OK, time for my 2 cents. I've been baking, preserving, and cooking for more than you are old - that's fifty years if you want to count. My recommendations are just from experience and, of course, always frugality. If you buy a good piece of equipment it should last your lifetime - prorated over 50 years the $200 cost in negligible - but a $1,000 piece will never recoup its cost not matter how much stuff you preserve. On the other hand, if you buy a $10 piece of junk only to replace it in 1 year, and every year thereafter, cussing it all the while, that thing has less value than dirt in that it causes stress, breaks at the crucial need, and is risky to use, poorly constructed, and maddening to use, and expensive in the long run. Cheap junk is still junk. Using a cheap plastic mandolin that you are afraid of is dangerous. Even with a Kevlar glove (buy them at Walmart in the fishing department - for cleaning fish - if you already have one) it will make the chore unacceptable - too bulky/clunky, but it still does work - time quality is a factor here. An expensive professional mandolin is pure pleasure and if you plan on canning for many years, the only way to go. My pro chef SIL gave me his old Bron mandolin (new is probably $150). "Wow" is the only word to describe a professional piece of equipment - kinda like buying a maslin pan! The thickness of a slice is easily adjusted; it makes julienne and french fry thicknesses in one pass with a turn of a knob, and also endeared me in that it makes a cute wavy cut if I so desire. It comes with a guide plate so that you never have to get anywhere near the cutting plate and therefore it is totally safe. The blade can be sharpened to razor edge but my SIL said that he used it for 17 years without having to do that and to me it is way sharp enough for my cukes. Zip-zip. As for mini choppers (half an onion - minced, 2 cups of diced peppers, 6 garlic cloves - minced, etc.) I recommend the little mini food chopper (1 to 2 cup size) by Black & Decker, for about ten bucks. Available at chain drug stores (CVS, Walmart, and the like). Never makes paste of nuts either (just "finely chopped") so it is used a lot here instead of the stupid scrunch and grunt upper hammer nut "grinders". I bought a burr coffee grinder for spices. It is a simple mechanism with adjustments for "granular" size that is irrelevant for hard spices - longer whirring works the same. It was about $15 at Target. It depends on what the outcome for which you wish to achieve. Note that it is super for leaving tasty traces in the hopper and then when you are grinding fresh coffee beans viola! Yum to cinnamon sticks followed by dark roast coffee beans. As for full sized food processors - I use the attachment made for my KitchenAid mixer. Shredding 10 pounds of carrots is a snap, chunking tons of cabbage for slaw is a simple change to a different sized cone (three come with a set and 10 more are available), and for making piles of cheese for crackers that just goes through like butter. The problem is that you have to have a KitchenAid stand mixer to attach it to. One simple little tool for twenty bucks that has me watching infomercials again is the Vidalia Onion Chopper, a.k.a. Sweet Onion Chopper, and the like. It uses the force of your hand/arm to press down on a template over a steel honeycomb-shaped plate. I cubed enough sweet onions for 40 jars of relish in about 10 minutes, enough zucchini for 20 jars of relish, and the steamed carrots for pickled relish in 5 minutes. Then I used it to cut up sweet and hot peppers, red onions, and dried apricots for about 20 jars of Habanero Gold Jelly in just under 10 minutes. It does not work for softer things like cherries and plums, but I will try it for tomatoes, whenever they decide to ripen, when I make more tomato preserves. As for a dedicated food processor - buy only the one with the widest bowl you can find. If it has a narrow bowl you may as well just buy a blender and forget chopping with it. I have a "harvest gold"-colored food processor from about 1970 that has a very wide bowl, no safety features, and limited options, that suits me just fine for chunk shredding, fruit puree prep (before it all goes into the Squeezo), and using just the cutter blade alone for making great pie crusts and for coarse chopping big nuts. It is worthless for making nicely sliced cukes for pickles, or for precision shredding or slicing for anything else. If I were to buy one today, I'd go with the snazzy KitchenAid KFP750. It is what all the pro chefs on TV use and they have to determine "quality or junk for their standards - give or take rebates. That model also comes with the mini bowl so the B&D would not be needed. (Though I would not give up my B&D mini for anything after all these years.) At your young age, and the interest in preserving food you have shown over the last 3 years, an investment in quality equipment is akin to a painter who has to choose between a throw-away brush and one that will last 10 years. Duh! Initial investment in quality tools will outlast throw-always by far. If you don't believe me, come see me chop cabbage in the harvest-gold FP sometime!!! Your whole investment in good quality tools would be in the $15O to $550 range. Throw-away paintbrush or 50 years of quality? Nancy

