OK, time for my 2 cents. I've been baking, preserving, and cooking for more than you are old - that's fifty years if you want to count. My recommendations are just from experience and, of course, always frugality. If you buy a good piece of equipment it should last your lifetime - prorated over 50 years the $200 cost in negligible - but a $1,000 piece will never recoup its cost not matter how much stuff you preserve. On the other hand, if you buy a $10 piece of junk only to replace it in 1 year, and every year thereafter, cussing it all the while, that thing has less value than dirt in that it causes stress, breaks at the crucial need, and is risky to use, poorly constructed, and maddening to use, and expensive in the long run. Cheap junk is still junk. Using a cheap plastic mandolin that you are afraid of is dangerous. Even with a Kevlar glove (buy them at Walmart in the fishing department - for cleaning fish - if you already have one) it will make the chore unacceptable - too bulky/clunky, but it still does work - time quality is a factor here. An expensive professional mandolin is pure pleasure and if you plan on canning for many years, the only way to go. My pro chef SIL gave me his old Bron mandolin (new is probably $150). "Wow" is the only word to describe a professional piece of equipment - kinda like buying a maslin pan! The thickness of a slice is easily adjusted; it makes julienne and french fry thicknesses in one pass with a turn of a knob, and also endeared me in that it makes a cute wavy cut if I so desire. It comes with a guide plate so that you never have to get anywhere near the cutting plate and therefore it is totally safe. The blade can be sharpened to razor edge but my SIL said that he used it for 17 years without having to do that and to me it is way sharp enough for my cukes. Zip-zip. As for mini choppers (half an onion - minced, 2 cups of diced peppers, 6 garlic cloves - minced, etc.) I recommend the little mini food chopper (1 to 2 cup size) by Black & Decker, for about ten bucks. Available at chain drug stores (CVS, Walmart, and the like). Never makes paste of nuts either (just "finely chopped") so it is used a lot here instead of the stupid scrunch and grunt upper hammer nut "grinders". I bought a burr coffee grinder for spices. It is a simple mechanism with adjustments for "granular" size that is irrelevant for hard spices - longer whirring works the same. It was about $15 at Target. It depends on what the outcome for which you wish to achieve. Note that it is super for leaving tasty traces in the hopper and then when you are grinding fresh coffee beans viola! Yum to cinnamon sticks followed by dark roast coffee beans. As for full sized food processors - I use the attachment made for my KitchenAid mixer. Shredding 10 pounds of carrots is a snap, chunking tons of cabbage for slaw is a simple change to a different sized cone (three come with a set and 10 more are available), and for making piles of cheese for crackers that just goes through like butter. The problem is that you have to have a KitchenAid stand mixer to attach it to. One simple little tool for twenty bucks that has me watching infomercials again is the Vidalia Onion Chopper, a.k.a. Sweet Onion Chopper, and the like. It uses the force of your hand/arm to press down on a template over a steel honeycomb-shaped plate. I cubed enough sweet onions for 40 jars of relish in about 10 minutes, enough zucchini for 20 jars of relish, and the steamed carrots for pickled relish in 5 minutes. Then I used it to cut up sweet and hot peppers, red onions, and dried apricots for about 20 jars of Habanero Gold Jelly in just under 10 minutes. It does not work for softer things like cherries and plums, but I will try it for tomatoes, whenever they decide to ripen, when I make more tomato preserves. As for a dedicated food processor - buy only the one with the widest bowl you can find. If it has a narrow bowl you may as well just buy a blender and forget chopping with it. I have a "harvest gold"-colored food processor from about 1970 that has a very wide bowl, no safety features, and limited options, that suits me just fine for chunk shredding, fruit puree prep (before it all goes into the Squeezo), and using just the cutter blade alone for making great pie crusts and for coarse chopping big nuts. It is worthless for making nicely sliced cukes for pickles, or for precision shredding or slicing for anything else. If I were to buy one today, I'd go with the snazzy KitchenAid KFP750. It is what all the pro chefs on TV use and they have to determine "quality or junk for their standards - give or take rebates. That model also comes with the mini bowl so the B&D would not be needed. (Though I would not give up my B&D mini for anything after all these years.) At your young age, and the interest in preserving food you have shown over the last 3 years, an investment in quality equipment is akin to a painter who has to choose between a throw-away brush and one that will last 10 years. Duh! Initial investment in quality tools will outlast throw-always by far. If you don't believe me, come see me chop cabbage in the harvest-gold FP sometime!!! Your whole investment in good quality tools would be in the $15O to $550 range. Throw-away paintbrush or 50 years of quality? Nancy

