Where Does a Kitchen Tool Go When It Goes Missing?
My immersion blender is missing in action. I don’t know when it left or where it went, and it certainly didn’t leave a note. One day it was resting in the drawer beside the spatulas, and the next there was only an empty space where it used to sleep. I have opened that drawer so many times that the drawer must think I’m hoping it will change its mind.
I have searched the cupboard under the counter, the bin in the pantry, and the basket where things go when they don’t belong anywhere else. I found three wooden spoons, a jar lid with no jar, and a measuring cup I didn’t know I owned. I did not find my blender. I like to imagine it’s out on an adventure of its own somewhere, blending soup for strangers and never once thinking of home.
For quite some time I’ve made do without it. I’ve ladled hot soup into a countertop blender in batches, which means more dishes, more splashes, and more wiping down the wall behind the stove. Every single time, I tell myself the same thing. Suzy, it’s time to replace that runaway.
Today, I finally have the time. I could order one online and wait for a box to land on my porch, but that isn’t what I want today. I want to hold the box in my hands, read every word on the packaging, and see what I’m buying with my own eyes. So off to Walmart I go.
Who Knows Where Everything Lives in a Big Box Store?
A big box store is a city all its own. It has neighborhoods for garden hoses and neighborhoods for greeting cards, long avenues lined with cereal boxes, and somewhere far toward the back, a quiet district where the kitchen tools live. If you don’t know the map, you can wander a long while before you find what you came for. I have done my share of wandering in stores like this one, and I’m not in the mood for a long walk today.
Just inside, I see a woman folding towels. She folds each one neatly, corners matching, the way someone folds when she cares how the shelf will look after she walks away. She is about five feet tall, with a calm way about her, and she looks up with a pleasant face when I come near. I ask her if she knows where the electric food immersion blenders are.
She very kindly sets her towel down and says, “Right this way.” Then she waves her hand in a friendly motion for me to walk with her. She doesn’t point across the store or tell me to try the far aisles. She is going to take me there herself, towels and all left behind for the moment.
What strikes me as we walk is that she never once looks around. She doesn’t glance up at the signs hanging from the ceiling or slow down at the corners to get her bearings. She moves through that big box city like she’s walking through her own home, turning left and right without a second thought. She knows exactly where these blenders live.
Can a Stranger Give a Better Review Than the Box?
As we walk, I ask her if she has ever used one of these. I’m half expecting a polite shrug, the kind you’d give a customer who asks about something outside your department. Instead, her face brightens. “Yes, I have this one,” she tells me. “I’ve had it for years. It still works well.”
Now that is a recommendation I can trust. It isn’t a sticker on a box or a row of stars from someone I’ll never meet. It’s a woman who has stood at her own stove, with her own soup, and used this tool year after year. Nobody is paying her to say it, and she says it simply, the way you’d tell a friend which grocery store has the freshest bread.
I tuck that away in my mind. Whatever she points to, I’m going to look at very closely. Years of good use is the best review any kitchen tool can get. I feel like I’ve been handed a secret before we’ve even reached the shelf.
Why Are the Best Things Always on the Top Shelf?
We arrive, and there they are, the immersion blenders, stocked high on a shelf. Very high. I’m five feet five inches tall, which is plenty tall for most of life. It’s enough to reach the back of my kitchen cupboards and see over most crowds. It is not enough for this shelf.
My helper is about five feet tall, so the two of us stand there looking up like a pair of hikers studying a mountain. Whoever stocked this shelf must have had giraffes in mind as customers. I picture a giraffe strolling in for a blender, reaching up without a stretch, and strolling out again. The rest of us are left on our tiptoes, squinting at the labels from below.
I look at her, and I think she is from Japan. There’s a gentleness in how she stands with me, as if we’re solving this puzzle together and we have all the time in the world. She isn’t in a hurry to get back to her towels. She’s here with me, and that’s the job right now.
Do Boxes Ever Fib a Little?
As we study the products, the packaging makes the stems, or the sticks, of each blender seem to be different lengths. One package looks like it holds a stick about twelve inches long. Another looks closer to eighteen. If I trusted the pictures alone, I’d think I was choosing between a pencil and a yardstick.
Packaging is a funny thing. A clever photographer can make a blender look like it could reach the bottom of a well, and a box can make a stick look shorter than it really is. I’ve learned over the years to read the fine print and not just admire the pictures. A box is like a first impression, and first impressions can be a little dressed up.
Then I spot a third one. It’s lying on its side, pushed back too far and up too high for me to reach. I lean, I squint, and I read the name on the box. It’s a Ninja.
