Do You Love Your Kitchenaid?

Merry Christmas!

My sister-in-law had surgery a few months ago, but that did not stop her from making Christmas as special as ever. Her house is always so beautiful. I love how she puts love and attention into every detail. There was one decoration, however, that stood out from the rest.

I was standing in her kitchen tonight, as she put the finishing touches on dinner. People are talking and having a great time. And I’m over near the microvave tasked with cooking the veggies in one of these new-fangled steaming bags when I hear something so peculiar, so rich, so wonderfully brilliant, it felt like the whole room stopped.

… yeah, I decorated my Kitchenaid for Christmas.

It is just like Carol to pay attention to this kind of detail and just like me to wonder why I didn’t think of it myself. I got my first Kitchenaid about 6 years ago. It is a beautiful cobalt blue. My son says I should dress it up for Hanukkah.

It isn’t the craziest idea.

Like many families (God, I hope so)… when we discuss this great gadget at our holiday gatherings, the initially casual conversation inevitably takes a sobering turn. The gravity of the topic seems to rank with other life or death topics, like war… and Tivo. Faces become drawn, brows furrowed. It's that look...you know the one...suspicious, cautious, territorial, unsettling and yet, curiously reassuring. Perhaps, it is because there really is no other human/appliance relationship like that of the cook and his Kitchenaid.

...except for perhaps a guy and his grill.

But even that comparison is laughable. The guy/grill affair is more like a fling than a marriage. Owners often flaunt their indiscretions by projecting an air of casualness indifference…as if to say… sure, I love my grill… but if it died tomorrow, I could replace it in a second… Best not to get tied down, all the while flagrantly shopping for their next partner in the sales papers before the current one is even out of the door! And then Autumn arrives, rusted-out used and abused old grills get dumped...euthanized and left to die at the ends of lonely leaf-cluttered driveways.

Where’s the love?!?!?

One thing is for sure: No Kitchenaid ever sat at the end of a lonely driveway! They are kept...and handed down...and collected and lovingly displayed even when they are way past their prime. Some folks even manage to gussy them up with peppermint ribbon, crystalline cranberries and a halogen followspot...

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Favorite person of the day: Carol Bargeron. She opens her home and her heart to her family all year long while I can only manage one day a year. I love you Carol!