Hi everyone. I am very tired but I wanted to do this post before I crash out and go back to doing other things. Ron and I just got done working together to slice three hams. Small boneless ones. We wait until they go on sale and get a couple. Turns out we had one in the freezer waiting for this. So a good sale came up on small boneless hams and Ron pounced like a lioness after an elk. We once got lucky, a large shoulder ham was at a really low price and had a small bone. That is important. The bone has to be small, if you get one of those that works great. You can have a ham dinner then carve the largest chunks off the bone. Those you slice on the meat slicer and the bone part you boil for soup. (insert Bernie Sanders yelling “Suooop”)! here.
So rather than describe it I will simply but the pictures below. But before I do that you might wonder why I have a meat slicer. Well for about 15 years I made bread for us and our friends. I love the taste of fresh baked bread and I had three great machines to do it. I made a two pound loaf every three days. I tried several ways to cut the bread loaves into slices. The meat slicer has a variable speed and worked great for cutting the bread into even regular slices. I used my machines so much I burned out three Breadman upright loaf machines. I liked that kind because the paddle was in only the one end of the bread loaf and so you did not lose much bread slices. I have never found another like it. I bought two, one was 200 dollars with a squat fat pan that gives an unusable loaf. If anyone has or knows of a good machine Ron keeps asking me to go back to making bread again. Ok below are the pictures. Loves, best wishes, and hugs to all.
Scottie's Playtime 
I have one of these, the 1993 version. I don’t know if you’d like it; the loaf bakes tall but round. The paddle is in the bottom, so a few (maybe 4, or 3) slices might have a bit of a divot. I like to use it on manual, though; it does all the time-consuming work, then I take the dough out, shape it, let it rise once more, and bake. The machine is still working well 32 years later! We got it for a wedding present. Obviously it has high recommendation from me. At this moment, I’m seeing versions running from 45.00 to 179.00. I think it cost not quite 200.00 in ’93, but import/shipment had to be paid by the givers, as well. It was a very generous gift, I thought, but it was several stepsisters and brother who gave it, so it worked out. I still use an old fashioned Cutco bread knife for slicing, and my slices are, of course, rustic!
LikeLiked by 1 person
I have that same bread maker, but it is a DAK electronics one. I was a huge DAK fan in the 80’s https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DAK_Industries and bought s lot of their stuff. I still remember when it went into the heavy kneading cycle and started rocking on the counter like R2D2 🙂
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hi Bruce. I had three Breadman ones. I made bread for the entire neighborhood and I gave away so much bread loafs I thought I was somehow a champion of something. We will find another one to do the same thing. Hugs
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh and you are correct Bruce, if not on a mat but hard counter it would dance / jitter. Hugs
LikeLike
Hi Ali. That is like the one I have. The loaf come out as a square, as wide as it is tall. It is useless to me. My older ones would do fudge and other stuff. I would love to find a Breadman one like the three I had. As I said the paddle at the bottom of a tall loaf. Ron has said he would love me to get one even if it cost $300 dollars. As for slicing, you have more steady hands than both of us do with our tremors and shakes. But yes we also bought a bread storage unit that came with a great bread knife and cutting board. Hugs
LikeLiked by 1 person
Back In the 90s when bread machines were everywhere, lots of my friends got one and baked a bit, for a while. They got brands like Toastemaster, Black&Decker, and other brands you could get in any store for around 35.00. One found a breadbox that had a slicer in it, but I’ve never seen one anywhere. Those appliance brand bread machines didn’t seem to last as long as their blenders, toaster ovens, etc. lasted. But I’ve never seen a bread storage box that slices, although another friend saw the first woman’s box in action, so they must have been somewhere.🤷
LikeLiked by 1 person
Oh Ali. How I wish I could get another like the Breadman I had. The first one was a flat pan with the paddle in the center. Then they came out with a tall upright pan and I used it until the paddle locked up, bought a second one and after a year or so it also did it. Now I understand why. I was washing the pan in the dishwasher and that is too hard on the bearings.
Dang, a friend had one and he was not using it. I had made and given him many loaves of fresh bread. It was his wife’s and she only used it once or twice and it seemed too much work for her when store loaves were so easier. She died. So I asked him what he was going to do with it, explaining mine had died. He offered to sell it to me. Sell it to me. I declined as if I had something I had no use for I would have given to a friend. He was not hurting for money, he was living OK. He died and I have no idea what happened to the stuff. His kids came, took it all away in a U-Haul and sold the place cheap. Hugs
LikeLiked by 1 person
Aww. That’s sad. I’m sorry that didn’t work out! I’m sure you’d have kept him in bread if he’d just given you the machine.
