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Saturday 10 October 2015

Banana Cakes & Sacher Tortes.......and Misbehaving Kitchen Appliances!

I had owned the Kenwood MultiPro FP905 food processor for several years, I knew that. In fact when we came to think about it, the husband and I, he distinctly remembered buying it for a Very Special Birthday. I had to be honest with myself, if not with anyone else – it had been in my possession for five years! And it had always been a pain in the proverbial, quite unlike its predecessor. In fact its predecessor had been a true paragon of virtue, lasting for thirty five years and only discarded when the plastic attachments began to wither and crumble because they didn’t like the dishwasher. Very possibly dishwashers were not standard kitchen appliances when the original Kenwood was born back in the late nineteen seventies. In any event I didn’t have one in my somewhat basic kitchen in Kohimarama where I whipped up one banana cake after another as well as home educating the children and patching the flat and leaky roof with odd bits of tarpaulin. So it was sad for several reasons when Kenwood Mark One passed on and had to be replaced. I consoled myself with the fact that in these more enlightened days Kenwood Mark Two could very possibly make phone calls and attend to cleaning the windows as well as whip up banana cakes. It would most certainly be resistant to the daily attentions of the dishwasher. So it was with some excitement that I carried it home on that Very Special Birthday, looking forward to its first Chocolate Truffle Cake. Imagine my dismay when I found that the Kenwood MultiPro FP905 demanded the attentions of two strong men in order to allow its lid to be prised from its high tech and innovative bowl. `It will get easier with wear,’ murmured a visiting son, glancing at his watch and remembering a rehearsal he had to attend. `Yes of course it will,’ I stoutly agreed thinking to myself that it more than likely would get worse. And it did get worse – much worse. But instead of returning it to Noel Leeming in Newmarket from whence it came, I simply returned it to the back of the cupboard and gave up making cakes. Well, not entirely because from time to time I ventured to bring forth a batch of muffins because then the offending lid and bowl would not be strictly necessary – its blender still worked beautifully, as did all its other futuristic attachments so it wasn’t an entirely lost cause. And so the sad saga of lost cake making was set aside until a few weeks ago when re-arranging my now more miniscule kitchen I rediscovered the unruly appliance sadly inactive in the furthest corner of the topmost shelf. I would make a cake! After all the Kenwood MultiPro FP905 must surely have decided to behave itself by now, in its new, downsized, city fringe environment. Thirty minutes later the husband, and the neighbor on our right who speaks no English were both struggling to twist the lid from the bowl. Contemplating the number of eggs trapped within I rang Noel Leeming in a minor fury and asked for their service agent’s details. A helpful young woman, clearly alarmed by this Friday afternoon ferocity immediately gave me the contact details for Sharpen Repair in Mt. Eden who were definitely going to be open on Saturday morning and were dedicated to the servicing of small household appliances – especially those manufactured by DeLongi. The Sharpen Repair Manager was briskly efficient. It was decidedly stuck he said. He would do his best. He would even contact DeLongi in Australia though there was the small problem of the lost receipt to consider – and the fact my particular processor had been sitting on a kitchen shelf for at least four years. It wasn’t going to be easy, he said. And it wasn’t of course even when I explained rather aggressively that naturally it had been sitting on a bloody shelf, it had been sitting there because I was waiting for it to improve. He looked at me strangely, exchanged glances with the husband who was lurking in the background and did not argue. `I bet he does absolutely nothing,’ I said angrily as we walked back to the car. `Well maybe you should have taken it back to Noel Leeming in the first place - when you first noticed……’ the husband began and then faltered into silence. I wondered how much a totally new, replacement one might be and he said probably too much so the matter was left at that. Imagine my amazement when some weeks later I got a call from Mr. Sharpen Repair to tell me that my replacement bowl for the MultiPro FP905 had arrived from DeLonghi in New South Wales. They had decided, he told me, to replace it as an act of kindness even though I had had it for a number of years and I had lost the receipt and in any event they had never, ever had a similar problem with their Kenwood MultiPro 905s. I was both surprised and delighted. Sharpen Repair had gone above and beyond the call of duty to be of assistance – and it has to be admitted, so had DeLongi! And I should add that as I write a Sacher Torte (yes, a Sacher Torte – why not?) cools on the kitchen bench and a banana cake rises in the oven.

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