Farewell Immersion Blender: Ode To A Kitchen Appliance

My Dearest Immersion Blender,

I loved you from the moment I spotted you in Fortunoff’s all those years ago.  With my registry gun in hand, I added you to the list in the hopes that one day you would be mine.  Oh how thrilled I was to see your beautiful image on the box when I unwrapped you at my bridal shower!  I knew that it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.  When we first started working together, I was so young and inexperienced.  I would shoot tomato sauce onto the back splash of my apartment kitchen and onto my clothing.  But you never laughed at me; you kept right on pulverizing until I got the hang of it, and it was smooth sailing (and smooth saucing) from then on.

For months on end, you would sit unused in the cabinet, waiting patiently for soup season to come around again.  As the years went by, your perfect alabaster exterior showed its age; stained from butternut squash, tomatoes, and that one time I added too much saffron to a recipe.  But those stains represented the memories of all that we had made together and I loved you for them.  While other appliances would quit on me without warning (remember that time the food processor died because I used too many sticky dates at once?), you worked through every challenge, never once burning out.

And at my weakest moment, when I needed to drink protein shakes because my diseased gut couldn’t digest anything else, you began each morning with me, whipping up the most delicious breakfast shake a food sensitive girl could ask for.  But in a moment of haste, I hurt you.  I pulled something out of the cabinet and you came tumbling to the floor, cracking your protective guard.  I worried you would no longer work, but you held it together a little longer.  Then a few months later, a piece of your guard broke off and I feared I would need to replace you.  Wrong again!  You powered through the season’s first batch of Roasted Butternut Squash and Apple soup.  I noticed that it took a little longer for the soup to get to a smooth texture, but I would never blame you for that – it must have been the squash’s fault.  We could get through this bump in the soup and work together forever!

Ah, those were the days of powering through veggies together to make delicious soup.

Until this week.  You were having what became your final spin in my morning shake and I felt a rattle in the glass.  I used a fork to feel around for whatever was causing the noise?  Was it a bit of frozen strawberry?  Was there a hard chunk in my banana?  To my dismay, I pulled out a large piece of your protective guard.  When I looked over to you in the sink, you were missing more than half of your guard.  You were no longer safe to work.  It was time to retire.

My dear immersion blender, I am sorry to say that I have replaced you with a newer model.  Please know that you will always be my first and favorite, but life goes on and there are still many soups, sauces, and shakes in my future.  I tried out the new guy today.  He is a bit quieter than you and my shake was smoother than I remember it ever being, but he cannot take away from what we have made together.  I am reminded of a Girl Scout quote that I think is appropriate for this moment: “Make new friends, keep the old; one is silver and the other gold.”  While you are not quite gold on the outside (more of a dirty tan), you are solid gold on the inside and will always be precious to me.

Rest in peace… and in pieces.

xo

B

The old and the new