Of course it is. Where else would a Ninja be but hiding in the shadows at the very back of the top shelf? That’s what ninjas do best. I half expect it to disappear entirely if I look away for one second, so I decide to leave it to its hiding and give my attention to the two boxes we can actually reach.
What Makes One Box So Much Heavier Than Another?
We take down the two boxes within reach and compare them. I hold one, then the other, and right away something isn’t right. One box is so much heavier than the other. I wonder if this blender has a motor made of solid iron, or if it’s been lifting weights on its days off.
Then I look more closely and laugh. It isn’t one blender at all. It’s two of them, bundled together in plastic wrap like twins who refuse to be separated. A two for one, and nobody announced the sale.
My helper sees it the same moment I do, and her face changes. She immediately takes the box from me and says, “This is unacceptable.” Then she apologizes to me for it not having been placed on the shelf correctly. She tells me she’ll talk to the supervisor about it, and while she’s speaking, she’s already removing the extra plastic wrap that holds the two boxes together.
I want to put her at ease, so I tell her, “Some people just don’t care. Don’t worry about it, I can look at it that way.” It’s true, I can. I’ve opened plenty of strange packages in my time, and a little plastic wrap won’t stop me from reading a label.
No, she insists. She finishes freeing the boxes and offers one back to me to look at properly. She won’t let me settle for less than the right way, even when I’m the one offering to settle. That moment stays with me long after I leave the store.
Is There a Word for That Kind of Kindness?
On the drive home, I keep thinking about how she handled that shelf. Somebody else stocked it wrong, but she took it on as her own. She apologized for something she didn’t do, fixed it right there, and planned to make sure it didn’t happen to the next person. That isn’t just good customer service. It’s something deeper.
There’s a Japanese word for this, and I think it’s a way of their culture. The word is omotenashi. It’s often translated as hospitality, but those who study it say the meaning runs much deeper than that. It means caring for a guest wholeheartedly and giving your very best without expecting anything in return.
Many trace omotenashi all the way back to the Japanese tea ceremony and the great tea master Sen no Rikyu, who lived in the 1500s. The host of a tea ceremony prepares every detail with care so the guest has an experience to remember. The word is also tied to a phrase meaning “without a front or back,” which describes kindness with no hidden agenda. What you see is truly what you get.
One idea in omotenashi touched me most of all. It includes taking care of things other people will use, out of respect for the next person who comes along. That’s exactly what she did with those boxes. She wasn’t only helping me; she was making sure the shelf was right for whoever came after me.
How Do You Choose Between 250 Watts and 500 Watts?
With the boxes finally sorted, we read the one she handed back to me. It’s a 250-watt blender. That’s fine for some kitchens, but I have a stockpot at home and big plans for soup. I want something with a little more muscle.
So I reach up and take down the one she spoke so well of. It’s a Braun, and it’s 500 watts. That’s twice the power, and holding it, I can feel the difference. A 500-watt blender sounds like it could whirl through a whole stockpot of soup and still have the energy left over to fold a few towels.
Next, we tackle the question of the sticks. We stand there talking and studying the packaging together, reading the details instead of trusting the pictures. In the end, we determine that the sticks are the same length after all. The boxes were fibbing, just as I suspected.
That matters more than you might think. A stick that’s too short in a tall stockpot is like a short ladder against a tall house. You end up reaching and leaning and dipping your knuckles closer to hot soup than anyone should. This stick is long enough for my stockpot, and that settles it.
I choose the Braun 500W. It feels good in my hand, and it comes with the best recommendation in the whole store. A woman who has used it for years told me it still works well. I don’t need to read another review.
Who Invented This Clever Stick Anyway?
Standing in that aisle, I start wondering who first thought of putting a blade on the end of a stick. It turns out the immersion blender was invented in Switzerland by an engineer named Roger Perrinjaquet. He patented his idea on March 6, 1950. That means this handy tool has been around for more than seventy years.
He called his invention the bamix, a name made from the French words battre et mixer, which means “beat and mix.” His wish was to work with it right in the pans on the stove, instead of pouring hot food back and forth between containers. Every time I blend soup right in the pot, I’ll be living out that Swiss engineer’s dream. I think he’d be pleased to know how many kitchens his idea has reached.
Over the years, the immersion blender found its way into professional European kitchens, and then into home kitchens everywhere. Today’s home models come in a wide range of power, from about 120 watts up to over 600 watts for heavy duty ones. My new Braun sits comfortably in the strong part of that range. Mr. Perrinjaquet, thank you for saving me from all those extra dishes.
