Impulsive thought of the following week: I need a new food processor. I much bigger one. For making meatballs. And slicing bell peppers.

So yesterday morning I ventured out to purchase, inter alia, a spanking new pulverizing machine. A Cuisinart (or, as we used to say in XU's dining hall as we sculpted the nasty Saga fare: queasy-art).

First I went to Sears. I spotted the dust bags we needed for a vacuum and as I took them down from the hooks an over-motivated Sears worker came over to assure that I had selected the correct dust-bag type. This annoyed me.

"I wouldn't have taken it down if it was the wrong type," is approximately what I said, though probably not as nasty.

"Can I ring that up for you?" he asked, and I was so eager to not have to talk anymore that I said yes, ring it up.

So I left Sears after only quickly browsing their food processors.

After that I went into BJ's Wholesale. As I walked the aisles the store's sound system played the O'Jays' "I Love Music (Any Kind of Music)." Wow, I haven't heard that in about 30 years, I thought! (And the friggin' song has been in my head since.)

Anyway, BJ's had a nice looking food processor with quite an array of attachments and parts -- I took it. Got it home, unboxed it, ran the parts through the dishwasher, and popped in the instruction DVD that accompanied the documentation.

And lemme tell ya: the DVD was very entertaining. After a section warning me not to pick up the slicing disc by its blade (!) there was a section on how to use the unit to prepare certain dishes. This section was delightfully hosted by a chef -- a celebrity chef! One who I, alas, had never heard of. But he did have a French accent. And a California accent. At the same time. And that lent the video much of its entertainment value.

So I watched as he did some straightforward choppage: guacamole, salsa, stuff like that. Okay, I thought, I can see myself doing that.

Then he said he was going to make meatloaf using the food processor. I was still on board with this, knowing that most meatloaf is infused with various concoctions of minced goodies. And sure enough he minced the usual suspects. But then he upped the ante -- by throwing his meat right into the whirring blades. And he didn't just pulse the meat to grind it and mix it with the aromatics -- no, he went and liquefied this meat, then patted it like liverwurst into a breadpan.

I was not down with this.

Needless to say, this morning's meatballs (floating in the gravy that is still simmering atop the stove) were not mixed using the mechanical violence prescribed in the Cuisinart user manual. The manual has been set aside. In fact, I think I shall promptly return to my normal practice of not reading user manuals, even for new gadgets that turn sharpened steel at high RPMs.