Smithy

Those are beautiful! I'd love to see them in action, if you don't mind. Show us some of your results, and if you have favorite recipes that you can share by link -- or at least describe -- that would be great too. I think I'd be in serious trouble if I lived near a Le Creuset outlet. The kitchen's already pretty crowded. 😉

Although this is true, eG still has this guideline regarding Decorum and Topicality: The points have been made; the says have been said; and I too am sorry I never had a chance to eat there. Good luck to you, Rob, in your next venture.

Most dinners here are wonderfully photogenic and tempting-looking. I wonder, sometimes, how many members might be shy of posting for fear of ridicule. Well, bring it on. I'm tired, I'm coming down with a cold, and my life is topsy-turvy right now...but I still get hungry and need to eat. Tonight's dinner: Last week's asparagus, cut into pieces and nuked, with a sprinkling of feta cheese chunks. Bits of butter and mayonnaise (the last remains of 2 packages) tossed in to melt. A hard-boiled egg, barely chunked up then heated in the final microwave pass. A travesty? One might say so. Or one might say "easy, filling, and light on the dishwashing." Tastes pretty good, too. I refuse to put this in The Gallery of Regrettable Foods, although perhaps it belongs there.

We dealt with the strength issue by judicious slicing (so we weren't trying to push, say, an entire potato through at once) but that may be too peevesome for some people. My husband thought it perfect; I used knives mostly although I found the chopper quite useful for some purposes. As for sharpening: in years of use, I've never found the need to do so.

Irish Potatoes are quite easy to cut with the alligator-style chopper (I too have a Vidalia chop wizard, but of course there are knock-offs). You do have to slice them crosswise first, to the thickness you want, but the choper requires little pressure. i haven't tried squash but as noted above some varieties at least would lend themselves to this machine. I also can't comment on sweet potatoes with this gadget.

I have two: one for the house, and one for the Princessmobile. Whereas I leaned toward hand-slicing and dicing, my darling preferred the security of having the diced product contained, even though it meant cutting things into smaller bits first. He didn't think he had the knife skills for dicing. Elaboration: Our alligator chopper, an original Vidalia chopping wizard, has too small a chopping area to allow an entire onion at once. I usually cut onions into quarters or eighths, depending on onion size, before proceeding. The potatoes require slicing before being pushed through the grid, but (a) an entire potato slice, if done latitudinally, will fit the grid area. (b) Furthermore -- and this was a surprise when we tested -- the potatoes cleaned the onion fibers from the chopping grid. The procedure became: chop onions first, and make more than needed for the night's recipe. Then chop the potatoes. Cleanup was much easier.

I don't know (I really don't) about cornstarch, but I think gelatin would work well for that purpose.

Laurentius, I haven't tested any of them because the shapes don't appeal to me. I'm glad blue_dolphin finds them useful, though!

I'll do a more rigorous test than I've done so far, and get back to you on that. Right now mine's in the dishwasher -- but all I used it for was peanut butter.

My pair of these spatulas has arrived. I think they're going to work well. They're a little shorter than the iSi spatulas I so love and can't replace, but they're the same thinness. Below: Mrs. Anderson's on the left, iSi on the right.

I'm on a grilled sandwiches kick thanks to my thrift-store find of a panini press. I'd save some of that gorgeous brisket in slices and press it with proper accompaniments into a sandwich. Mushrooms, cheese, condiments of your choice. Tomatoes? Pickles? Kraut? Lettuce? into the sandwich after grilling. My husband would want to slather it with barbecue sauce (ick, I say!). Actually, cheese and maybe some sauce trapping chunks of brisket would be good in grilled sandwiches too, using the little chunks that are leftover from slicing. I did something like that here with a badly-abused pork tenderloin. I'd want to use some of that lovely brisket, gently warmed (microwave if I had it, low skillet otherwise) to dress up a nice green dinner salad. @rotuts' ideas above all sound good, too. I'm just adding to what he said. 🙂

I can't note what @JoNorvelleWalker did, but here's a topic on making crumpets. Mmm...maybe time for me to revisit the issue!

Well. Now I've discovered that I really, truly want that automatic shut-off feature. I ordered this model (eG-friendly Amazon.com link) for our house, thinking it was automatic shut-off. It isn't. I'm sending it back in favor of this unit (eG-friendly Amazon.com link), which (also) claims auto shut-off. We'll see what happens, won't we?

It's now June, with no visible change in the roll. Could it be bagged in, say, a nitrogen atmosphere? Or is it really so heavily laden with preservatives?

That is a beautiful platter of food! Are you saying that the rice colors are their own natural growth colors? I've heard of the the forbidden black rice, but I had no idea rice could have such vivid colors as the blue and magenta you show above.