What Do Two People Laugh About in the Kitchen Aisle?
With my choice made, you’d think we’d say goodbye and go our separate ways. Instead, we keep talking. We talk about cooking, and we laugh about how some tools hold up for years while others burn out before you’ve learned all their buttons. There’s something about kitchen talk that turns strangers into friends in no time at all.
Every kitchen has its heroes and its quitters. There’s the cast iron pan that will outlast us all, and the wooden spoon that has stirred a thousand pots without a single complaint. Then there are the gadgets that promise the world and give up the first time you ask them to do real work. We laugh about all of it, two cooks standing under a shelf meant for giraffes.
It’s the easiest kind of laughter, the kind that comes from knowing exactly what the other person means. She has her blender that has lasted for years, and I have my runaway that left without a word. Between the two of us, we know a thing or two about tools. And now I know which one to trust.
Why Sweet Potato and Squash Soup First?
I already know what my new blender’s first job will be. I’m planning a sweet potato and squash soup, velvety and warm, with a little ginger and lemon. As the saying goes in my kitchen, “Ginger your lemon.” I can almost smell it simmering already.
These two vegetables have quite a history of their own. Sweet potatoes come from the tropical Americas, and they were being grown in Central America at least five thousand years ago. The first Europeans to taste them were members of Christopher Columbus’s expedition in 1492. Long before that, sweet potatoes had already traveled across the Pacific to Polynesia, a mystery that has fascinated historians for years.
Here’s the part that made me smile. Sweet potatoes were brought to the Ryukyu Kingdom, present day Okinawa, Japan, in the early 1600s. They became a staple in Japan because they helped prevent famine when rice harvests were poor. They were even planted in the private garden of the shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune.
So my very first soup with this blender will hold a vegetable with a long and honored place in Japan. It feels like a fitting thank you to the kind woman who helped me choose it. She’ll never know, but I’ll be thinking of her when I stir that pot.
Squash has deep roots too. Many kinds of squash were domesticated independently across the Americas and are among the earliest American crops. Along with corn and beans, squash was an essential part of the Native American diet. Its English name is said to come from a Native American word, and it has been feeding families on this side of the world for thousands of years.
Put the two together, and you have two old friends from the Americas meeting in one stockpot. Add a warm swirl of coconut milk, a bright squeeze of lemon, and a good grating of ginger. Then lower in a 500 watt Braun and let it whirl until the whole pot turns smooth as silk.
Who Hires People Like That?
I will say, talking with the big box woman from Japan was a pure pleasure. I had an evening of easy shopping, even if two boxes were still in plastic when I got there. I came for a blender and left with a story, a good laugh, and a reminder of what real care looks like. Not every errand gives you all that.
There are people who do their jobs, and there are people who make their jobs into something more. She could have pointed me down an aisle and gone back to her towels. Instead, she walked me there, told me the truth from her own kitchen, fixed a shelf that wasn’t hers to fix, and laughed with me about cooking. That’s the kind of person who makes a big store feel like a neighborhood.
Whoever hired her knows who to hire!
What Goes Into the Pot?
Sweet Potato and Squash Soup (serves 6)
2 tablespoons organic extra virgin olive oil
1 organic yellow onion, chopped
3 organic garlic cloves, minced
1 tablespoon organic fresh ginger, grated
2 organic sweet potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 organic butternut squash, peeled, seeded and cubed (about 4 cups)
5 cups organic vegetable broth
1/2 teaspoon organic ground cinnamon
1 pinch organic ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon sea salt
1/4 teaspoon organic black pepper
3/4 cup organic full fat coconut milk
1 organic lemon, juiced
How Does It All Come Together?
Warm the olive oil in your stockpot over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring now and then, until soft and golden, about 7 minutes.
Stir in the garlic and ginger and cook until fragrant, about 1 minute.
Add the sweet potatoes, squash, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and pepper. Stir to coat everything in the warm oil and spices.
Pour in the broth. Bring it to a boil, then lower the heat, cover, and simmer until the sweet potato and squash are fork tender, about 25 minutes.
Take the pot off the heat. Lower your immersion blender all the way to the bottom before turning it on, and keep the blade under the surface so it doesn’t splash. Blend until velvety smooth.
Stir in the coconut milk and lemon juice. Warm gently for a few minutes, taste, and add more salt or lemon if you like.
Thin it with a little more broth if you like your soup lighter. A swirl of coconut milk and a bit of extra grated ginger on top make a beautiful scrumptious bowl.
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