Kitchen nostalgia

Retronaut just posted this vintage advertisement, and although I found the image of the pigs throwing themselves head-first into the Universal Food Chopper vaguely disturbing, I simultaneously felt a pang of nostalgia. My reaction echoed in many of the comments:  "Awwww, my mother had one of those!"

Funny how such a prosaic kitchen implement sent my mind rocketing back to the 1960s. I can see my mother in the kitchen, grinding up corned beef, potatoes and carrots for hash. Like the cars of that decade, the Universal grinder was big, heavy and rock-solid. Indestructible. 

The articles about making raw pet food all recommend one brand of electric grinder or another, simultaneously warning buyers to review the warranty terms carefully, because some of them will not cover breakage caused by grinding bones (an essential BARF ingredient).  One article suggests investing in a good pair of earplugs to block the din of grinding.  After a few moments of consideration, what popped into my head?  The image of my mother's Universal grinder. I don't remember it generating any undue noise, and it could probably crunch up those electric grinders with their limited warranty cards. 

I was surprised and thrilled to find something even close to the Universal grinder when I got to Phnom Penh. Its design isn't as stylish as its American cousin's, but it's just as bullet-proof.  It came with no warranty card, because it's perfectly obvious it will outlive its buyer and several generations thereafter.

One was made in the fine old industrial city of New Britain, Connecticut, and the other in Moscow.  In the 1960s, no one in our town would have bought a Russian meat grinder, made by those godless Communists! Back then, my schoolmates and I crouched under our desks during bomb drills on the theory that we would somehow fare better there when the Russians launched a nuclear attack. And that seemed even less far-fetched than the idea that I would one day live in Cambodia and buy a meat grinder made in Moscow.