Days 63–67: Happy Homemaker

What makes a house a home?

There were three significant things I considered moving overseas via boat: our awesome mattress, my sewing machine, and my KitchenAid mixer. These were items that were important to me, wouldn’t fit reasonably in a suitcase, and had been hard-fought/hard-bought in the first place. One by one, my research told me they should stay stateside.

All three items went to good places. Our bed (almost brand new and seriously the most comfortable mattress I’ve ever slept on) went to friends. My sewing machine (almost brand new and given to me by a dear friend and Fairy Godmother) went to a friend’s daughter. My KitchenAid (pined after for years and discovered on a deep sale for under $200 and had graced our kitchen counter for a good decade or so) went to a family of refugees.

We went from a filled 3-bedroom townhouse with 2.5 floors of living space down to 6 suitcases, a guitar, and a backpack. While we have some keepsakes and 2 guitars waiting for us in Evanston, we said goodbye to a lot of things in our pre-move purge, most of which we have no desire to replace.

Since we’ve moved into the Awesome Flat we’ve acquired some things. We now own a bubbler, press pot, and grinder so we can make our own coffee. I have a yoga mat, block, and strap so I can do my own practice and teach. We bought a small table and 4 chairs so we can enjoy and possibly entertain on our terrace, and a short bookshelf so I have somewhere to put my laptop while teaching. We got our own bedding and towels so we could feel less like we were living in borrowed spaces. We got Mitzie a bed (though she spends more time on the actual bed in the yoga/guest room). We got rocks glasses and a cocktail mixing set because those kinds of drinks do not make themselves here. We restocked bare-bones painting supplies so we can make at least our Altoid-tin masterpieces.

That feels like a lot, typing it all out, but, with the exception of the furniture (which we’d leave) and the linens, everything would pack up into a single box fairly easily. The ease of living more minimally isn’t something we’re wanting to give up anytime soon so buying/adding things is something we’re avoiding. At the same time, feeling settled enough to add some things to our personal inventory feels damn good.

So we bought a mixer.

This all starts, really, with sourdough. I had, like many during the quarantine phase of the pandemic, embarked on the sourdough path. In addition to the basics of sourdough making tasty bread, as someone with a gluten allergy, the introduction of sourdough to my life meant the return of honest-to-goodness delicious bread. Not only bread — donuts and soft pretzels and bagels and crackers and pancakes and waffles! My gluten-free sourdough was nothing short of amazing…and it didn’t come with us, either.

Items that are easily available in the US are sometimes challenging to find here. I’m 100% willing to deal with that difficulty given all we’ve gained by moving but it does require some acrobatic feats when recreating things from “before.”

• Mason jars? Not readily available so I’m making due with some regular jelly-style jars.
• Cone coffee filters? Haven’t found them so I cover the jelly jars with a paper towel and a rubber band instead of a coffee filter and the mason jar ring.
• Sweet White Rice Flour? Haven’t found it so I used regular white rice flour as the base for the starter.
• “Standard” loaf pans? Not available in the shape/size I’m used to so I’m using a slightly smaller loaf pan.

I was able to find all the above at a variety of stores (The jelly jars from the variety store across the street, the rice flower from our grocery store, the loaf pans from Flying Tiger when I struck out at Ikea) and had my starter underway. All that was missing was the mixer.

The KitchenAid that didn’t come with us would have cost over 500€ here, so that was off the table. Finding somewhere to actually look at mixers proved nigh on impossible. We spent the better part of Saturday (Day 63) going from store to store only to be showed mixers in paper catalogs or big screen ordering displays since mixers are not, apparently, something one stocks on a shelf in these parts.

At the end of our pedestrian hunt we crossed the border into Alboraya (the town north of Valencia) to get lunch at Un Posto Al Sol. I was incredibly brave and added to my “I’ve tried it” list by eating mussels. We landed back at home so full that I didn’t have it in me to be too disappointed that we didn’t have a mixer to show for the day’s efforts. We enjoyed siesta and had a lovely evening out on the town — the bread would just have to wait.

But what about the mixer?

My internet research skills, extra honed through this move, had narrowed the options down to Smeg and Bosch. While The Smeg mixers look very sexy in a retro way, Bosch won in terms of power and price. Ordering direct from the manufacturer after MUCH hemming and hawing about what features we really needed and which price we were willing to pay, I placed the order for our Robot de Cocina MUM5 1000 W Turquesa on Sunday (Day 64) and it was delivered to our door on Tuesday (Day 66). So, not quite the instant satisfaction finding it on Saturday would have brought but not too shabby, either.

Yes, I spent Tuesday morning working to distract myself from the waiting game. I caught sunrise and lingered on the beach wall, daydreaming about sourdough.

I spent the rest of my time off that morning organizing the links to the various gluten-free sourdough recipes. I did laundry. I walked to the Consum in search of baking supplies (note to self: chocolate chips are not so easy to come by here). I started to map out my Nanowrimo writing schedule.

Thankfully the delivery driver arrived before lunch.

I. Love. This. Mixer.

I love the mixer and it’s state-of-the-art features. It mixes better than my beloved KitchenAid. It’s beater goes around the edge of the bowl instead of in the center, and ALWAYS STOPS AT THE BACK OF THE BOWL. If you want to geek out with me, check out these quick videos of the mixer in action:

• Video 1: Planetary Mixing: https://youtube.com/shorts/cgzO2fqeUNQ?feature=share
• Video 2: Slow stop (I got so excited I cut off filming at the crucial moment but trust me, the beater stops at the back of the bowl): https://youtube.com/shorts/_Gmgk5OW_Us?feature=share

It has a cover for the bowl to minimize spatter. And the beautiful thing came with blender and slicer/grinder/shredder attachments, making it clear why here these machines are actually called Kitchen Robots (Robot de Cocina).

My love affair with the mixer aside, buying it and placing it on our counter did something extra important — it made me a homemaker. I used the mixer to make sourdough bread, filling our home with that irreplaceable home smell, and replacing something that had been missing in my life. This is an actual appliance, something we’ll move with us when, eventually, we leave the Awesome Flat (in years, hopefully). This mixer is a statement of intended permanence.

Is it coincidence, for example, that the mixer arrived on Tuesday and enabled me to start Wednesday, the day I finished the paperwork for my residency, with baking a loaf of sourdough bread?

Yes, yes it is.

BUT STILL! Both things happened on Wednesday (Day 67), both were important, and both make me feel even more at home than I’ve already felt.