cstefan

What is the opinion on the ARY Vacmaster VP215 versus more expensive chamber vacuum machines with Busch pumps such as Minipack and Henkelman? While I know Busch pump machines are much more durable and features such as being able to set the vacuum percentage or having a moisture stop sensor seem nice does any of this justify the increased cost? Especially since I'm a home user and won't be putting the duty cycles on a machine the way a commercial establishment would.

I haven't looked at a physical copy of Sunset in years. I really should peruse the copies at the library. My dad subscribed for years and he owned many of their books on cooking, gardening, and home improvement. Sad to see them sell their HQ. I hope the content doesn't suffer with the move. I also hope Sunset is able to re-invent itself successfully for the new-media era.

I'd strongly recommend purchasing a blender rated and warranted for commercial use. Vitamix, Blendtec, Waring, and Hamilton-Beach among others all make commercial blenders. There may be additional brands available locally for you. Contact the listed companies to find the distributors and dealers for your country. If you have a local restaurant supply store you may want to see what they have. A home blender isn't going to put up with the abuse it is going to get in a commercial environment. When it breaks the repair won't be covered by warranty.

I currently organize alpha by author then order of initial publication. For multi-author works the author I judge to be most famous takes precedence. There are some idiosyncrasies like Christopher Kimball and America's Test Kitchen all filed under 'C' with my Cook's Illustrated books. I have a separate section for baking/pastry/dessert, for beverages and for food writing. The food writing stays mostly separate except for some of the James Beard (how the heck do you classify 'Beard on Food' or 'Delights and Prejudices'?). Baking books are sometimes mixed with the general books when the desire to keep a particular author's books together outweighs the desire to file the baking/pastry/desert books together. I may do a re-org by how used my books are as I now have shelves in 4 places. The new kitchen shelves will get the most used volumes. The living room will get oversize and coffee-table books along with the beverage books. The dining room will still have the bulk of my collection. The spare bedroom/office gets the food writing, the extra copies, and the archival portion of my collection.

Does anyone else have experience with the new Vitamix G series models? I just got a pro 750 and I think it addresses many of the issues that caused fat guy to not like Vitamix way back at the beginning of the thread. I still can't speak to durability as I've had it only a couple of weeks.

I'm currently a fan of surgical towels. I have some linen towels I received as a gift I'm rather fond of as well.