The house?  Quiet.

The baby?  Asleep, quietly snoring with a little wheezy feedback (he’s been a little sick).

The mixer?  Here!  In gleaming red, ready to quite literally whisk me and my choice of ingredients away in a lovely adventure wherein I pack on more pounds and enjoy it until I weigh myself.

(I must add that I didn’t pay the price on the site, but a far more delightful one— who knew Amazon had kickass deals?!)

The recipe to officially break in this appliance?  Aye.  There’s the rub.

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Ever since my cells’ genetic information decided to start screaming at me about wanting to be a domestic deity and creating perfect cakes and cookies and possibly brioche –or at least simperingly AND whimperingly aspiring to do so– I have wanted to have a KitchenAid mixer.

A KitchenAid mixer, I would tell myself, would solve all the problems of mankind.  Or at least would solve the problem of my developing tennis elbow whenever I decide to make something that requires stiff peaks.

For some reason, things acquire larger-than-life attributes in our minds; and ever since seeing my step-sister
obtaining her own gleaming, look-at-me-I’m-so-grown-up KitchenAid, I figured that the day I secured mine would be the day my kitchen would transform itself into a palace of culinary competence and cornucopian abundance.

That day came yesterday, as my Mother’s Day present from Monsieur and Herr Meow arrived early. 

My kitchen has not gone Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo.

It hasn’t even moved.

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But my mind has been racing.  Was it just frivolity, then, that led me to ask for a KitchenAid for Mother’s Day?

Am I just one more dastardly consumerist searching to fill a void that deepens with every wretched interaction in this growing, festering sore we call life?  A chasm so large that the leaden weight of the KitchenAid stand (I’m guessing about 8 lbs) only pushes it farther in, threatening to create a black hole where my soul used to be? 

Okay, maybe a little.

And since it is a little unsettling to realize that one’s new mixer is creating a level of hell in one’s soul solely by weight (not volume), I decided to run to someone whose soul had already explored the vast depths of consumerist hell: one of my most beloved gurus, Craig Claiborne. (he deserves a post of his own sometime soon)

To The New York Times Cookbook!

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One word:  poundcake. 

Technically that’s two words.  But oh…. POUNDCAKE!

In my opinion, there is no better, richer, or fluffier cake when done right.  And to do it right, you have to whip the crap out of it to allow more air.

Never in my life have I felt so fulfilled with so little… relatively speaking.

But so yes.  Welcome back, me, and all that good stuff.  And I’ll let you know how it turns out, okay?

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Oh hey, you guys?  Faithful readers?  I have a question for you guys.  Would you buy things from me?  Would you visit my Etsy shop, were I to start one?  Thoughts?  Comments?  Shall I start up a poll?

Oks– happy HumpDay!