Aren't you fancy! Our grinder had a hand crank.
@Polly Ticks That's the Mixmaster (completely restored, from the inside out) I was given as a 60th birthday present five years ago.
For the record, the first grinder in my household when I was a kid was this . . .
. . . but, since my maternal grandmother had a Mixmaster with grinder attachment since just after World War II, my mother used to go across from our apartment to hers (we lived in opposite wings in the building) to use hers as often as not. Finally, come 1962, Mom landed with attachment the Mixmaster model a) that succeeded the one I now own; and, b) on which I learned a good deal about cooking myself:
My only regret is not having assorted
other attachments for mine yet, including but not limited to . . .
(Which one would I want first? The coffee grinder, of course! Look at the size of the glass hopper---I could grind more coffee in one five-minute sitting with that than I could with any small stand-alone coffee grinder. Then, the blender---you have way more speed control running a blender off a Mixmaster than a stand-alone machine.)
We weren't rich by any means but we knew how to get the job done quickly enough. Just for a laugh, I found me an old crank grinder so I could see for myself the quickest way to grind up pork rinds into a bread-crumb substitute. (I'm on a strict diet, but with a little adjustment I can still make and eat a lot of dishes I like, such as chicken parmigiana if the breading is with ground pork rinds.) So I ground up the pork rinds in the cranker one time and timed it, then ran them through the Mixmaster grinder the next time. Not that I minded the exercise, but the cranker took about 15 minutes longer than the Mixmaster did, and time wasting is
not an option. Goodbye cranker.
Grandma could actually see and raise with an attachment that was discontinued in 1949: an ice cream freezer motor. Once upon a time, Mixmaster owners could get as many as seventeen attachments for various jobs including shelling peas, slicing garden beans, peeling potatoes, apples, and other fruits/vegetables, mixing drinks, opening cans, and a small boatload more. Those attachments that ran off the power transfer unit you see on mine could be used with any model made from 1930-1967; those that drove right off the motor, you couldn't unless you got one of the ones that survived after 1949 when their mounts changed to fit the new stand platform. You can still find those attachments on places like eBay, but you'd have to beware how much TLC they need to become operational again. (I had to re-grease the two large gears inside my power unit.) If you're a cooking maven like me, believe me it's worth it.
