When we broke up the family home many years ago, one of the kitchen devices that I got was the cast iron Universal meat grinder. This piece of equipment always fascinated me from assembly to operation. The parts could be selected for the task at hand and each had it's place and a screw or bolt to hold it in place. As the handle turned, the meat would be fed by the threaded worm through the chamber to the cutting wheel and forced out into the bowl below by the persistence of the turning handle. It's truly a classic and in my eyes, a real work of functional art.
I mentioned recently that we were given a grinding attachment for our KitchenAid mixer for Christmas - a replacement for my classic, or so one would think, but if you know anything about me, I let go of the old with great difficulty. So when we recently set out to grind pork for homemade pork sausage, I decided the two should meet - the old and the new - the self-confident workhorse and the sleek aggrandized prima donna. Well, several hours later, the rest is history ...
If I've told you once, I've told you several times ... we are never bored. I started to photograph both devices with an eye toward the photography composition class I've been taking - wondering what I could do with the lines and light, and if I could tell a story. Peter quickly joined in and what fun we had. This slide show is the result.
You tell us, is there a story here ... one you find engaging and just a little entertaining? Does the narcissistic old meat grinder succumb to the charms of this buff, new beauty?
Photos & Slide Show ©2012 Claudia Ward & Peter Tooker
Music: The Euphonium from the soundtrack of "Mr. Majorium's Wonder Emporium" by Aaron Zigman & Alexandre Desplat
You're probably thinking that we have way-too-much-time-on-our-hands, but trust me we don't .... we'd like to do more.
