I've even got a baby tomato.

The tomato plant in question had a conception as accidental as mine. It was emerging from a tray of chives when I returned from Florida. Obviously a mix up in sowing.

I transplanted him and his brother into tiny pots of their own originally destined for the Torre Abbey plant sale (26th for those wondering)

The plant sale tomatoes left the nest before they could be donated. I swapped one for a Rosemary and gave another to Stephen's Dad. All that was left was my one accidental tomato plant.

Boyfriend suggested we leave it as an indoor plant to observe the differences. I transplanted it to a larger pot and a higher window. Almost immediately we noticed the flowers.

As the flowers depart, leaving tiny shrivelled yellow cases at the bottom of the pot, the stems support a tiny green jewel. Our first tomato.

Hamsters

This week's Wild Wednesday isn't really wild, but tame. These are our new Roborovski dwarf hamsters, Cuddles and Kisses.

Money-saving light bulbs

How many environmentalists does it take to change a light bulb? Two, but apparently it takes them two months. Shortly after moving into the flat we replaced most of the bulbs with their energy-saving equivalents, but we left the 100W bulb in the lounge as the energy-saving bulbs we had weren't bright enough. It turns out that it's hard to find higher power energy-saving bulbs, but this afternoon we finally located a 18W (100W equivalent) bulb. Even better, it was buy-one-get-a-second-for-1p.

Coincidentally, we received our first letter from the electricity company today, so we can now work out the monetary savings from energy-saving bulbs (it's always nice to be able to save money and the planet):

Suppose we have the lounge light on for an average of 2.5 hours a day. The savings are (100W - 18W) * 2.5 = 205 Wh. For an average 30-day month, that's 6.15 kWh - around 4% of our monthly electricity usage. On our electricity plan, after a 10% discount for paying by diret debit and opting for paperless billing, that's £1.40. The energy-saving bulb pays for itself in only two months, and over its estimated 8-year lifespan will save us £134 - and yet people still complain about the price of energy-saving bulbs.

(image from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Compact_Flourescent-bw.jpg)

First flat, first kitchen, first carrot

So we’re fully moved in to the new flat (these boxes are purely decorative). Expect posting to resume to normal levels of inactivity soon. I my cook books laid out, my gadgets in order and I finally have a new set of pans. So what do I do at 9am on a Sunday morning? Cook!

We got a bag of carrots free with a bag of potatoes, I flipped through the pages of the Veganomicon trying to find what would use up a few. This is a half-sized batch of the Curried Carrot Dip. I added a little more oil, twice the amount (that is twice the halved amount) of spices and threw in some cayenne pepper. Oddly enough one of my pet food hates is mashed carrots, the texture freaks me out but I think this is just different enough. Although I’ve only had the smallest sample teaspoon so far.

Then it was time for an old favourite; the incomparable carrot and raisin muffins from Vegan with a Vengeance. There is enough here to last the week. Provided I don’t get carried away.

I love my new kitchen, from the colour of the worktops to the oven timer, from the beautiful fridge freezer to the gas (gas!) hob. Now all I’m waiting for is a dining table and a waffle iron. But we’re almost perfect.

Normal blogging service shall resume shortly…

This week's Wild Wednesday is a collection of sheep from Cockington. Also included is a clue to what we have been up to in the last few weeks.