Let me tell you a little story of something that happened. On the first day, Jen starts teaching the gumpaste flowers. She calls all the kids to the back of the room, and shows them how to use the electric pasta roller to roll out their paste for the flowers. She makes a special note on cleaning it, and gives them a very clear warning not to try to clean the machine with a paper towel while the rollers are moving. It can very easily get sucked into the rollers, jam it, and break the pin on the inside. It happened the last time we taught the class. It was still under warranty and Kitchen Aid was kind enough to replace it. She wanted to make sure they were all especially careful not to have that happen again.

 

 

So she goes back up to the front of the class, the kids go back to their tables to work, and Donna and I are assigned to stay in the back and roll out all the pieces of gumpaste the kids will need to cut out their flower parts. So Donna and I get our groove going, a little assembly line, and we are kicking gumpaste butt. The pasta roller starts to get a little gunky from all the use. Donna turns it off, starts to wipe it down. There was still some residue hanging behind. I go wet a paper towel and the rest is a blur to me. Somehow that machine turned itself on, and the wet paper towel jumped out my hand right onto the top of the moving rollers. Before I could blink, the towel is jammed in there tight; the machine comes to a groaning halt, and is jammed.

 

 

 

 

Then Donna and I circle the wagons around the machine so Jen won’t notice what we are doing. We try frantically to get the paper towel out of there with brushes, spatulas, wires. It ain’t budging. I drop a few F bombs under my breath, sweating bullets in fear and panic, while Donna and I try furiously to un-jam the thing. Of course a few stressed giggles leak out too, and we are certain Jen is going to call us out from the front of the class. But thankfully she just keeps teaching on.

 

After a few more unsuccessful minutes, I detach the roller from the KA machine, cover it with something lame I cannot remember, and casually take it into the enclosed kitchen attached to the classroom. Sharon thinks running hot water over the towel will help it disintegrate and come out of the rollers. Any idiot knows that water makes paper towels swell and expand, so guess what? That brilliant idea did not work. I am scraping and shaving minuscule pieces of paper out of the microscopic space between the 2 rollers for about 6 hours, with no success. Right at this time, a big burly plumber man comes into the kitchen. (We were in a pipe fitters’ hall). I immediately turn to the poor unsuspecting bloke who came in to refill his coffee cup and beg him to help me get this out or my friend is going to have my head. Since pipe fitter guys are so historically nice, he of course took over. He worked that thing over like nobody’s business. He scraped at it with a knife for about 20 minutes and slowly got tiny piece by piece out. He is doing this in the metal sink, and proceeds to make huge clunking and metal banging noises as the pasta roller hits the sink over and over again. A couple of times Jen calls in to me: “Hey, what the heck is going on in there?” I ignored her as sweat soaked my ratty, make up stained T shirt.