I also think you should do your research before you purchase a kitchen item that may or may not do what you want it to. We'll be happy to help you, we LOVE to spend other people's money. (grin) As sleevendog mentioned, though, not everyone has a bunch of expendable cash for new and expensive kitchen equipment and gadgets. If you don't like to cook the best tools in the world aren't going to make you love it, I don't think, but if you might kind of like it, good tools will make a difference. I keep telling my son in law that a kitchen is like a garage, there's a big difference between a Dollar Store wrench and Snap On. Now understand, I didn't always have fancy appliances, when I started posting here more than a decade ago my most used kitchen device was a wooden spoon, Larry Englehardt (who used to post here) told me he was amazed at what I could accomplish with a wooden spoon, LOL. I didn't have even a mixer and I was chopping onions with an old hunting/skinning knife of Dad's. It can be done but it's a lot harder. I don't have a mini-processor, so I can't remark on that. I do have a big one but I don't think chopping things is a big plus with it. Everything I chop is either uneven sizes or turns to puree or something. Many things I prefer to chop by hand. Thankfully now I have some good knives. If you might like to cook and just want to try different things, we'd love to help, really we would. Just give us a chance. Between everyone here you can probably even find a lot of easier ways to accomplish things, I know I've learned a LOT. Happy Cooking (I hope). Annie

FOAS, I always admire your passion in the precision of mathematical exactitude, However, I do not feel that topics in food discussions necessarily lend themselves to constricted legal lawyerly approaches. I realized and did state and did apologize to the OP that I was not directly addressing her question, because I had a point to make that's related to the topic. I also feel that the issue of a FP for a single person was missed by many posters. That possibly will cause the OP to make the wrong choice. I am very puzzled that even for a family of four you have not that much use for a FP, and you feel it is wrong for me to suggest to the OP that there may be other options? After all, I never said not to get one, I am puzzled that you feel it is wrong to suggest to others to study options. I have not said a FP has no application for some single person who has physical limitations, or food preferences suitable for having a FP, such as for olychick, I have not said a FP cannot perform well chopping, slicing, shredding, mixing, ------ There is another whole aspect about the art of food preparation not using machinery, as in Japanese cooking, and the pleasure of tactile relationship with your food. but that is a little more off topic for this thread. "---The resurgence of handmade food is ultimately about a movement toward a more intimate connection with what we eat and where it comes from, what Paula Wolfert calls "the essential taste" of food. ---- "Without taste, smell,and feel, nobody can cook well." dcarch

Lars, I rather thought the same thing about the TV cooks. . . but that's a heck of a lot of new equipment they must go through. Wonder if there's place they get rid of it. Hmmmm. . . . No, I really don't care if my f/p looks cloudy. I always am more interested in why it occurs. Along the same lines, my thoughts on when they put stuff in the over doesn't center on the gleaming racks. It's that the sound the racks make when the oven is hot is completely different than the sound they make when it's cold, so you know the oven is cold, even if they take it out later, steaming. I think I've also mentioned before that when I watch Giada the minute she first says "There we go" I quite watching for content and count how many times she says it. You would think I'd have something better to do with my mind, wouldn't you?

Sorry, I haven't checked back here for awhile and just saw the latest messages. I haven't done much big cooking for awhile, do to current life demands, and still haven't had a chance to try the new dicing sets. I probably should, just to say I did, but for a single vegetable, I just grab a knife. I really like the dicing (original set) when I'm cooking for the crowd. I wish it worked better with raw hard roots, but I understand why there are issues. I hypothesize that the fresher and damper the roots are, the better they'll dice. Still, there are peppers and onions and squash and all kinds of softer things I chop regularly. I should make some gazpacho and play. :) OTOH, I have a highly rated manual hinged lid dicer which I can't even get an onion through, so whatever help I get, is good help. What the W-S staff were doing wrong is focusing on french fries. Most of the people I know offline don't make french fries at home. They're a drive thru thing. :) The peeler was designed for potatoes, though I've used it on apples and other things. It looks like it's taking a lot of good product, but it's really not more than most veg peelers do. The result gets beat up, though, so not for pretty work. The peeler, however, is best on smaller potatoes. I just cut mine and don't worry about loosing a little more on the cut edges. If peeling potatoes is a big enough task to even think of going to the machine (like for latkes for the multitudes), it's good. But then if you take what you've peeled and put it through the dicer, you aren't going to get much in the way of lovely long fries. I haven't tried, since I don't make french fries, but I'm guessing the demo didn't use the narrow feed tude, either, and if you're doing something vertical, you need to, or it'll fall over and give you the wrong shape. But I wasn't there and can't be sure of what they did or what you saw, Loves. I'll put it on my list of things to try just for trying. I can always cube them up after. While I do love the chopping element, the FP as a whole is just amazingly beautifully designed, and I still adore it. I never much liked my Cuisinart. It was a bother to use. The other day I was making ... fangipane, I think ... the directions called for the food processor, which is common with almond flour so you don't have to sift it. I wasn't thinking and just put my ingredients in the main bowl, rather than the small one. I was worried because it was a thin layer on the bottom of the bowl. It worked fine! I was amazed. This thing is so easy to use and clean! LOVE still blooms!