The one cool thing in my sucky seventies kitchen

What’s that stainless steel plate in the middle of what used to be my kitchen counter? It’s the Ronson Foodmatic! It slices, it dices, it chops, it grates, it mixes and juices and crushes and even cooks. It’s pure appliance awesomeness. You just know this sucker was sold by a fast-talking pitchman on some late-night infomercial in the 70s. It’s positively Bass-o-matic. It was here when we bought the house in 2000, along with other 70s relics like lime green shag carpeting.

I couldn’t talk Dean into putting it in our new kitchen, though. “So we splurge on a granite countertop, then cut a hole in it for a 40-year-old appliance that will probably die in a week?” Okay. Point taken. But it’s been working all these years and may just outlast our new kitchen anyway.



Press the button and the plate flips up and here’s the base unit with the motor.



Below are two trays of attachments. It has everything you need:



Mixer with beaters and a dough hook.



Slicer/shredder with three blades.

There's also a meat grinder, juicer, coffee mill, blender, knife and scissors sharpener and more. Everything pops onto the base unit.



Deep fat cooker/tempura maker. The metal basket has a folding handle so it stores inside the cooking kettle. Make French fries, onion rings or anything that needs all that deep-fried goodness. It also has a paddle you can put in to stir your tempura for you.



Turn off the heat, put ice in the kettle and add this insert, and it’s an ice cream maker.



Still has the owner’s manual/recipe book and the diagram for how to put all the stuff away on the shelves.

The blender carafe is broken and the mixer has only one large bowl. It originally had a smaller one as well. Other than that, everything’s here and it all works. I used to use it all the time, but quit about a year ago when we got serious about remodeling. I figured I’d be putting it up on eBay and didn’t want to break anything.

So there was one cool thing in my old kitchen. But absolutely everything else sucked.