3 hours ago, kayb said:Cross-hatch for the win.
A photo would be welcome. I have my grandmother's wavy potato masher at home. Is that what you mean by a heater coil? (Don't worry, I won't be insulted if it is. 
)
Anyway, the straits just got more dire. My would-be potato masher system for the Princessmobile seems dead in the water.
Remember the asparagus trimmings from earlier today? They've been simmering away on the stove top, yielding their goodness for soup. It's prettier in person than in this photo.
The idea is to blend it all to get the best of the flavor, then strain out the fiber - a mighty project, I might add - and then reheat with a bit of cream, and possibly top with fresh asparagus tips. I have a small food processor aboard the Princessmobile, and we have shore power, but my preferred way to deal with something like this is a wand blender and a deep container. The food processor tends to throw liquid too high in the container, and leak out onto the counter, unless I do very small batches.
I have a wand blender with excellent attachments, and there's the connection with mashed (okay, whipped ... I know it isn't the same) potatoes. This was a Christmas present some years and one trailer back.
I put the battery into my Ace of Wands so it could do its magic. Nothing happened. The battery was dead.
I put the battery into the battery charger. What you can't see in a still photo is that the battery charging light is flashing rapidly. The battery is dead, not as in "drained" but as in "refuses to charge". I don't think it's a problem with the charger, since it shows the error light. I've cleaned all the contacts. Same error. The next step is to contact KitchenAid, I suppose. Maybe the battery can be rebuilt when we get home.
In the meantime, those asparagus trimmings are simmering with a quart of my chicken broth - and no good way to extract the most flavor from it all. I think a very simple colander straining will be in order, despite the potential loss of flavor from the more stubborn stalks. Who knows? Maybe the convenience will be worth the lost intensity of flavor?
And I do realize this is a first-world problem. 
