Monday, November 14, 2016

A Surprise Present

So Saturday afternoon there was a knock on my door.  It was my son's friend, Lori.  She was carrying  a cardboard box.  She set the box on my table, grinned from ear to ear and said, "I have a present for you."  When I opened the box I was astonished to find this.



Lori comes over to my apartment from time to time.  She is interested in what I am doing and we chat about all sorts of things.  I suppose that during one of those chats I must have mentioned that after the holidays I would be looking to add a food processor to my collection of kitchen gadgets.  Bless her heart, she ordered one for me.

Yesterday morning Lori made a quick run to the grocery store and brought back two 5 lb. bags of carrots.  They were the baby carrots, so all I had to do was wash them and shred them.  Now understand that I have never before owned a food processor.  If I wanted shredded carrots, they were shredded one by one on a box type shredder - by hand.  The whole 5 lbs. of carrots ran through the processor in mere minutes!  They are in the dehydrators as I type.

Lori also brought me four heads of cabbage - two green and two purple.  I shredded the rest of the carrots and the cabbage, packed them into Ziploc bags and stored them in the fridge.  As one batch of vegetables dries, I have another ready to go on the dehydrator trays.  This is so cool.  :)

When a person has a physical condition like arthritis that causes pain, the tendency is to find alternative ways of doing even the most simple of chores that hurt the least.  This gadget is a godsend for me, for much of the canning and dehydrating I do requires vegetables to be shredded or sliced.

Thank you, Lori.  You have made my life easier and I am most appreciative.

17 comments:

  1. She sounds like a real sweetheart.
    When I was downsizing from my house, I almost got rid of my food processor. Same size as the one pictured but a different brand. So so glad I kept it. Most of the time, it stores in one of my cabinets. But it is worth it's weight in gold when I need something. I get the most use out of it when it's time to make cucumber pickles or deal with monster zucchini. A friend uses hers to grate cheese. I haven't tried that yet but would sure beat using my box grater.
    Cheers, SJ in Vancouver

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  2. SJ...She is a sweetheart. :)
    I have never had a food processor before, so I am like kid with a new toy. I was just amazed at how quickly I was able to get the carrots and cabbage ready for the dehydrators. Right now, one of my shoulders is a little wonky, so it would have really been a chore to do the amount of grating I did this morning if using a box grater. I watched a couple of videos yesterday about grating cheese with a processor. They made sure the cheese was cold, grated it and then froze it. I know I will use it for that.

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  3. I agree, BW...I just love kitchen gadgets.

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  4. I'm glad it's working for your purposes. God bless the young lady who gave it to you!

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  5. Gorges...It sure will make a lot of the food prep I do much easier. Amen to the God bless her.

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  6. Rob...Yes, it did. Ho, ho, ho. :)

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  7. Mom, She's a keeper. Love, Duane

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  8. Son...I believe you are right. :)
    Love, Mom

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  9. I thought she was going to bring you an AK-47 and two cases of ammo. But a food processor is nice , too. ;-)

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  10. Lisa...It really was such a thoughtful thing to do, and I'm sure it will get used a lot.

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  11. You're funny, Harry...Aside from the cost, your suggestion wouldn't surprise me much. The girl knows her way around firearms, too.

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  12. Just today, I was thinking I should get out the food processor I bought ten years ago and used once. Mine is small and I wish it were larger. I may just go get a larger one! I don't have arthritis, just injuries that linger and cause me pain when I do too much. For years I used a box grater and finally bought one that is flat with a handle. It is so much easier to use than the box grater.

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  13. Vicki,
    Did you read my post about needing a recipe? I have two pounds of dates and want to make date balls that don't require cooking. I can look it up on google, but cannot find what I need. Tried. Got a recipe for date balls that do not require cooking?

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  14. Linda...I wish I had gotten a food processor long ago. It took no time at all to shred 10 lbs. of carrots and I shredded two heads of cabbage and used the slicer side of the blade for the other two heads. All worked well. I like to buy blocks of cheese and grate my own, so I tried that next. Success! I also used it to slice potatoes for supper.

    The arthritis doesn't bother my hands very much so far, but my shoulders can get a bit painful from time to time, making it difficult to do things like grate carrots on any kind of hand held grater. I think the processor will work really well for me.

    I saw your post about needing a date recipe and I checked my recipes and I don't have what you are looking for. I also checked my Mother's recipes and she had one for date filled cookies, but the filling is cooked and then spooned onto circles of cookie dough. The dough is folded over the filling, the edge sealed and then they are baked. But I knew that wasn't what you wanted. Hope you can find the recipe you are looking for.

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