Retro not Vintage

Ebay and I hooked up last week. I'm now the proud owner of a Hobart A9 coffee grinder. My 20 year-old coffee mill is still working, but I indulged myself toget something I always wanted. Although I sometimes call my current machine a grinder, it’s not, it's a coffee mill that breaks beans apart by accelerating them in a container and having friction break them apart. The A9 is a mill, the coffee beans will be placed in a hopper, forced through a chamber where they pass through a set burr, ensuring that each bean is ground precisely to the same shape for equal brewing.

Does it hurt?

I’m excited. Hobart, whose products are known to consumers as Kitchen Aid, briefly reintroduced the A9 a dozen or so years ago. Based on the original design from the pre WWII era, the A9 was beautiful and elegant, the machine both worked and looked good sitting on the counter. Not satisfied with the combination of good looking and good working Hobartians brought back the machine in plastic with plastic parts in the 70s/80s before shelving the design until the new millennium (this my machine’s era).  Probably due to the price and possibly because some brainiac felt that better branding meant all Kitchen Aid products should look like their iconic mixer, they scrapped the A9 in favor of something that looks more like a smallpox vaccinator.

I generally avoid politics here. There are plenty of cultural and political blogs out there for that, I want to be about food. In part it’s because what’s the point the debating over how much government is good government? The possibility of a reasonable discourse on that topic died in the Reagan years and was replaced by a scorched earth win the argument at all costs and view those who hold different beliefs as the enemy, which they’re not, quite often it's our friends and relatives who disagree. Mostly though, in a culture that is fragmenting along racial, ethnic, religious and especially economic lines, I think food is one of the last areas where people come together to share. I wouldn’t say the zone surrounding the kitchen and table is sacrosanct but I tend to veer away from issues that divide.

Just because I put my head in the ground and lead conversations away from not from controversial topics but from unwinnable topics doesn’t mean the whole world feels that way. Thanksgiving for instance will force the Glen Beckers and the #OWSers to rub elbows. Funny, a year ago freedom of assembly looked different to both sides - I guess issues look different if it’s not wearing a tricornered hat.

I bring this up because I saw Michael Moore speak briefly last night – he didn’t have horns, btw. Let me say my political beliefs are in good government, personal freedoms and the belief that if elected bodies take care of the health, education and general welfare of its citizens, you are guaranteeing meritocracy. That and the belief in science, the age of reason and trusting fact more than opinion makes me a socialist liberal to the Murdochians of society. Really though, if the culture hadn’t lilted so far to the right, my beliefs would be that of a Rockefeller Republican.

Or it might not, because I generally refer to Rockefellers as robber-barons which is why Mr. Moore appeals to me. Although his movies seem to galvanize rather than stir debate, and subsequently he has worn himself out with me over the last decade. But Mr. Moore seems to have the opposite effect of Alec Baldwin, I like him more when he opens his mouth, not less. Sure he may be loud, unsubtle and unfair, but why should he play by the rules other people designed? A self-made man whose antics might not be admirable, he bears witness that being unique, determined and smart one can succeed on their own terms.

Plus he is funny. And with close quarters, alcohol, relatives you only see once a year, the ability to deflect tension with good humor and intelligence should be example enough to help everyone get through the holiday.