Processing Food, Processing Words

Modern life offers many annoyances, ranging from the fact that I have to take off my shoes in the airport to the fact that many of my friends and relatives are dead. However, the twenty-first century does have its upside. I finally got a food processor.

Twenty or thirty years ago I was in a friend's kitchen (she's still alive, btw, for those of you who might be worrying) where a friend of hers was explaining a recipe to me. "You put it in the food processor," she said.

"I don't have a food processor," I said.

This lady looked at me with naked pity. You'd have thought I just admitted to not having indoor plumbing. My friend frantically attempted to save my face. "But she has a word processor," she said.

Still, those were my priorities, back in the day. I'm a good cook, but I'm never going to be a professional chef, and for all this time I've been content to process my food using a bowl, a spoon, and a good sharp chef's knife. And yet last month when some online emporium offered a 12-cup Kitchenaid food processor in cinnamon red for 30% off full price I was there.

That baby is now in my kitchen. You should see how fast and how thin it cuts up a cucumber. You should see how easy it is to make pie crust. If you keep the ingredients good and cold it's as flaky as anything you could mix by hand. Just brrt! brrt! and there you have it, a perfect ball of dough.

And how is my Work in Progress coming, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. Words are a lot harder to process than food.

Kate Gallison