With practice, I've been able to get decent results chopping onion and peppers in a food processor - its a question of not putting in too much and 'pulsing' the blade. Even then there are always a few larger pieces that need to be chopped again. They also work well with mushing up garlic - but you have to be doing enough - like 10-20 cloves. When I'm making a batch of 12 quarts of tomato/onion/pepper/garlic sauce, and cutting up a dozen onions and 18 or so peppers, the food processor saves an awful lot of time. I have enough nerve damage in my hands that it would be impossible to chop that much up w/o a food processor.

Phrog: >>> is that the December issue of CI? Because their website shows November as the current one, and they review mixers there. CI does 6 issues so current issue is Nov-Dec . But, my mistake; you are correct that the current issue is about stand mixers. The CI web site says the FP review/update was from Jan 2013. (Can't find my print copy -- might have lent it out -- so I haven't been able to verify the edition.) Here is what the update said about the Breville if you do not have on-line access to the CI site: "Recommended "$399.99 "Breville Sous Chef Food Processor, 16-Cup "f this super-fast and powerful deluxe machine were not so pricey, it would be our favorite. It perfectly pureed broccoli soup with nary a leak, kneaded batch after batch of springy pizza dough, ground nuts into powder, and minced fresh parsley into crisply cut confetti. Its pulse button is responsive and effective, and its adjustable slicing blade works well, though you have to set the width under the blade before you start to process. It comes with a 16-cup bowl and a 2.5-cup mini bowl, five blades, a built-in timer, and a count-up display, which was very helpful. We liked the multiple feed tubes (though as with the Cuisinart, a safety function limits the length of some foods). Blades are displayed in a well-designed storage box thatâÂÂs clearly labeled to eliminate the usual guesswork. Its large, smooth shapes donâÂÂt trap food and are easy to wash and wipe dry between tasks. We also appreciate the overheat function: If stressed, the motor shuts off and counts down, indicating when itâÂÂs ready to start again (though it wasnâÂÂt easy to stress this motor). Our only quibbles: ItâÂÂs too easy to overchop food into mush when you want dice, and we sure wish it wasnâÂÂt quite so expensive." Pie âÂÂâÂÂâ Chop âÂÂâÂÂý Mayo âÂÂâÂÂâ Grind âÂÂâÂÂý Pizza âÂÂâÂÂâ EaseofUse âÂÂâÂÂâ Grate/Slice âÂÂâÂÂý This post was edited by JWVideo on Sat, Nov 2, 13 at 0:03

cookie, sometimes just changing the order and how you add things can help. I would chop the dates a bit first by hand, then pulse the coconut with the nuts in the processor, then pour that mix over the dates to coat them, in a bowl and toss a bit, then into the processor again. Pulse and add everything else. I recently wanted a speedy quick last minute salsa and knew better but put a few things in without a 2 sec pre-chop. The shallot stuck to the blade, grr, and by the end of it all, way over blended. Had coarse shallots, so i added a few more cherry toms, (cut in half) and more cilantro, yada, not so speedy after all... Dates are snotty glue. I still have a ton and have been using them allot lately as a sugar replacement. Mine are still on the stems and need to be pitted so i do that chore on a pile of a dry ingredient. In my case it was some blended granola and coconut... similar recipe but mine also has some puffed rice. Not really an extra step, but chopping a bit on the granola "flour' to coat did help avoid sticky date snot.