cooking and engineering
I thought that this would be a cooking post at first, as the bf's birthday cake cooks happily along in the oven. But then I went to make the cream cheese frosting. It was surprisingly easy--I had never made it before and had always thought it was one of those mysterious tasty things that Only Moms know how to make. It would have been a little smoother in a food processor, but all I have is a hand mixer.
This is actually my second hand mixer. My first was lent to a friend and met an untimely demise, so I told her she could replace it herself with one of equal features and quality. This was probably a good idea, because if I would have replaced the hand mixer it would have taken too long; analysis paralysis would have kept me from buying it until I had scoured Consumer Reports for the absolute best mixer ever.
So when I go to put the beaters in, I notice that on the bottom the mixer says Wal-Mart. This is strange because both the box and the side of the mixer have the GE logo, but the Wal-Mart logo is actually imbedded in the plastic itself. Having read about the pickles and the cheap Levi's jeans, I figure Wally World must have gone to the GE people and said their cheapest mixer wasn't cheap enough, and they'd manufacture it themselves and slap the GE logo on or something.
Either that or they went to some home electronics design shop and picked a rejected prototype out of the trash. It's so horribly designed as to actually be sad. The wheel that increases the speed of the beaters is located in an indentation in the handle, which is the same indentation where your thumb rests to guide the mixer. This is fine if you want the beaters at their highest speed, but if you are mixing something that requires a little more delicacy (or has a lot of liquid), your thumb keeps on pushing the wheel to higher speeds as you try to guide the mixer, spattering your recipe everywhere. Then when you go to eject the beaters (my old mixer had a separate button for this), you have to push downward on the wheel, again speeding up the beaters and this time REALLY spattering the walls, because when you eject the beaters they are completely OUT of whatever batter you were just mixing. Maybe someone thought they were clever by only having just the wheel instead of an extra button. But clearly, whoever is responsible for this design has never used a hand mixer before. Bleh! I really, really dislike things that are poorly designed like this.
Incidentally my mom has a hand mixer that is at least 30 years old and still going. The wheel to increase the speed is blue and when you pop the beaters out, they really get pushed out. It was probably one of the first kitchen appliances that I learned to use.
OK, off to lick the yummy cream cheese frosting off the beaters. Poor design aside, licking the beaters is one of the great pleasures of cooking!
This is actually my second hand mixer. My first was lent to a friend and met an untimely demise, so I told her she could replace it herself with one of equal features and quality. This was probably a good idea, because if I would have replaced the hand mixer it would have taken too long; analysis paralysis would have kept me from buying it until I had scoured Consumer Reports for the absolute best mixer ever.
So when I go to put the beaters in, I notice that on the bottom the mixer says Wal-Mart. This is strange because both the box and the side of the mixer have the GE logo, but the Wal-Mart logo is actually imbedded in the plastic itself. Having read about the pickles and the cheap Levi's jeans, I figure Wally World must have gone to the GE people and said their cheapest mixer wasn't cheap enough, and they'd manufacture it themselves and slap the GE logo on or something.
Either that or they went to some home electronics design shop and picked a rejected prototype out of the trash. It's so horribly designed as to actually be sad. The wheel that increases the speed of the beaters is located in an indentation in the handle, which is the same indentation where your thumb rests to guide the mixer. This is fine if you want the beaters at their highest speed, but if you are mixing something that requires a little more delicacy (or has a lot of liquid), your thumb keeps on pushing the wheel to higher speeds as you try to guide the mixer, spattering your recipe everywhere. Then when you go to eject the beaters (my old mixer had a separate button for this), you have to push downward on the wheel, again speeding up the beaters and this time REALLY spattering the walls, because when you eject the beaters they are completely OUT of whatever batter you were just mixing. Maybe someone thought they were clever by only having just the wheel instead of an extra button. But clearly, whoever is responsible for this design has never used a hand mixer before. Bleh! I really, really dislike things that are poorly designed like this.
Incidentally my mom has a hand mixer that is at least 30 years old and still going. The wheel to increase the speed is blue and when you pop the beaters out, they really get pushed out. It was probably one of the first kitchen appliances that I learned to use.
OK, off to lick the yummy cream cheese frosting off the beaters. Poor design aside, licking the beaters is one of the great pleasures of cooking!