Which appliance purchase was your worst mistake?

[Harborwitch]

Jan get yourself a big ol' bag of popping corn and grind it in the Vitamix for cornbread. Wow, that was so good, it was one of the kids favorites. I throw wheat berries, corn, oatmeal and I can't remember what else in there and let it do everything from grind to mix and knead the bread. It was a very dense loaf but a nutritional gold mine.

 

[Claire]

I, too, will never buy GE again. About 15 years ago I had a new home built and it was totally GE. I lived there for five years and in that time every appliance had to be replaced or repaired. Fridge. Microwave. Dishwasher. Stove (twice). Washer. Dryer. Most also discolored or the finish came off. These were not "builders specialls" either, I upgraded every appliance. Now my kitchen is over 100 years old and the appliances are a mishmash. When a 10 or 20 year old appliance dies or no longer looks pretty, I can live with it. Not when it was supposed to be my dream kitchen and they all looked lousy and started breaking in a year.

 

[LeisuresKitchen]

Well I actually didn't buy it, it was given to us as a gift from my MIL. It's a crock pot. It's nice too but I wish she wouldn't have spent her money. I'm use to cooking the old fashioned way and this thing is big and oval so it takes up a lot of cabinet space. It already has a dent in it from me trying to shove our usable pots and pans into the little space we have.

 

[Claire]

Leisure, I feel your pain. We often get gifts of kitchen stuff because people know we like to cook, eat and drink. Quite often the gifts go to the cellar, and I hope I'll remember to bring them back upstairs when the gift-giver visits so that their feelings won't be hurt.

 

[buckytom]

harborwitch, i'd like to know more of your secrets with the vita-mixer.
i'm another one that tossed away $500 or so on it.

i made the broccoli - cheddar soup, which was too thin, and a few frozen drinks, which, like hb mentioned, had chunks of ice mixed with melted bits.

now it sits on a shelf in the basement, collecting dust. it still has it's hopes and dreams from when i first brought it home, though, of being the center of attention on the bar in a fabulous party of beautiful and interesting people.

 

[Lynan]

I hate my electric juicer and it has been banished to the jail cupboard these last 3 years or so. The MOST horrible thing to clean...all those meshy bits, I just dont have time. My trusty Carltonware 1930's Buttercup hand juicer does well as does the S/S 2005 one! And SO easy to clean.

My Fairy Floss machine is idle after buying it to try to make Pashmak!! Hmmmm...Christmas is nearly upon us so some flavoured floss may be an idea,...rose, mint etc. This thread has given me an idea so thanks Jan dear girl!! xx

 

[Harborwitch]

BuckyTom I wish I could remember everything that I did with it. I know it was used daily - most likely what wore it out! Grinding the popcorn for cornmeal was THE BEST! I'd go to the co-op and buy whole wheat berries and grind those for bread flour. It was really fun to sprout some of them before making the bread and adding them.

The best soup was a tomato vegetable (think V8 here) soup. We did that both hot and cold - interesting. We used tomatoes, onions, celery, peppers, carrots, and whatever else was available.

Peanut butter was great made in it! I never had a problem with chunks of ice??????? So I'm not sure what's up there. We found mine in the storage shed a while back - when I have more room it will be returned to the kitchen and repaired (older ones had a soft brass nut thingy that the blade mechanism sets on - it would round off after about a year of heavy use. I just haven't repaired it - mostly because it was buried in storage.

The last time I looked at their website they had some pretty good ideas there. Everytime Costco has them on special we stand and watch the demo and I heave huge sighs of desire. There's just no room.

 

[PBear42]

For me, Kuhn-Rikon pressure cookers. Yeah, I know. Lorna Sass swears by 'em, as does 'most every other reviewer I've seen. I disagree. First, the secondary pressure release (the safety valve) on three different lids (I have four cookers, two of which share a lid) failed after a year or two (depended how often that particular lid was used). Second, rather than invest in fixing the KR lids, I decided to try an old-fashioned weight regulated cooker. Had been using one for pressure canning and found it much easier to use than the KR spring regulators, which require more-or-less constant monitoring to keep them at correct pressure. To my surprise, I actually get less water loss in the weight-regulated cooker. So, the KRs are now banished to the attic and I have a full range of weight-regulated stainless steel pressure cookers, which have become my primary workhorses for stews and braises.

 

[Nicholas Mosher]

I bought one of those ice cream makers that you have to freeze the bowl first to use. It makes excellent pint-sized batches, but I rarely use it because you only get one batch off before you have to clean/refreeze the bowl. I'd love one of the units that you plug in that has refrigeration so you can churn out larger batches. Then again, the last thing I made was the ever-overkilled (no longer trendy) green-tea ice cream when I had people over for sushi a few months ago.

I definetly want my own rotisserie though!

Couldn't live without my rice cooker either.

 

[PBear42]

clarification

When I say the secondary releases failed, I don't mean that they popped too soon. Rather, a plunger in the middle of the valve has to pop up to seal the cooker before it can begin to pressurize. Until that happens, pressure is escaping through the valve. What happened with each of the lids was that the plunger would become more and more "fussy" about popping into place - took lots of fiddling and poking by me - till finally it became more trouble than it was worth to use the cooker. As I said, these could have been fixed, and if weight-regulated cookers hadn't worked out (I'm using mostly Presto, btw), I would have done that. As it stands, though, I consider them a bad investment and don't recommend them to anyone.

