The Deuce

The hot sauce I made a few days ago was so good that I decided to make more. I've been more or less exclusively subsisting on salsa and chips for the last few days. They had some nice small Jalapenos they were almost giving away so I bought more than I probably should have. They looked like they would be hot. Yaou-sah! I won't be eating this batch so fast.

I want to talk about one of my long time kitchen buddies, the Moulinex La Machine II. When I was young, if you wanted something chopped, you chopped it with a knife. If you wanted it minced, you chopped some more, a lot more.

Sometime around 1980, the French started shipping over food mills, which they apparently had been using for some time. The most popular was the Moulinex La Machine. They sold a bunch of them. I guess after awhile, they figured if they could offer a cheaper product, they would sell even more, so they introduced a smaller, but otherwise virtually identical model, La Machine II. It was a miscalculation. The American housewife loved the food mill so much that they were willing to pay a premium for bigger, more powerful machines with many bells and whistles. These were introduced soon after and they sold and still sell, like crazy. You can easily spend a couple hundred dollars on one of these behemoths and they come with every conceivable sort of attachment and control lever.

I was not that interested in buying a food processor but sometime in the early 80's I saw one of the lowly La Machine II's on a clearance table at a department store for just a few bucks. I figured what the fuck, I can throw it away if I don't like it and it will probably break pretty soon anyway. Little did I know.

I loved the Deuce. It worked like a charm. The problem immediately switched from not having things chopped fine enough to turning your ingredients into paste. No problem. Light touch. I can do that. It was super easy to clean, so if you are doing any serious chopping, it really saves a lot of time. Sauces, meat loafs, casseroles and lots of other stuff, just took minutes of preparation. I still chop and grate things the old fashioned way, if it's just a small amount but if it's a lot, I always set up the Deuce.

This thing is like the mouse in the Green Mile. It still works as good as the day I bought it. Got to be at least 25 years, maybe closer to 30. I used to kind of hope it would break, so that I could buy a fancier one. Not anymore. Maybe it will last forever. They can bury it with me like a tribal chieftain, with his favorite war club clasped to his breast.