A food processor is an interesting kitchen tool. You don’t know you need one until you have it, and don’t realize how indispensable it can become until you don’t have it anymore.

For every customer who comes in with unrealistic expectations that the processor is a miracle machine that will do everything—in effect, a robotic sous chef—there’s one who looks them over with a sniff and shake of the head, and pronounces “I don’t need one of those monsters because my cooking is (basic/simple/just for me) and these things are just too much trouble.”

I used to be one of the latter. My first cookbook was about early nineteenth century Southern food. I chopped with a knife, pureed with a food mill or a wire mesh sieve and wooden spoon, crushed and ground with a mortar and pestle, made pastry by hand, and whipped up mayonnaise with a whisk (and, once, two forks).

That lasted until the book was finished and a new book contract afforded me enough money to buy a basic Cuisinart nine-cup machine. From the moment it came out of the box, I was a little bit like the former show girl who married up and in her old age perpetually dripped with diamonds. When a society matron cuttingly remarked that she thought wearing diamonds in the daytime was vulgar, the old girl quipped, “I used to think so, too, honey—till I had ‘em.”

I thought food processors weren’t really necessary, too—till I had one. I still use a knife, food mill, mortar and pestle, pastry blender, and whisk, but had not made a piecrust or batch of mayonnaise by hand in at least ten years—until last fall, when my faithful old machine finally bit the dust.

Actually, it was the plastic trigger mechanism in the pusher that gave way, not the motor, which after testing the recipes for four cookbooks, was only beginning to show signs of strain. But the motor was useless without the trigger mechanism, and replacing the broken pusher was going to cost half as much as buying a whole new machine, so old faithful was shoved to the back of the pantry and I limped on without it.

I dragged my feet all through Thanksgiving and Christmas, doing everything by hand—except cheese straws, which I gave up on making, because once you’ve done that in a machine, there’s just no looking back.

It turns out that occasionally procrastination can be a good thing. About the same time that my old machine faltered, Cuisinart unveiled their new Elite series. We added a fourteen-cup model to the studio kitchen at the store, and after working with it for a couple of months, my crippled old machine finally went out to the lane and I now have a new Elite model of my own.

Here’s what I love about the Elite machines:

• Cuisinart finally took a cue from Viking and made the bowl stem longer so that it’s now possible to process liquids in almost the same quantity as solids.
• The chopping blade locks to the bowl stem so that it won’t fall out when you pour the puree out of the bowl.
• The nesting bowls overlap and fit snugly, so that even though all of them have to remain in place while you use the small one, unlike other machines that have nesting prep bowls, the large one doesn’t get soiled while the small one is in use.
• The pushers both lock in place, so that when the lid is removed and turned over the pushers don’t fall out and go bouncing across the floor to break. Yet it’s no trouble to remove them when you actually want them to come out.
• The slicing blade adjusts so that you get six different thicknesses from one blade.
• The trigger mechanism on the large pusher (the one that snapped off on my old machine) is sturdy metal and is not going anywhere.
• Best of all, the lid . . . oh, my friends, the lid! It slips off with a gentle squeeze of a button and snaps back into place with a light push. There’s none of the struggle that the old Cuisinart machines were infamous for.
• Everything is dishwasher safe, so cleanup is simpler than you might think. Just use the top rack and turn off the heated dry function.
• The die-cast metal base is sturdy, solid, and its mat finish doesn’t show smudges and wipes clean with a damp cloth.

The only complaint about this machine is that food often gets under the silicone gasket around the lid. But there are vents in the lid over the gasket, and I’ve found that, so far, a quick hosing with the spray nozzle of the sink faucet has gotten out any food particles that the dishwasher missed.

Food processors are not robotic sous chefs. They can’t do everything and they aren’t supposed to. But take it from a reformed old-fashioned Victorian cook: once you’ve made pastry or whipped up a batch of silky homemade mayonnaise with one, you’ll be hooked, and looking for excuses to use it.

I just might make up a batch of cheese straws for Easter . . . and, of course, deviled eggs with homemade mayonnaise . . . and a creamy puree of spring pea soup . . . and . . .