Oh No KitchenAid...

It's broken. Won't mix soft butter broken.

I was making a cake to take to share with my knitting peeps tonight, and I broke it. On the front of a KitchenAid stand mixer there is a plug that goes over the hole where other attachments can attach. This is held in place with a screw, which, as it turns out, can wear itself loose with a lot of vigorous mixing, and the plug can fall into the butter and sugar you are creaming, and jam the machine, and strip out something in the motor.

Thankfully there is a shop here in Wellington that repairs KitchenAid mixers, and invited me to drop it in on Tuesday, since we are just about to start an extended long weekend for Easter. You know, Easter, when all the baking happens? Yeah. I must have sounded sad on the phone since the repair shop lady kept calling me dear and not to blame myself, and to be reassured that it can and will be fixed. Or maybe she just understands what it is like to bust a mixer that you love very much. And kept calling me "Dear".

So, tonight, no cake. This weekend, no Easter baking. But I'm feeling grateful that there is a repairer not 5 km from where we are living, and I doubt I will ever forget to tighten that bloody screw every time I use the mixer.

It's taking a lot of restraint to not eat the butter and sugar that was going to be an orange cake, though.

 

Road kill WUT

Last night I was driving us home from the Airshow (which as excellent), driving on unknown roads, tired, and in the late dusk. My Australian mind expected a kangaroo to jump out and whack into our car at any second, but I had to adjust my head to New Zealand hazards. We figured that the only thing I was likely to find on the road were introduced possums, foxes or rabbits, and squashing them would really be doing the local ecology a favour.

Keep driving, LOOK WHAT IS THAT SMALL FURRY THING. It's a bird, it's a plane, no its a WEASEL. WHAT THE? Yep, it was a weasel. I asked Mr Google in the seat next to me to use his google fu to identify the creature, and it was a weasel. Turns out that weasels were introduced to NZ by some complete tools against good scientific advice (haters of evidence and reason, even then...) and now they are a big problem. Weasels and stoats.

I had no idea that this year I would see feral weasels or stoats. I learn something new every day. Apparently there are wild hedgehogs here too.

By the way, I did not run over the weasel, it was too weasley quick and got away. Next time, weasel, next time...