Get the right equipment to cook up a good life after divorce: Part Two

In Part One we dealt with the essential implements for the kitchen, this part deals with the electrical stuff you might need.  If you are tight for budget then follow the advice in Part One, after all great cooks lived and breathed long before the kitchen hummed to the sound of electric motors!

The mixer is King (or Queen)!
This is the centrepiece of the kitchen gadgets and none of the good ones are cheap.  The Porsche Carrera of kitchen mixers is the KitchenAid coming in at around £400.  Clearly it's not an impulse purchase. 

You can drool over the fabulous enamelled colours which include a fabulous shiny black and pillar box red but be very careful which one you choose.  These beauties are built to last a minimum of twenty years so the chances are you will be changing your kitchen décor well before you need to replace your mixer.

The other great name in household mixers of course is Kenwood whose range starts relatively modestly at around £200.  Baking apart, with the addition of some of the extra accessories your mixer can be turned into a food processor (although you cannot turn a food processor into a mixer however hard you try).  These do not come cheap but will transform and extend the use of your mixer to include mincing, slicing, grating, pasta making, and pressing citrus juices amongst other things.

Food processors
The food processor can be invaluable in the kitchen.  Using the main blade it is possible to reduce a loaf of bread to crumbs in a couple of minutes, process pastry and biscuit dough in seconds, and puree fruits and vegetables for soups, sauces, infant food etc. The better food processors come with a selection of discs for slicing and grating and attachments for juicing fruits and vegetables.

The stick blender
This is a great and very inexpensive piece of really useful kitchen gadetry.  They are wonderful for pureeing cooked vegetables for soup or baby food or for making mayonnaise. Their great advantage is that they can just be shoved straight into the pot in which you have made your soup or whatever without the need to decant into a full size blender or food processor.

Looking after your need for good food and nutrition is a vital part of keeping in good shape to help the adjustment to the new life after divorce.  Doing this properly certainly does not depend on lots of cute and shiny kitchen equipment.  Buying good ingredients and cooking with love and enthusiasm (plus some great recipe ideas) will do it.  However, having some good kit to do it with will make it a lot easier and a lot more fun.