The sad thing is my wife still has one, luckily she doesn’t use it.
That’s it!
I don’t even eat eggs, but this item makes me want to start! Square eggs! The future is here!
On the topic of another kitchen gadget… Does anyone have a George Foreman Grill? Surprisingly, most people I know who own them say they’re pretty handy.
I don’t know who made it, but the worst thing I ever used was a cheese making kit.
You put milk, and culture into a thermos like container. Let the stuff set for a time. Open the container, and puke from the smell. Pour the contents into cheese cloth to drain and setup. Puke some more from the smell.
Give the chunky stuff to siblings and relatives to eat. I couldn’t eat the stuff.
Throw the kit into the trash. This was a Christmas present.
The egg press is a fun little toy. I used mine to make the cutest cocktail sandwiches. The biggest problem with the presses is that you obviously can only press one egg at a time. The egg forms into a cube best when it is still warm from the cooking process. For any quantity applications, it can be pretty time consuming to cook one egg at a time.
The solution (at least for this thrift shop junkie) is to have three or four of them at the ready. When you pay about 50¢ each for them (about what they’re really worth) it really isn’t a problem. Back to the sandwiches though.
You use the tiny cocktail rye bread that is about 1½" square. Spread with mayonnaise, top with a slice of square egg, a slice of cherry tomato, another dollop of mayonnaise, salt and ground black pepper, top with some chopped chives and the crowd goes wild.
::the roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd::
Another cute decoration you can make using these is a pair of dice. You press whole peppercorns into the faces of the cubed egg to make the pips.
Having said all this, do you think that a single person at the party even noticed the square eggs?
[John Belushi]
Buuuuut noooooooooooo!
[/John Belushi]
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by OrcaChow *
**
Dang! I never tried the Glowing Electric Pickle thing!
But if you want an adventure with food, put a Frankenstuff weenie in one of these suckers and electrocute it.
(For non-US Dopers and those w/ functioning taste buds, Frankenstuffs have either day-glo orange “cheese product” or Granular Pseudo Chili extrusions forced down the middle.) I have no idea what they taste like “straight”; I just bought a package for the satisfaction of nuking them.
Devoted to scientific method,
Veb
P.S. The knock-off home yogurt maker sounds truly horrendous!
So I was shopping at the mall today with 2 of my husband’s coworkers, and we stopped into a housewares store. Why? She wanted to buy a bagel slicer. She pointed out the banana hangers to me and said that she really wanted one. :eek: I thought that she was playing an elaborate joke on me, but she wasn’t. She was dead serious.
If she had started looking for a Presto Jiffo Hot Dog Cooker, I would have fainted.
I vote for the Egg-Wave as the most truly useless gadget. But the commercials slay me!
Umm…I own a Banana Hanger.
It was a Christmas gift from my sister-in-law about two years ago.
I hang bananas on it.
As a matter of fact, when my wife says, “Oh…and we need some bananas,” and I bring back bananas from the store, and I go to hang the bananas on the Banana Hanger, and there are STILL ONE OR TWO BANANAS FROM THE OLD BUNCH hanging on the Banana Hanger, I get sort of pissy.
what is the most useless kitchen tools? a plastic lettuce knife, does anybody own one , especially since baggged salads are apparently less expensive?
you can get a bottle pump and make your own carbonated drinks, Lechters had/may still carry them and i believe the pumps are 30-40 dollars.
those ice cubes that never melt, <i.e plastic and filled with distilled water.> who used those? what the hell for?
A pickle picker? i used to have to tell people what is was constantly!!
we do have a George Foreman Grill, it is a nice thing to have, but even if you get a large grill you may have to cook several batches before you have enough for a meal, depending on how many people you are cooking for. the hamburgers my dad made on it were good, but definetly on the dry side. we just got ours. YMMV.
That’s a Seltzer Bottle. Or, if you’re feeling all Sherlock Holmsey, a Gasogene.
That’s a MUST in the kitchen (or bar, really). How can you pour yourself out a “stiff whisky and soda” if you don’t have soda-water? Open a liter of Canada Dry? Oh, please!
My husband bought my daughter a tuna can squeezer. You know, to get the water out after you open the can. I shall rest easy in the knowledge that never again will my precious princess have to use the lid of the tuna can to press out the water and risk having it touch her fingers.
The main function of the non-melting ice cubes is that they won’t water your drink as regular ones do when they melt. I will freely admit that a watered down Martini is pretty ghastly. However, having chunks of plastic roaming around in my coctail is as, if not more, ghastly.
Hey Uke, I seem to recall a certain Gasogene, didn’t you introduce me to him at one of your chili parties?
Ooooh, yeah, I’ve seen that ad. I don’t get it. Those eggs look completely unappetizing. I mean completely, and we have to assume that the company tried to make them as appetizing as possible for the ad. But no - what it appears to make is some bizarrely shaped caricature of an egg. I’ll stick with butter and a frying pan.
My sister-in-law gave me a Salad Spinner when she got two for her wedding many years ago. I put it in the back of a cupboard and forgot about it until I stated making beer at home. The Salad Spinner is the best thing in the whole world for sanitizing the caps for the bottles.
My vote for the most useless gadget is a cookie press. Or more than five cookie cutters.
I hate George Foreman, but I have to admit that I like my GF grill. Our household includes three adult humans, and two cats who consider themselves to be above human, so the grill is big enough for our family. Hamburgers, chicken breasts, pork chops/steaks and TENDER beef steaks all do very nicely on this grill, and come out very flavorful. I do not, however, advise trying to cook a round steak on that grill, unless the steak has been thoroughly tenderized. I haven’t tried turkey fillets, but I bet they’d be good, too. However, this grill doesn’t go in the dishwasher, which is a major downside, in my opinion. I very rarely allow stuff into my kitchen if it has to be handwashed.
I kind of like the little citrus fruit tools. They will slice the skin, but not the fruit, which is precisely what I want sometimes.
I don’t like the old hot air popcorn poppers. Sure, you get greaseless popcorn…but what’s the POINT? The popcorn is now flavorless!
I don’t know it this should count or not, but I am driven absolutely insane by those waffle- iron type things with Mickey Mouse or Snoopy faces on them- so you can toast cheese sandwiches AND imprint your favorite cartoon character on the bread at the same time.
Couple that you might think are a bit pointless.
Melon baller, makes nice little round scoops out of melon flesh, why do people need to do that ?
I’ve seen an antique apple peeler, lovely Heath-Robinson affair it is. Basically it works like a little lathe, yu turnt the handle at the end and the shaft with prongs on it rotates the apple and you move a blade, which is on a sliding rail, onto the apple and a spring tensioner holds it to the apple thus peeling it.
Thing is it takes some time to set it up right and it takes some cleaning afterwards too, not very good for a quickie.
The all time classic is the Fondue set. You see these quite often in their 1970’s packaging at bring your own sales -usually unopened.There must have been a massive factory churning them out for all of six months but they appear to be indestructable, probably saturated the market and the company went bust.
The Rotato, to peel potatoes. It’s a big vise looking thing that spears your potato then spins it to peel it. 
That or the bacon wave, why oh why would I want to line up my bacon neatly before I cook it???
Hey Lynn Bodoni, those air poppers exist so you can make caramel popcorn. Mmmmmm.
And for future gadgets to mention in this thread, today’s NYTimes has a column on what we can look foward to:
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/12/27/living/27GADG.htmlmoun
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