The Stand-up Mixer Debate

What is it about stand-up mixers and marginally domestic girls in their 20s?  It seems like stand-up mixers used to be something that our grandmas had, and, if we realized how useful they were, we could look forward to inheriting them rather than tossing them out as relics or pieces of junk.  As far as I can remember, neither of my grandmas had a stand-up mixer, at least not during the time when I knew them.  My mom definitely never had a stand-up mixer.  I don't know if it was our consumer culture that placed "now" over "good" or a glitch in our understanding of feminism that made us think that any woman who got near a kitchen was betraying her ideals, but a lot of women my age grew up thinking that cooking was unimportant, boring, or someone else's job.  Or worse, we believed that we were cooking when we poured something frozen into a saute pan.  Regardless, we never learned to value cooking meals from scratch, and so we never learned how, and so we never wanted mixers.   At least, I think that's how the progression ought to go.

But this post isn't really about the cooking and life skills we've lost.  After all, we've seen a huge surge of interest in all things do-it-yourself, back-to-the-land, and crafty in the past ten or so years.  People are taking steps to slow down and connect with their families and with the planet by making more home cooked meals, growing their own fruits and vegetables, even canning fruit and raising chickens.  But, where, in all of this interest in "from scratch" does the resurgence of interest in products like the KitchenAid Mixer come from?  When I was taking my first steps toward a more "from scratch" lifestyle six or so years ago, I was focused on reinventing the wheel.  I thought that, to really be from scratch, my food had to be made by hand.  Luckily for me and my occasional dinner guests, I didn't extend this idea to its logical (if absurd) conclusion and start cooking my meals over a camp fire.  But I did start to think about where my food came from and then later tried to gauge how much energy input went into getting it from where it came from to my table ready to eat.  I figured out that you could make most things that called for mixers by hand (even meringues, though I wouldn't recommend it).  I also figured out that there are some things, like pumpkin, that really do taste better after a few minutes in the food processor.  At that point, it becomes a decision and a trade-off.  Is the improved consistency worth plugging in the food processor for a few minutes?  Can I make this dish in another way?  If it will taste the same, I try to go the non-tech route.  And I now own a couple of sturdy appliances that get me through the tasks that I have decided really are worth plugging in for.

Which brings me back to the mixer.  All of a sudden, this summer, I absolutely had to have a KitchenAid mixer.  I think it was a combination of the lingering euphoria from looking at friends' wedding registries (so much shiny cookware!) and soreness from all the hours I was spending alternately hunched over my computer and laboring in the kitchen.  There might have been whiskey involved, too.  I searched on the internet (purveyor of so much shiny cookware) and found a sturdy-looking refurbished mixer.  It was still woefully out of my price range.  I talked about it for weeks.  I tormented my mother, my best friend, and my roommate, not to mention my Bar study partner.  In the end, I didn't buy it.  A girl with no job who has never been able to afford a washer and dryer or a car shouldn't be purchasing fancy cooking appliances.  That was when I started to wonder what had happened to me, and why I felt so strongly about needing to own a stand-up mixer.

Which came first, our interest in cooking from scratch or our interest in shiny cookware?  The answer to that question is different for everyone, and I don't think it really matters as long as we're doing something that makes us healthier and happier.  If good marketing by sellers of beautiful cooking tools is getting more budding cooks into the kitchen and more home cooked food on people's tables, I think it's a win for everyone.  And yet, it frustrates me to think that our new-found love of cooking and living in a sustainable way has come full circle to once again support the consumer culture that a lot of us have been trying to get away from.  Why did I really want a stand-up mixer?  Was it because my arms were sore, or because everyone else had one?  I think that I was hugely influenced by the well-marketed idea that delicious food comes from a beautiful kitchen, and that people who have the "right tools" are able to accomplish more.  For me, this is a bad thing.  I turn to cooking for all kinds of reasons: to control the food I eat, to "vote with my dollar" at the grocery store, for the comfort that crafting by hand gives me.  I don't like to think that I do it for the shiny consumer goods, even if I can acknowledge that they're pretty.  I'm curious how other people feel about this issue, or whether I'm the only one who stays up at night agonizing over consumerism and its grip on me.

In the end, not getting the mixer was the right choice for me.  No matter how much I tried to use it, it would have been just another thing that took up unnecessary space in my life (and that I would have developed some form of guilt about).  At least for now, I have decided that I already have all the tools I need to be a great cook:  two hands, a bunch of cookbooks, a little ingenuity, and a lot of resilience.