# Stupid convenience items **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [June 13, 2004, 11:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202 "2004-06-13T23:54:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2004, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/61 "2004-06-19T17:33:44Z")
> [@CrazyCatLady](#): > > No flour in the kitchen? But…but…how do you make biscuits? And cornbread? And chicken pot pie? And cinnamon rolls? People still eat that stuff? Jesus, how…starchy. I buy a tray of the giant cinnamon rolls from the grocery store bakery like once every two years if overnight company is coming. ---
**Author:** ![CrazyCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2004, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/62 "2004-06-19T17:46:14Z")
Of course people still eat that stuff. We have chicken pot pie 2-3 times a month in the winter, and have biscuits, gravy, and sausage a weekend or two a month year-round. Now the cinamon rolls, I only make those once or twice a year. And **Dr.J** makes homemade bread on a fairly regular basis. At last count, we had four or five different types of flour in our kitchen. Regular flour, bread flour, cake flour (that one I don’t get, since we don’t make cakes, but I’m assured that we need it), whole-wheat flour, and rye flour. Starchy it may be, but it’s awful tasty. ---
**Author:** ![Omega\_Glory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/7c8e57/32.png) [@Omega\_Glory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omega_Glory)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2004, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/63 "2004-06-19T18:14:38Z")
The last time I was in Wegmans, I saw pre-sliced apples sealed in plastic to stop them from turning brown. I’m a big fan of some convenience items though, they might be more expensive but they save a lot of time, which is nice. ---
**Author:** ![Unintentionally\_Blank](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/unintentionally_blank/32/5418_2.png) [@Unintentionally\_Blank](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Unintentionally_Blank)\ **Post date:** [June 19, 2004, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/64 "2004-06-19T20:03:03Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > I don’t get the people who use pancake mix. Don’t you realize what’s in it? Check the label sometime, then smack yourself in the forehead. Hey! Don’t go dissin’ my 15 lb. bag of Krusteez Pancake mix! (it only needs water!) Now, frozen PB&J sammiches with the crust _already removed_? Freaky. :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 2:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/65 "2004-06-20T02:12:55Z")
Flour is one of those items that keeps for years so it’s always something that I have handy even though I rarely use it. Maybe just a teaspoon or two for a roux or some quick pastry. But the inconvenience of not having it, although minor is not worth the hassle. ---
**Author:** ![Zjestika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/8edcca/32.png) [@Zjestika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zjestika)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/66 "2004-06-20T02:50:34Z")
> [@susan\_foster](#): > > Probably bought by the same people who bought the battery-operated hand grater by Black and Decker I saw advertised. > > [Move my hand? That’s just too hard!](http://www.itsagizmo.com/index.jsp?&media=BND&keyword=Gizmo_Grater_Pop_Up) > > Sad, and lame. > > Susan I want it! Sad and lame perhaps, but I hate, hate, hate shredding cheese. It makes my knuckles stiff. I also don’t like bagged shredded cheese because I’m a snooty food co-op employee and prefer organic small batch medium cheddar to day-glo Kraft. I want it! But I’m too poor. Oh, well. ZJ ---
**Author:** ![lezlers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/258eb7/32.png) [@lezlers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lezlers)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/67 "2004-06-20T04:20:45Z")
> [@voguevixen](#): > > Are you talking about Bisquik? The pancake mix I buy doesn’t even require eggs or milk, just water. I only buy this because I never buy eggs. (And I eat pancakes so infrequently that one box lasts me several years.) I’m with you. And also, I’m ashamed to say…I never knew what was in pancakes. I know, I know! Shame! SHAME! > [@](#): > > For some reason the recent glut of “newfangled” toilet brushes make me want to pull my hair out. First, there’s the one where you buy special toilet cleaner inserts that fit into the brush and dispense through it, because it’s SO HARD to dump a glug of bleach or bowl cleaner into a toilet. Second, there’s the paper toilet brush with the disposable head, because EWWWW! A regular toilet brush has germs on it. Who gives a crap? It’s only going to go back in the toilet! Okay, I’ve got one of these too. But it’s not because I’m lazy, I swear. I actually…well…_I thought it looked neat, okay?!_ ☹ ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 4:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/68 "2004-06-20T04:27:50Z")
