Math to the family

I have an addition to the family of food makers. It is a Singer Sandwich Grill but that doesn’t have as nice of a ring to it as my Big George does so I may have to rename it. It also will not be stored in the same place as my Big George. I’m thinking it will sit with my Crock Pot which is in the kitchen. So I guess the family is different than I originally wrote. The husband would be Big George, the mother Crock Pot (because it has some girlie print on it), and the baby would be the Singer Grill. So, apparently I have no real connection with them other than I bought them. So I guess this makes me more of a slave owner. Except the machines can’t procreate so the gift of the Singer was a slave from the beginning and therefore cannot attain its freedom based on being born free. I’m not sure of the sociology of all this, maybe I will have to check out the biblical rules of slavery. I’m sure I will have to set them free in 7 years, but I’m sure they won’t leave on their own so maybe I need to be looking for the ears of these machines so I can drive an awl through them and make them my permanent slaves.

Really this post was to be about my new member of the “slave” family but I have been distracted with new thoughts about being a slave owner. So, the post that was in my head originally is becoming augmented with these new thoughts.

I received the Singer as a gift, as already mentioned, from the people who I said I would marry my Big George if I could. I now realize that that statement could not have been acted upon because Big George was already married to Crock Pot for the last two years. Anyway, I took Singer home and the next day I cleaned it up and got ready to have it make some sandwiches. I sat there for nearly 42 minutes waiting for Singer to make the sandwiches but he never did. I even barked some orders at it and when that didn’t work I even tried just barking at it. Nothing worked and then, while nose to nose with Singer barking at it, I realized the last time I had seen one of these.

It was close to 10 years ago when my good friend Matt was going to college or already at college. His grandmother bought him one of these for his eating enjoyment while living in a dorm at Kansas State. It then clicked that I had to do something, that even though it was a sandwich maker it wouldn’t literally make the sandwiches. So, I put in all the stuff I like on a turkey sandwich. Like turkey. And since the grill was really hot and ‘Ready’ as indicated by the light I put some cheese in there. I like cheese on a sandwich anyway but the thought that this grill would melt the cheese added to my enjoyment of having cheese on a sandwich.
The biggest problem I had was trying to think of whether or not I needed to put some sort of grease on the grill before I put the bread on it. Really the whole think looked very similar to a grilled cheese sandwich. But, I thought of Ron Poppel and he never used grease when he used this grill. (I think I remember him selling these things. If he didn’t then I have just created a false memory, which I do from time to time like the last part of my time in Baltimore). To solve my dilemma I put butter on one side and left the other side to potentially get burnt to a crisp (what is a crisp anyway and why are they burnt?).

Since Singer was ready I put on all the items already mentioned and closed the lid. Like a newborn baby my Singer came without instructions and I wasn’t in the position to ask for help. I mean Singer was signaling that he was ‘Ready’. Plus now I had opened the lid and put on all the stuff and Singer would soon not be ‘Ready’ any longer. Now I know what it is like to land the Space Shuttle. You just have a very narrow margin of time to work with before you have to scrub the whole mission. Being the adventurer that I am I took the risky venture and made a unilateral executive decision and closed the lid. . . almost.

Initially I didn’t take notice of the space between the lid and the base and therefore was unaware of how close they really are. Therefore, when the lid didn’t close I had to do some quick thinking. I squeezed the handles on the lid and the base really, really. . . really hard to get them to close. Had I had my tubby roommate I could have had him sit on Singer and the work would have been less but then it would have been difficult to close the latch on the handles. You know with all the fat that I would have to lift to even see Singer. He would have engulfed the little machine (and he would feel proud that he actually made it in my blog. So if you see my phat roommate you can tell him he made it in here). (When you tell him be sure you tell him I called him phat not fat. You will have to spell phat otherwise he may be offended. The tubby part isn’t offensive so you don’t have to mention that part).

I digress, Singer was closed, the latch was in place and now was the wait. I noticed that the ‘Ready’ light was off and I thought that maybe it would come back on when the food was ‘Ready’.
But as time went on and the light didn’t come back on I thought maybe I was wrong and the light was to come on the second time when the crisp was done. Maybe I hadn’t read the name well enough and this was actually a “Singer Sandwich Grill unless you cook the sandwich too long and then it is the Singer Crisp Maker”. I did see some more writing past the word “Grill” but they were smaller letters and I didn’t think they really mattered. Let that be a lesson to you you should always read the fine print.

To avoid the crisp, which didn’t seem that appetizing, I opened it. Both pieces of bread stuck to Singer and the melted cheese hung in the air like cobwebs. Despite all the carnage it looked good and I was hungry, however I didn’t think it was done so I closed the lid. This was a bad idea because when I opened the lid the alignment of the pieces of bread were shifted and therefore didn’t go back together the way they came apart and there was some new grilling noise that sounded much like crisp noise. I immediately opened to grill and began the evacuation procedure that I had been learning the last few years. Wisdom taught me that when bread, turkey and cheese are making sizzling noises on metal that one of two things are happening. Either the bread, turkey and cheese are really hot and therefore making the metal hot but less hot than the food, or the metal is hotter than the food and the food is sizzling because of the metal. I guess the third option could be a roommate or small child are making sizzling sounds in a far off corner of the house who is doing it not to scare you but for some unknown reason that is only known to that person. After ruling out the other options I again went with wisdom. And it told me that the metal would be hot. Therefore I used a knife to do the evacuation.

A little aside here for a moment while the tension is still at a fever pitch. I have a natural aversion to using knives in a poking fashion with unknown, currently plugged in, machines. I’ve been told that with a toaster this is a bad idea (and the cartoons tell the same story) and this grill seemed similar to a toaster. I also have an aversion to using water and machines (although I’m fine with a washing machine). While Singer sat on the countertop I thought long and hard before I plugged it in. You see while cleaning Singer nearly all of it got wet and I wasn’t too sure if it was supposed to get all wet. Anyway, after plugging it in I was clearly fine or else that would have been the first thing I mentioned.

I have had recent problems with heat and fire, and because of this my right hand and left forearm have paid the highest price. Therefore, I used my left hand to extract whatever the knife couldn’t do. It went flawlessly. All that was left was some residue of cheese from the ill-fated reclosing of the lid that prompted the immediate evacuation. I got it all onto a plate and ate in peace as a satisfied new Singer slave owner.