My Dad, who by the way is the world’s best Dad, (sorry to all the world's other Dads, especially DMs whose Dad is kindness itself to me but you surely wouldn't expect me to say anything else?) brought me up to understand completely one simple rule. If you want to buy something to help you do a job, buy the best aid you can afford for the task and you will never regret it.

I’ve always lived by that rule but last year I made a simple mistake. I mistook the most expensive thing for the best and I lived to regret the day I didn’t do any homework and simply went into a shop and bought the most expensive thing they had for the task I wanted.

Most readers of my diary know that one of my passions in life is cooking – I love cooking, it’s my stress reliever as well as my way of making sure we don’t eat stuff that’s just clogged up with chemicals from mass-production. If I pick up something in a supermarket that has ingredients on the side that I don’t have in my store cupboard at home, (you know the sort of thing - hydrogenised vegetable fat, emulsifiers, preservatives, the list of nasty chemicals is more or less endless) then I prefer not to buy it and make my own alternative.

This means that I use my food processor almost every day. I had an old Moulinex that had been a wedding present from way back when and it had been used and used, over and over again. The bowl had a crack in it, the blender had no lid, various bits of it would only work with coaxing and the motor was very dodgy. I desperately wanted a new one (I still can’t quite bring myself to say I NEEDED one) but because we couldn’t sell David’s house I couldn’t spend any money that was not essential.

When David’s house in Ascot was finally sold and we were solvent again, I treated myself to a new one. I nipped into Argos and bought the most expensive food processor they sold – the Kenwood Multi-Pro – that’ll be fine, I thought – it’s a Kenwood, that’s a good make. I couldn’t have been further from the truth. The gadget suffers from being the most badly designed kitchen gadget I have ever come across. What’s more, for a food processor, it’s serious money and therefore represents VERY poor value indeed. It’s absolute pants, to the point that it is virtually unusable and I would strongly recommend that if anyone is considering buying one, don’t!!! It’s such a shame you can’t ‘test drive’ kitchen gadgets in the way you can with almost every other consumer ‘durable’ product. To me it’s a simple case of looks over utility. In the case of the Kenwood, it looked great but it was just so difficult to use. BTW – I’m not moaning about the Kenwood Chef, just to be clear, this is their food processor rather than their traditional mixer.

I’ve struggled with the wretched gadget for eighteen months or so and finally lost my will to use it about three or four weeks ago so yesterday I popped along to see my spiritual friend and guide, Saint Delia, on her website to see what she had to say about the subject of food processors. She recommended this little beauty so I did a quick search for it online to see how much of a bargain I could get, then made my purchase at Amazon. I placed the order yesterday afternoon and today, at around 11am, DM emailed me to say it had arrived. Now how is that for service?

So, tonight we have got home-made pasta for supper and this gadget even kneads the stuff for me. It didn’t quite get it to its final level of elasticity but it was so close, I got it there in about a minute. Cool.

You can tell it is quality just by picking it up. It weighs a ton and has a steel body and a pro spec motor. Oh it’s a real beauty, both to use and to look at. I can’t wait to work out what all the attachments do but for tonight I’m happy with my pasta dough and looking forward to my meal.

I do love my kitchen gadgets – just get me on the subject of bread machines and I’m a happy bunny indeed.


Sorry Lisa but last year I was celebrating beating Liverpool on this day!