 

[boufa06]

When DH and I were in the planning stage of opening a restaurant, we were convinced by the 'experts' to plunk down a tidy sum for a bread prover. It was the most memorable white elephant of my whole life! It was never used for proving bread but just to store pots and pans!! As it turned out, it was quite easy to prove bread without resorting to high tech equipment but the big monster was impossible to move out since the kitchen partitioning wall was built after the prover was put in its place. Fortunately, the story had a happy ending. After an acrimonious and expensive court battle against a rapacious landlord, we settled by agreeing to move out to new premises. Little did he know that he could have inherited most of our kitchen equipment due to our inability to move it out without tearing down a wall. Fortunately, he was convinced at the last moment to buy all our kitchen equipment for a nice (to us) sum. This way the prover became his baby to either help him relieve pot storage problems or challenge his ingenuity to the hilt!

 

[LeisuresKitchen]

When DH and I were in the planning stage of opening a restaurant, we were convinced by the 'experts' to plunk down a tidy sum for a bread prover. It was the most memorable white elephant of my whole life! It was never used for proving bread but just to store pots and pans!! As it turned out, it was quite easy to prove bread without resorting to high tech equipment but the big monster was impossible to move out since the kitchen partitioning wall was built after the prover was put in its place. Fortunately, the story had a happy ending. After an acrimonious and expensive court battle against a rapacious landlord, we settled by agreeing to move out to new premises. Little did he know that he could have inherited most of our kitchen equipment due to our inability to move it out without tearing down a wall. Fortunately, he was convinced at the last moment to buy all our kitchen equipment for a nice (to us) sum. This way the prover became his baby to either help him relieve pot storage problems or challenge his ingenuity to the hilt!

poetic justice. Love it!

 

[nufsed]

It was eons ago that my wife purchased from an infomercial (pre-internet days) a multilevel-stackable-plastic-whizz-bang-sure-to-magic food dehydrator gadget.
What a great deal of money we were destined to save!!
What a wonderful and varied selection of foodstuffs we would surely have!!
What an awesome opportunity this would be!!
What a total waste of money and time!
While it DID work (we dried some bananas and such) it simply failed to prove useful. I think its still in the storeroom somewhere!


Nufsed

Ricky

PS: my favorite gadget is still the '73 model Hobart KA in my avatar

 

[Corey123]

Hey, nufsef!!

Where have you been lately? Was going to ask if your K'Aid Stand Mixer is still working, but I think your PS on the bottom of your post answers my question.

Good luck with it!!

 

[Katie H]

Sorry, nufsed, you didn't care for your food dehydrator. We have a similar/same one and really like ours. One of the things I like to use it for is to dry bread cubes for croutons and stuffings. Once I've cut the bread into cubes, it only takes a couple of hours to have nice fully dried cubes.

We also use it to make some mean beef jerky. I like to dry green peppers for pepper flakes, too. Great for soups and such.

 

[Harborwitch]

I love our dehydrator (in storage now - won't fit on the boat either). Once in a while our local grocery would have a deal on mushrooms - big ol' bags for a dollar each. A few hours in the food dehydrator and I had wonderful mushrooms for those times when I really needed mushrooms and no way to get to the store. We dried peppers and celery, herbs, fruit. I think we even dried tomatoes in it. If a killer deal on shrooms comes up I can always go to storage and grab it for a day or two.

 

[Corey123]

I once bought a Cuisinart juice extractor, had it for a few years only to find out that the spinning rubber drive coupling had begun to rub up against the plastic casing, wear away and create a burning rubber smell!!

At the time, I thought that it would be as good as their food processors, but boy was I mislead!!! Eventually, the thing crapped out and I had no choice but to throw it away! Part of the resaon that I will never buy any Cuisinart products ever again!!

Now this piece of crap is no longer available at all. I replaced it with a Juiceman juice extractor, and it works much better!

 

[Veloce]

We bought a Cuisinart ice cream maker, hoping to make ice cream sweetened with Splenda. After three or four failed attempts we gave up. We eat so little regular ice cream that it's not worth the trouble. Ben & Jerry's is often on sale for $2.50 a pint here. The ice cream maker is now on the "aging" shelves in the basement.

(We have a 5-shelf storage unit in the basement where we put things that we don't use any more but are "too good to throw away." When we put something new on the shelf we make room for it by throwing away - or giving away - something else there. We also do an annual clean out of the better stuff for the church yard sale.)

 

[Little Miss J]

I have an ice cream maker that you have to freeze the bowl. It was a gift and I love using it but unfortunately it doesn't get much of a chance. I only have a fridge/freezer so usually I don't have the space to freeze it!

 

[Corey123]

I like the self-contained machines, but nothing from Cuisinart. I've written them off.

I got a Galato TSA-09A in January '03, and it's still going strong!! It really works very well!

You don't have to pre-freeze the part where the bowl goes. Well, in essense, you do, but it only takes about 12 minutes or so for the chamber to freeze up.

It has it's own built-in sealed refigerating system.