We had a robot delivered last month. In the US you might think of it as a multi-function kitchen machine but here everyone just calls it a robot and we don’t even have to pronounce the “t”. As you can see from the photo, this is not just your standard food processor, but oh so much more. Just as those “but wait, there’s more” television commercials tell you, it slices, dices, chops, and juliennes. It’s a blender, a mixer, a grinder, and a juicer. Where is it all going to fit?

Bill loves to make bread. Back in Atlanta he was in the kitchen a couple of days a week with the heavy-duty stand mixer plus the industrial-size food processor churning out loaves of Italian and French bread, whole wheat sandwich buns, plus plain and fancy dinner rolls. He might even have the blender out at the same time to whip up a batch of frozen margaritas while waiting for the yeast to do its magic. Now we go out every day and bring back baguettes, croissants, pain au chocolat, or whatever else looks good from one of a dozen boulangeries in town. On Saturdays at the market there’s even a mobile baker wedged between all the fruit and vegetable vendors in case we can’t walk a half block to find our daily bread.

So why this “robot” and how does that fit with our original plans of downsizing and our double-or-nothing rule you may have read about before? Actually quite well but then we’ve always been good at rationalization. Yes, it is a new thing that we’ve acquired for this tiny house but look at everything this one appliance can do. So what if Bill had to remove a shelf in a kitchen cabinet to accommodate the machine’s height? We just turn all of the boxes that were previously stored there onto their sides and it all fits.

Has it been a success? Absolutely. Our neighbors had never tasted sour dough bread and now Bill can’t bake those loaves fast enough. For the Neighbors’ Day Festival in May he made a cheesecake that was the hit of the deserts table. Fresh squeezed juice is a snap and you should see the mise en place that I as the sous chef can produce with all those blades. But what about the bread for us? Wouldn’t be a day in France without a fresh baguette from the boulangerie, now would it?