I've got to be honest, the FGF kitchen is not exactly a cutting edge facility. I have one good knife (a large John Lewis chopping knife I got from Marshall's for like $9) - the rest came from Wal-Mart, and I bought them in 2001. I have a Toastmaster toaster, hand mixer, and blender - all about 10 years old, all also probably purchased at Wal-Mart. I have an old school can opener that is - again - 10 years old from Wal-Mart. I have a set of plastic kitchen utensils (you know, a giant ladle, turner, and like 5 slatted spoons) that must've all come together in some amazing economy pack at Wal-Mart, about 10 years ago. You get the point. What happened was, Michele and I broke up, she moved out and took everything with her - because everything was hers. At that point, I hadn't lived on my own yet, so I hadn't accumulated any of the things one accumulates when one lives on one's own *sigh*.
Over the past few years though (well, apparently since 2001), I've been slowly gathering items for my kitchen, and in the last 2 years I've done some major updating. For example, I got a set of KitchenAid pots and pans about a year ago (thank you, Heidi, for not allowing me to purchase the set of "Chef's Secret" pots and pans I had my eye on!). Kim and Jen gave me a Cuisinart coffee maker for my birthday this year (yep, that's right - the one that's in all the movies!). And I splurged and got myself a super fancy garlic press at IKEA and a snazzy set of aluminum dry measuring cups (with rubberized handles) at BB&B. Yep, the FGF kitchen is definitely moving up in the world - I even found a KitchenAid rubber scraper at Tuesday Morning for $3!!!
So, the obvious next step was to go all the way and get a KitchenAid stand mixer. Yes, obvious, so so obvious. Truth be told, I've been drooling over these KitchenAid stand mixers for a long time. And, as my longing became public recently, I found out from my friends that they were actually confused about how I could have such sparse and inadequate kitchen equipment when cooking, grilling, and baking are three of my favorite things! Well, NO MORE! I did a little research on the KitchenAid.com site and then did some ebay recon. I decided that I wanted to pay no more than $225 (including s&h) for the 5 quart, tilt-head mixer, new, with all attachments. The standard 325 watts was fine with me, but of course I would've been totally ok with the 450 watt KSM, too. :) Well, not too long after I started ebay stalking these things, I saw that someone had one, NIB, onyx black (one of my 3 acceptable colors) for a Buy It Now price of $240 OBO. So...I made an offer. They were saying shipping would be $17-something, so I just subtracted that from $225 and put in an offer of $207-something. I awoke the next morning to find my offer had been accepted, so TA-DA! That is how Ethel came to be a member of my family.
Wanna hear the coolest part? The seller is from Barrington, RI! How cool is that? I thought it was pretty amazing that we were less than 10 miles from each other (ok, maybe 15). The seller ended up just bringing it to my house, and he awkwardly started to make some horrible comment about how "that's a really big blender for a single...(embarrassing pause)...you can mix a lot of stuff in that mixer." Yeah...it was all sunshine and rainbows until that moment, and then I just wanted to sneeze on him and spread some of my gay germs!
Anyway - I named her Ethel after my grandma Summers. My car is named Eliza after my Grandma Tibbett, so I thought it was only fitting to name my mixer after the other one. :) The interesting part (to me) about this is that Ethel went by Connie, and Eliza went by Cathryn. Neither of them really liked their given first names, but I think they're beautiful! Of course, Ethel and I will document our experiments and projects right here on the FGF blog, and I'm looking forward to many many years of cooking bliss with the old gal!
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| Ethel was made in Michigan - she's a Midwesterner just like me! |
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| Isn't she GORGEOUS?!?!?! |
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| Yes, she's an artisan. That makes me feel so professional! |
This is what we ended up with - not too shabby! I sliced a banana and covered mine with that (and pure, organic maple syrup, of course!), and it was awesome! :) Breakfast fit for queens, as grandma would say!
This is the batter. It looks like whipped butter because, well, it's whipped butter with a little sugar, flour, and vanilla mixed in. :) No, seriously, this recipe has 
The directions say to use two spoons to spoon the dough onto the cookie sheets. Yeah, right. I've never been good at that. I just used my hands. It worked a lot better and saved me about 20 minutes and a lot of irritation and mess. Oh yeah, and I only use 
Here they are! They turned out really really well, and they were mixed, baked, cooled, I'd eaten a few, and the kitchen was clean in just a little over an hour. I observed that it seems there is a critical mass at which cookies spread rather than rise. The smaller balls of dough ended up bumping up, and the larger ones spread out. I'll keep that in mind next time and "spoon" accordingly. Also, someone posted a comment that a Tbs. of sour cream, yogurt, or buttermilk could be added to make the cookies softer, so of course I did that (I used buttermilk but would love to try sour cream next time), and I think it helped keep the cookies from getting overly dry. They only needed to bake for 9 minutes, too, which is fabulous!
I've got my Wonder Woman glass of milk - I'm ready to go! :) This is definitely a recipe I'm going to save and use over and over again. The recipe said it could make up to 4 dozen, but I made 2.5 dozen. I made some kind of big, but not that big. I'd say it's more like 3 dozen, if you're lucky. Regardless, they're delicious!
The second time, I looked at the recipe and then did what I wanted, and they turned out soooo much better! It helps to add about 3x the amount of butter and 10x the amount of cream/milk/half + half the recipe calls for. Oh, and I added dill - that was the key ingredient. :)
UPDATE: Ok, so I knew the zucchini part of the sausage stuffed zucchini might be a challenge, and boy, was I right! To be fair, I only tried one store, but the "zucchini" they had were not only imported from Mexico, but they were literally 6 inches long and about 2 - 3 inches in diameter - in other words - not suitable for STUFFING. :) So...I stood in the produce section for a minute to mourn the loss of my zucchini fantasy and think of a way to salvage the situation (kind of like the engineers at NASA did when they had to manage all those problems with the Apollo 13 spacecraft...). My first instinct was to scrap this plan and just make a pizza, then I decided to make like Julia Childs and get creative! So...I took a moment to contemplate vegetables that are 
Long story short - the eggplant worked beautifully. AND according to my Italian friend, stuffing it with Italian sausage stuffing is apparently one of the most loving things one can do to an eggplant. So, I was happy - I mean, this meal was INSANELY good! Add a salad and homemade mashed potatoes (I wasn't really sure what side went best with this, but it just seemed like a starch was a good plan) to the plate, and you're good to go! Oh, and three really important things about the recipe: 1) the ingredient list doesn't mention grated parmesan cheese, yet the recipe instructions call for it twice, and 2) IMHO, this recipe only serves 2. I routinely double, triple, or quadruple the recipe for 4-6 people...usually about 1/2 meat for each person, and 3) the recipe instructs you to remove part of the zucchini/eggplant to make room for stuffing, then never tells you what to do with it! You can add it back to the meat, but I sincerely believe that ruins the flavor. I leave it out (after trying at least 3 different times to add it back in). I say cook it up separately or just discard it. Bon apetit!
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