I’ll keep my eyes open for something like what you’re looking for, though if you haven’t seen it, it’s likely not out there.. I see on PBS, a goodly number of people using a stand mixer for the mixing and kneading, almost like using the bread machine, though you still do the shaping/putting in the pan and final raise manually. That’s not so bad, though. It’s a thought, anyway! Interestingly, some use a paddle attachment rather than the dough hook attachment, but their final products are always perfect. Of course, when you’re baking in the Test Kitchen or Julia Childs’s kitchen, how else would they turn out? 😀 😀
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thanks Ali. We have a big kitchen aid stand mixer with attachments. For bread we used the paddle also. The hook never seemed to work for us. I used to use it to make cookies and stuff. My hands are too sore to do much like that now. But yes if you see a bread maker like what I want please let me know. Thanks. Hugs
LikeLiked by 1 person
Hi Ali. I love bread makers. But I want one with a small shaft and the blade on the bottom. Hugs.
LikeLiked by 1 person
When the kids were still kids and I was the only one feeding them I had single-paddle bread-maker like that that I’d on week-ends do a couple/three loaves for the week on manual and a couple times a week do a crock-pot ham-hocks and beans, stew or some such timed with the automatic bread-maker to have fresh bread when we all got home. They were into middle and high school by then and one just wasn’t enough. I don’t know whatever happened to it
Yeah, they’ll all bigger than me …
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hi Ten Bears. First congratulation on raising your children alone. Doing this as a single parent is incredible. As you already know I never had real parents so I envy kids that did, and those that have parents such as yourself. Many thank you’s, your children will become those that protect other children. A parent who gave all they could to be to raise their children to be themselves.
But to have a parent like you … Look I have no fantasy you could have taken on the brawling bruiser that my adopting father was, but in my child’s mind you would have taken me a way, you would have tried to protect me. Sadly no one in the town was willing to risk it until the wealthy farmer simply sent me away. No one stood up to them, no one told them to stop.
One of the men I know who talks to me constantly on Male Survivor has himself had to remove from the life of himself and their three children his wife. That did not make sense, so he had to remove the abusive nature of his wife from his children’s atmosphere. Due to his wife’s mental instability, total collapse. And he raised those three kids who now as adults praise their father for his efforts on their behalf. He claims he was strict on his children. Not the way my own parents were, mine who used me for their sexual pleasure for them and their friends. Again how I envy parents and those children like yours who not only knew they were safe but also understood they had a parent that would go to the mat, to the end of the world to protect them. Sorry, I have to stop as I am crying. I know it is unmanly …
The police officer that picked me up in grade school in full uniform that caused lots of kids to talk, took me to court ordered doctors and therapist appointments, then took me back to his girlfriend’s home, I was set up a chair where I now remember I was underdressed to watch them have sex. I am sure the new memories will be of me being part of that … but I really don’t want that added memories. I have enough of them and each of them hurt. But yes, as much as I deny it … I do now know that damn police officer made me also have sex with them, specifically him as he repeatedly told me, they won’t believe you anyway and you have already done it and you like it as it feels so good. How I hate the memories I have.
Ten Grain I appreciate all you do here, all you give. Thank you. Hugs
LikeLike
You’re making me blush …
LikeLiked by 2 people
Hi Ten Bears. I am sorry. That was so unfair of me, and thank you for your gracious response. I was well into repeated flashbacks because a fellow abuse survivor sent me stuff he felt about my own childhood which he called “… you were tortured …” and then told me more about his own abuse. So when I read your comment my mind was still in that … place. What I was trying to say was … my own sire, the man that spunked in to a woman to make me, he sold me to the people that abused me. My own “father sold me” is something hard to accept. My point with my disjointed comment was you wouldn’t have sold one of your kids and if you knew they were being abused you would have moved heaven and given high hell to rescue that child from that abuse. Please only read below if you want more context.
—————————————————————————————————
I always knew I was adopted, no one made any effort to make it seem like I was a part of the family. I did not know the circumstances. So during my childhood even during the worst of the abuse I built a fantasy that my “real” dad was out there looking for me, that he would come and somehow over power the brute that ran the hell I lived in, and he would take me home to where I wouldn’t be hurt anymore.
I realize now it was a childish dream built by a boy that had to have something to cling to. When on my 12th birthday my adopting mother came to my bed, dropped her nightgown and laid on my nude body in my bed I expected to have to do something. I had had to in the past. I did not expect what she would say. She had been drinking as normal. She would give me the name of my real father … if I pleased her enough, if I was a perfect boy for her … For several years I tried to be that perfect boy during the day and when she asked I would do my best to “please her” only for her to deny me the name until I left the home and went into the military. Then instead of giving me the name, she gave my information to my male sperm donor. The bastard reached out to me wanting absolution for what he had done as he had cancer and was dying.
My point with what I wrote was so disjointed that I apologize. But as I said above, if someone had taken one of your kids and tried to abuse them … well I am not sure if they would ever find the body and wouldn’t be able to recognize it if they did. See you were the dad, the person me as a little boy crafted as my “real dad” who would come rescue me. I don’t think the first time I wrote the reply that came through. I hope this time it does. My respect for what little you have shared about yourself on your current blog shows you are a badass when called for it, and the help you offered with my work-out routine shows you care about people. Friendship and hugs
LikeLike