I’m a regular reader of Nosh With Me, a food blog that the author, Hilary, describes as, “One girl’s love affair with her KitchenAid mixer.” For many owners, their KitchenAid stand mixer may simply be a casual purchase at the mall or a wedding registry acquisition, but if you came to own yours in your early or mid twenties, you probably have a story to go with it. Priced between $175 – $425 (USD), they are not cheap, but I believe here you get what you pay for. This price bracket makes it an extravagant purchase for most college grads with the exception of the extremely well to do or culinary arts major.

The story of my KitchenAid can’t be told without also touching upon how I met my wife, who, at the time, was also employed at Backroads as a tour leader. I was looking for a place to live in Daly City. Anyone familiar with the SF bay area would find that detail intriguing enough. Less than a mile from the beach and ten minutes from the city with access to both BART and CalTrain, it sounds pretty good. Oh yeah, wait, the fog—there is a lot of it. All the time. Realtors in Daly City—like teachers—take summers off. You get the idea.

That October I moved in to the large room downstairs and lived in the house alone while she was attending Spanish immersion school in Guatemala. She returned in early December to find me lacing up a bicycle wheel in the living room. The next morning, we decided to have pancakes for breakfast. I opened the kitchen cupboard and scanned the pots and pans. “What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Teflon”, I replied. She didn’t have any, but we lived super close to Serramonte Mall so we took a quick trip to Macys in search of a non-stick pan. On the way to the cookware we passed by the appliances. There was a display with some 300 watt KitchenAids meant to distract us from our pancake mission. We both paused and stared for a moment in awe. I looked closer and realized this was the tilt-head model with the screw in bowl. “This is pretty nice,” I said, “but you have to get the one with the lever that lifts the bowl. It’s more powerful, sturdier and larger.”

After admiring the mixers we went to the cookware department and my housemate splurged on a nice Calphalon fry pan perfect for making pancakes. I never gave the KitchenAid a second thought since it was more than one month’s rent. Ten days later my birthday arrives. At this point, I’ve basically known my housemate for about two weeks plus half a dozen interactions at work. She goes to get my present and I can hear her struggling to bring a very large box into the living room. No, is that what I think it is? “Ok, this is like your birthday present for the next 10 years” she explained as I unwrapped the box to reveal a dream KitchenAid.

Di said she was just going to get me the less expensive one, but then she saw the 75th anniversary model complete with extra engraved bowl and limited edition diamond white and she knew she had to get that one for me. A few weeks later and we were more than housemates. My Mom would later confess, “I thought when she bought you that expensive KitchenAid she was going after you!” The truth is that we were just nice people who had a lot in common and were becoming great friends. We’re going to be celebrating our tenth wedding anniversary this year.

Now that my KitchenAid has been around for a dozen of my birthdays, I can’t help but peek at the newer, six quart models. They seem to address the difficulty of adding dry ingredients when the bowl is raised—and they have more power. But this KitchenAid is so special and has such a wonderful history to me. Maybe when the 100th anniversary model comes out in another dozen years I’ll be ready to consider parting with this KitchenAid.

75 year timeline of KitchenAid from the 75th Anniversary Recipe Book.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 21st, 2007 at 10:00 pm and is filed under Essays. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.