Old things are not always useless.

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Do you have one of these? Did your parents have one, or your grandparents? This belonged to one of my grandmothers. It's an extremely heavy grinder, made of cast iron. You fasten it to the edge of a table or countertop, poke in all the stuff you want little by little, and you turn the handle. Over and over and over...I guess you could possibly call this grinder a predecessor of our modern-day food processer. At grandma's house, it meant ham salad. A big bowl to catch the ground ham as you turned the handle. Other things were added--chopped celery and onions, sometimes a chopped bell pepper, and always sweet pickle relish, or ground up sweet pickles--same thing. Usually a few ground up hard-boiled eggs were added as well. When you got the big bowl full, she added her mayonnaise and a dash of pepper, a dab of lemon juice. There are a ton of different combinations many of these older ladies were fond of back then. Sometimes due to budget restraints, chunks of bologna were used rather than ham by some, but grandma always used ham. She made a mountain of it. After I went to live with her, I was the official grinder of the ingredients. I have such a strong memory of the old kitchen, the Formica table with the red designs...the smells of cooking, and that grinder. It was also my job at the end to take the inner metal parts out of it, dismantle it, and wash it. When it was dry, I always put it in the designated box she kept it in, ready for next time. This was her grinder. She's been gone for years, but she gave me this and many other kitchen items before she died. She ran a little cafe in a tiny town in Illinois, all of the food was made from scratch. No instant mixes, powdered potatoes, nothing but the real thing. She was so fun to cook with. I think she would be glad to know I still have this grinder, and her Fiesta dishes, and I actually use them. Did you ever use one of these?