I wouldn't worry about the cakes. Maybe, you could make one in a processor. I've never done it but I don't lean towards using my Cuisinart for "floury" types of things. I have a stand-mixer for bread. I mix cakes by hand & have for 35 years. Don't know why...they're just quick & easy and it seems faster to just mix it than drag out the mixer, I guess. I do think every kitchen should have a quality mixer of some sort though. Egg whites, for example, can actually be better done by hand in a copper bowl but it's a lot of work. A hand-mixer fits that bill fine. Stand-mixers are expensive pieces of equipment. It's similar to Le Crueset cookware........they're beautiful & do a great job with many types of cooking. But, they're expensive & you could accomplish the same thing with a $20 Lodge cast iron pot. So, while I own & enjoy LC...I wouldn't necessarily recommend it to a relatively new cook or inexperienced cook. My recommendation to you would be to look at Kitchenaid hand-mixers. They are inexpensive (under $100, I think) and would handle most anything you are going to need for a while. I prefer Cuisinart but I think food processors all perform pretty much equally well...it's just a matter of personal choice. As an experienced bread baker, and former teacher of bread-making...I'd strongly recommend you get your hands in the flour to start. That way, you'll learn how the dough "feels" going through it's various stages of development. A mixer does not understand how to make bread. It's just a workhorse, so to speak. What I'm saying is that a $500 mixer won't turn you into a bread baker. You'll still have to learn technique and the life-stages of yeast as well as how to manipulate time & temperature to create that perfect loaf of bread. You have the boat motor which is a handy little gadget that you'll use frequently for making soups, sauces, etc. With the addition of a new hand-mixer you should be in pretty good shape for some time. And, maybe, your Sunbeam is working fine and you don't even need that. Eventually, your experience in the kitchen will clarify for you what tools you need to improve your skills. And, again, remember our moms/grandmoms didn't have any of these fancy tools & they were excellent cooks.

Sounds like a good plan. Food processors are pricey, and it's a good idea to try one out for a minimal amount of money before investing in one. You may find you wouldn't use it enough to make it worth it. I love my food processor, but I don't bother with it for small jobs. I can dice up a single onion and a couple of carrots fast with my knife and cutting board, with less to wash up. However, for large meals and putting extra food up, the food processor saves a lot of time. I want to put some apple slices in the freezer for future pies, so my food processor gets used for things like that, or if I'm making a huge pot of sauce and need several onions chopped. It also wonderful for grating cheeses, so I'll usually grate a lot of cheese at once and then store it in the fridge so it's handy. I'd be interested in hearing how you like a mandolin. And good luck with your food processor search. If you can find one of the old original Cuisinart's in good shape, you'd have yourself a good food processor. Newer isn't always better. I found an old Hobart built dishwasher in wonderful shape and got rid of my new one. Nothing cleans dishes as well as the older KitchenAids. I can handle the noise. In 45 minutes I have spotless dishes with no crud on them.

The thing I disliked about the Cuisinart was the fact you had to take it apart, empty it and then put it back together again before proceeding. Making cole slaw for a crowd, I had to empty it four times or more...a real pain. The Hamilton Beach, I can do a whole head of cabbage, onions and carrots all in one process. Not to mention, it's very easy to put together. You can slice a wide cucumber in it, a large onion without cutting it in half, a whole tomato, I love it!