As anyone who knows me will no doubt attest, I am a little bit in love with my Kenwood Chef.
I'd wanted a decent food mixer since I started baking our own bread while bored on maternity leave (before I gave birth, I hasten to add. After the birth the bread baking took a back seat for, ooh, five months or so). I could have bought a cheapo Argos one or something at the time, but decided to be sensible and save up for a decent mixer that would last. A tax rebate this April (too much tax paid due to spending half the year on maternity pay) enabled me to purchase one, finally.
I initially wanted the rather more aesthetically pleasing KitchenAid, but eventually good sense prevailed, and I went with the more versatile and, if reviews and recommendations are to be believed, longer lasting Kenwood Chef. There is a bewildering range of Kenwood mixers available, but only the Chefs have sensible sized motors and allow access to the huge range of accessories, which I really wanted to be able to use at a later date if I chose. I elected not to go for the catering-standard Chef Major (enormous engine, but equally enormous mixing bowl. Not sure it would even have fitted in our tiny kitchen), but didn't want something that wouldn't cope with almost daily use, so went for the halfway house Chef Premier, which has a relatively large motor and can take all but one of the accessories available for the Major.
Older Kenwoods also come up on a daily basis on Ebay, and by all accounts are more than adequate for day to day usage. I've also heard that the older ones are more easily repaired, so perhaps if you're a hardcore self-sufficienter an old one would be better. I chose a newer one partly for ease of getting hold of accessories, partly because I wanted my mixer to last another 20 years rather than risk having one with the best part of its life behind it.
Anyway, the point of this post is not to wax lyrical about the Chef (honest), but to do so about its new accessory! Having done the sums, I discovered that there are certain things that would be no cheaper to make ourselves (like bottling our own tomatoes, unless we were growing enough to have a glut), and some things that would save a packet. Pasta is one of those things - organic pasta is insanely overpriced compared to the ordinary stuff.
So, despite the enormous expense of getting a pasta maker, I reckon that with our current pasta consumption, we'll pay it off in somewhere between two and four years - in terms of subtracting the cost of energy and organic flour and eggs from the price of ready made organic pasta.
There are a couple of different ones available, but I went for this one. I can't tell you how much it pleases me that the little die things that shape the pasta come in their own red, satin lined boxes.
I will, of course, post and let you know how good I am at making pasta as soon as I get five minutes to try it.
In other news, the box it was delivered in has kept Teddy entertained for 27 minutes and counting, so it's already paid for itself in my eyes
If I had to recommend one piece of kit for an efficient sufficient life, I think it would have to be the Kenwood. I bake bread, cakes, muffins, pitta bread, bagels, biscuits, tiffin cake, meringues, and so on and so on, and every single thing gets mixed in the Kenwood first.
I'd wanted a decent food mixer since I started baking our own bread while bored on maternity leave (before I gave birth, I hasten to add. After the birth the bread baking took a back seat for, ooh, five months or so). I could have bought a cheapo Argos one or something at the time, but decided to be sensible and save up for a decent mixer that would last. A tax rebate this April (too much tax paid due to spending half the year on maternity pay) enabled me to purchase one, finally.
I initially wanted the rather more aesthetically pleasing KitchenAid, but eventually good sense prevailed, and I went with the more versatile and, if reviews and recommendations are to be believed, longer lasting Kenwood Chef. There is a bewildering range of Kenwood mixers available, but only the Chefs have sensible sized motors and allow access to the huge range of accessories, which I really wanted to be able to use at a later date if I chose. I elected not to go for the catering-standard Chef Major (enormous engine, but equally enormous mixing bowl. Not sure it would even have fitted in our tiny kitchen), but didn't want something that wouldn't cope with almost daily use, so went for the halfway house Chef Premier, which has a relatively large motor and can take all but one of the accessories available for the Major.
Older Kenwoods also come up on a daily basis on Ebay, and by all accounts are more than adequate for day to day usage. I've also heard that the older ones are more easily repaired, so perhaps if you're a hardcore self-sufficienter an old one would be better. I chose a newer one partly for ease of getting hold of accessories, partly because I wanted my mixer to last another 20 years rather than risk having one with the best part of its life behind it.
Anyway, the point of this post is not to wax lyrical about the Chef (honest), but to do so about its new accessory! Having done the sums, I discovered that there are certain things that would be no cheaper to make ourselves (like bottling our own tomatoes, unless we were growing enough to have a glut), and some things that would save a packet. Pasta is one of those things - organic pasta is insanely overpriced compared to the ordinary stuff.
So, despite the enormous expense of getting a pasta maker, I reckon that with our current pasta consumption, we'll pay it off in somewhere between two and four years - in terms of subtracting the cost of energy and organic flour and eggs from the price of ready made organic pasta.
There are a couple of different ones available, but I went for this one. I can't tell you how much it pleases me that the little die things that shape the pasta come in their own red, satin lined boxes.
I will, of course, post and let you know how good I am at making pasta as soon as I get five minutes to try it.
In other news, the box it was delivered in has kept Teddy entertained for 27 minutes and counting, so it's already paid for itself in my eyes
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