> [@Zjestika](#): > > but I hate, hate, hate shredding cheese. I hate grating ginger. I think if you get blood in it, it becomes nonKosher. We need a hydraulic garlic press that works on ginger. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/69 "2004-06-20T05:00:14Z")
I can’t stand grating lemon zest, either - that’s one thing I wish I could just buy. It seems it all just ends up on the grater and I can’t get it off. Plus I end up with less skin than I started with. I wish they had more convenience foods that de-messified or de-stickified things. I guess that makes me an obnoxious person. I wish when I got a hot dog out of the packet I didn’t have to touch the hotdog juice, or worse risk turning the package the wrong way and having it spill out over me. :eek: I’m unreasonably grossed out by perfectly natural food juices. I also wish they would perfect squeeze bottles of things so you never got mustard-water or ketchup-juice. I know they’ve been working on it for ketchup but I haven’t seen any mustard advances, and that’s the worse offender it seems. And I really like the squeeze bottle instead of the tub you dip your knife in, because then I don’t worry about getting ketchup in my mustard or mayonnaise or whatever. I wish there was a practical non-nasty way to do it for peanut butter or jelly - I always just end up doing the jelly first and then licking it off, hoping nobody else in the house notices. So far, so good. Don’t tell. ---
**Author:** ![Flutterby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Flutterby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flutterby)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/70 "2004-06-20T05:10:23Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > I also wish they would perfect squeeze bottles of things so you never got mustard-water or ketchup-juice. I know they’ve been working on it for ketchup but I haven’t seen any mustard advances, and that’s the worse offender it seems. The solution to mustard water… shake the bottle before you turn it upside down. ---
**Author:** ![Guinastasia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guinastasia/32/5751_2.png) [@Guinastasia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Guinastasia)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/71 "2004-06-20T05:13:34Z")
> [@CrazyCatLady](#): > > No flour in the kitchen? But…but…how do you make biscuits? And cornbread? And chicken pot pie? And cinnamon rolls? Bisquits and cinnamon rolls? You mean those things that come in cans, right? 😃 (BTW, my sister has this recipe for a really yummy breakfast roll that involves Pillsbury crescent rolls, marshmallows and cinnamon) ---
**Author:** ![Cinnamon\_Girl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@Cinnamon\_Girl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cinnamon_Girl)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/72 "2004-06-20T06:59:05Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > (BTW, my sister has this recipe for a really yummy breakfast roll that involves Pillsbury crescent rolls, marshmallows and cinnamon) How about caramel sticky buns? Pillbury can biscuits cut into quarters piled into stainless steel bowl, drizzled with butter/brown sugar/wee bit of honey glaze, baked for about 15-20 mins. ---
**Author:** ![CrazyCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/73 "2004-06-20T08:21:35Z")
> [@Guinastasia](#): > > Bisquits and cinnamon rolls? You mean those things that come in cans, right? > > 😃 > (BTW, my sister has this recipe for a really yummy breakfast roll that involves Pillsbury crescent rolls, marshmallows and cinnamon) Canned biscuits aren’t bad, if you’re going to butter them. They don’t mix with gravy well at all, though, and the canned cinnamon rolls are…ew. There’s just something about the combination of that exact texture and those exact flavors that just doesn’t really work. I think I could get into crescent rolls and marshmallows, though. (Oh, who am I kidding? I’d eat shredded newpaper if you put enough marshmallows on it.) ---
