Looking for a present for your significant other?

I don’t know about you, but as the years go by it seems to be getting harder and harder to know what to buy as a present for my wife ("Gina The Gorgeous"). Not that you want to buy a gift for my wife, of course; I’m talking about buying presents for our “significant others” in general.

Maybe I’m having problems because Gina already has just about everything she wants. (Of course I’m joking … in fact I’m rolling around on the floor laughing :-)

Yesterday was our wedding anniversary. Well, it was one of them, because we originally got married over here in America, then we followed up a few months later with a “Blessing Ceremony” in England. All of which was wonderful, of course, although it does mean I have two anniversaries to remember.

But we digress… some time ago I had mentioned to Gina that I was looking for a book on the tools and techniques used for creating mosaics (this is part of my Starry Night project). Thus it was that yesterday morning Gina presented me with a mountain of books related to mosaic making – seriously, I don’t think she missed a single one of the offerings on Amazon. She also gave me a load of clothes for my forthcoming Trip to Norway, and all sorts of other things.

I must admit to being caught a little “off-foot” by the sheer quantity of presents (not the least that one of the gifts was a bunch of really warm socks). For my part, all I had to give was a rather nice lady’s wristwatch, plus a killer anniversary card, plus my “ace in the hole” … an “I O U One Food Processor of Your Choice” note that I had hidden in her card.

Now, a food processor might not seem like an incredibly romantic present, but it was something I knew Gina wanted because we had recently seen a program on television about eating healthy and we had decided to give it a whirl. The idea is to not eat anything that comes pre-processed and is delivered in a bottle or a package or a can. Instead, you have to stick to organic fruits, vegetables, meats, and suchlike along with minimally processed flour and grains; also, you essentially have to use these ingredients to make everything you eat from scratch. In order to do this, however, you need a decent food processor and our old one was “on the fritz” (an expression whose origin, I discover, is sadly unknown).

The thing that made this present romantic was the fact that we went out shopping for the new food processor together (by some strange quirk of fate, while on our quest, we also managed to find ourselves trundling through a wide variety of ladies’ perfume and makeup shops … but that’s the price you pay for being married)

After visiting goodness-only-knows how many stores, and after surveying more food processors than I would have thought had been made since time began, we ended up purchasing a little beauty called a Ninja Kitchen System 1200, which boasts 1100 Watts of raw grinding, chopping, and whisking power.


Now, I know that you can get monster professional food processors with enough attachments to fill a small factory. The problem with something of this caliber is that – realistically – we would never really use it. The thing about the Ninja is that – in addition to being really solid and well-made – it’s got only the capabilities and attachments we need (including a 40 ounce chopping container with a 4-blade knife and a bread mixer, and a 72-ounce chopping container with a 6-blade knife and a whisker for things like meringues). Speaking of the whisking attachment, this means I can finally make the Baked Alaska I’ve been waffling on about to Gina for years now (my mother used to make it as a special treat when I was a kid).

The end result was that we spent yesterday evening in the kitchen with Gina happily making organic fruit smoothies using the larger chopping container and myself happily making a rather interesting sauce to drizzle over the top of the steaks I was grilling (I know red meat is supposed to be a no-no, but we’re working our way up to the full “healthy eating” experience in gradual steps).

So, the bottom line is that if you are looking for a gift for your significant other, then – as strange as it may seem – a food processor in the form of a Ninja Kitchen System 1200 might do the trick, because it will facilitate your creating “culinary experiences” together (hey, you never know, some of them might even taste nice :-)

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