Spare Me EFFETE!

The great little Braun coffee grinder gave up the ghost late last week. It had resided in my kitchen cupboard for the past ten or fifteen years and survived daily use. Literally: I grind coffee and make at least one, sometimes two, French press pots of brew every day.

This meant I had to whack up coffee grounds in the mini-food processor, which works OK but is not how I’d like to wear out that thing.

So when I noticed that Target carries coffee grinders, I picked up a Mr. Coffee grinder, the one that came closest in size and appearance to the reliable old Braun. I don’t care much for Mr. Coffee products—electric drip coffeemakers in general make terrible coffee, and this maker’s is no exception. And this little machine makes a coarse, clumsy grind that’s just good enough for government work. If you wanted the grounds very fine, you’d either have to grind it in several stages with some cool-down time, since it heats up  quickly, or just let the grounds get an extra zap of heat. Not that big a deal, but mildly annoying.

The Braun grinder and the KitchenAid grinders Target had were big, clumsy, clunky things that would never fit in my cabinet. When Satan and Proserpine took out the old cabinets that came in this old house, they didn’t replace the large cabinet that hung from the ceiling over the counter between the kitchen and the family room. Not doing so did open up the space beautifully–the living room/dining room/kitchen area is bright and open now—but it also reduced the amount of cabinet space so that there’s really not enough for a person whose idea of cooking extends beyond the microwave and the frozen pizza. The old Braun fit exactly into the single small spot that was conveniently at hand for it. Any of the newer models would require me to empty out another cabinet to find a space for it.

So when I was over at Biltmore Fashion Square to hassle with the Apple people fruitlessly (they no longer sell software in their store—you have to download EVERYTHING from the App Store, like I have nothing better to do than figure that out), I dropped by the Williams-Sonoma there and asked after the Braun.

They’re all huge monsters.

But, said I, don’t you have a model about so high and so big around (gestures)?

Well, no. Said she. Well, yeah, there’s one. But it’s (shudders) a blade grinder, not a burr grinder. You wouldn’t want THAT.

Oh. No. Of course not.

The reviled blade grinder was also too large to fit in my cabinet.

Spare me the goddamn fake gourmet effeteness!

And spare me the corporate schemes to make us buy things that we don’t need, whether we want them or not. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

The thing that’s particularly annoying about this is that to get things that were commonplace thirty or forty years ago—a decent pan, a real cast-iron skillet, a functional goddamn coffeegrinder that’s not the size of a baby elephant, a dinner plate that’s larger than a salad plate—you have to search all over creation and usually pay for the schnozzola for it.

If we’re gonna replace things for the sake of style (read, “for the sake of improving the corporate bottom line”), could we at least replace them with stuff that’s better?

What’s your least favorite “improvement” of the day?