**Author:** ![Esky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f04885/32.png) [@Esky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Esky)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 12:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/74 "2004-06-20T12:27:31Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > I don’t get the people who use pancake mix. Don’t you realize what’s in it? Check the label sometime, then smack yourself in the forehead. > > The peanut butter in the jelly always grosses me out in a big way when I’m not able to avoid looking at it in the store. Two jars just too hard there? I have to agree with both - the pancake in a bottle grosses me out because th pancakes are very thick. i like the crepe-like ones my grandmother so kindly cooks up for me. She spends an afternoon and makes up to 100 pancakes which i then refridgerate and devour as breakfast and snacks (with a thin spread of jam) over the next two to three days. That’s how long it takes for me to get throuh 100 of my nanna’s pancakes. They are that good. Don’t get me started on homemade donuts. ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/75 "2004-06-20T13:03:27Z")
> [@voguevixen](#): > > A regular toilet brush has germs on it. Who gives a crap? It’s only going to go back in the toilet! > [@Mayfield St. Cloud](#): > > [Don’t be so sure!](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=250739) I’d bet ten bucks that the average toilet brush has fewer germs on it than astro’s “big bottle brush”. Considering that toilet brushes generally get the heavy duty bleach/acid treatment from high powered toilet cleansers, and the “bottle brush” gets some watered down dish detergent, I’m on pretty safe ground. Let’s not forget [Cecil’s](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a990416.html) take on the subject. Back to topic… Shredding cheese is a sucky job. Shredding soft cheese like mild cheddar, monterey jack or mozzarella, is a monumentally sucky job. I’m more than happy to trade off some quality for convenience here, and the prices are usually pretty comparable. I think the Dawn dish brush is laughably silly, does it even dispense soap? Unless you have some serious carpal tunnel issues, you’ll get far better performance with a plain jane brush and elbow grease rather than relying on some pathetic D-cell powered motor to do the scrubbing. Throw a 9.6V rechargable cell and a powerful motor in there, maybe we’ve got something. ---
**Author:** ![DoctorJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctorj/32/2904_2.png) [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/76 "2004-06-20T13:14:37Z")
> [@](#): > > cake flour (that one I don’t get, since we don’t make cakes, but I’m assured that we need it) It’s for biscuits. The best biscuit flour is half all-purpose flour and half cake flour. I had a roommate whose fiancee’s mother worked for a company that supplied school cafeterias, and he would come home with a bunch of stuff every time he’d go see her. I was able to make the pizzas taste pretty good, and a few other items weren’t bad. The worst, however, was the Egg Dog, a hot-dog-shaped, vaguely egg-like substance that one thawed in the microwave. I once demonstrated that I could scramble an actual egg in the same amount of time that it took to cook the egg dog. ---
**Author:** ![AllShookDown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d9b06d/32.png) [@AllShookDown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AllShookDown)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/77 "2004-06-20T14:33:20Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > I can’t stand grating lemon zest, either - that’s one thing I wish I could just buy. It seems it all just ends up on the grater and I can’t get it off. Plus I end up with less skin than I started with. [Here you go.](http://www.penzeys.com/cgi-bin/penzeys/p-penzeyslemonpeel.html) ---
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/78 "2004-06-20T16:06:31Z")
> [@Zsofia](#): > > I wish they had more convenience foods that de-messified or de-stickified things. I guess that makes me an obnoxious person. I wish when I got a hot dog out of the packet I didn’t have to touch the hotdog juice, or worse risk turning the package the wrong way and having it spill out over me. I hate to mention it, but one of the hot dog companies actually does make individually-wrapped, single serve hotdogs; or did last year during “hot dog season.” (I want to say Ball Park, because I vaguely remember Michael Jordan being in the commercial.) ---
**Author:** ![voguevixen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/b5ac83/32.png) [@voguevixen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/voguevixen)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/79 "2004-06-20T16:10:09Z")
Here ya go. They’re called “Ball Park Singles.” [http://i2.peapod.com/c/AI/AIKOJ.jpg](http://i2.peapod.com/c/AI/AIKOJ.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![SamIAm336](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4491bb/32.png) [@SamIAm336](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SamIAm336)\ **Post date:** [June 20, 2004, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202/80 "2004-06-20T16:13:53Z")
Bisquick is not for bicuits. yuuch. Bisquick is for dumplings! I have never found anything better for dumplings, even making my own biscuit mix does not taste as good. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/stupid-convenience-items/250202.md?page=5)