ottawa foodies

Mine has to be a cheap crepe pan that I bought. It heats unevenly, burns everything and gives off an odor somewhat like an electrical fire....what was I thinking? (Well, I guess I was thinking that the only other crepe pan at the store was a Le Creuset pan that was not in my budget at the time.)

So, what did you buy that sucked?

Any of the "Daily Essentials" appliances from Loblaws. They should not even be allowed to sell that junk. Our $7 hand blender lasted about a month, and the toaster did not even make a single piece of toast.

Hmm, maybe my wire cheese slicer. We were recently gifted a garlic slicer thingamabob. Both are totally useless since I know how to slice cheese/garlic using... omg... A KNIFE?! Whowouldathunkit?

A Herb Mincer.

I saw one of these the other day, in the supermarket, close to the herbs.

If I had bought the gadget, it would be the most useless kitchen purchase I've made in a long time.

Like Chimi.... To mince herbs, I use a .......... wait for it ........ A Knife.


I try and be a minimalist.... could be the frugal Scotsman gene in me.... or I don't like having to clean many things, while cooking.

When we built our new ikea kitchen we bought the towel rod thingie that pulls out with your kitchen towel on it, but really makes no sense, we never pull the part out to get a towel we just grab the towel, if that makes any sense.

Digital kitchen scale. I imagined this being very handy for recipes that measure ingredients by weight, but somehow I never ever use it.

I could not live without my kitchen scale!

a mezzaluna that has no handles, it was gifted so it's not "my bad"; I'll stick to a knife, thank you!

I also find myself using our kitchen scale on a regular basis.

The most useless thing i've come across are those little handheld food choppers. They're a great way to turn things into mush, but useful for little else.

I have a small mezzaluna with a small concave chopping board that isn't really large enough to do anything with. It was a gift, too, so I don't have the heart to get rid of it (yet).

Useless things that I've bought personally? Because of how often I use it, my V-slicer is good as useless. If I used it more, I'd totally call it useful.

I just remembered I have a small chopper at home - its a glass jar with a plunger style blade attached to the lid. You push the blade down to chop things but end up with little bits of food flying around the inside of the jar. It was banished to the back of a cupboard in favour of my knife. That chopper thingy belonged to my mom so I'm not quite ready to part with it yet. LUVgoodFOOD's towel rack reminds me of a garbage can I had once in my first apartment. The previous tenant had mounted one of those plastic garbage frames to the inside of a cupboard door hence losing valuable cupboard space. It was disposed of shortly after my move in.

Personally I like those little choppers but the wife won't let me get one :-(

Not a purchase but someone gave us a "pizza oven" as a wedding gift.
gizmodo.com

I was gifted an avocado masher, yes, a specific aparatus for mashing avocados; because clearly a fork or even a potato masher would be totally inferior and inappropriate for such a task. It is a cute green color though.

I hope that someone does not read this site :-)

Kitchen Do-Dads (as I call them). I'm terrible in that I am always buying these little gadgets whenever I visit a Kitchen Store (can't leave without something). I have a whole drawer of them... tea bag press, mushroom scrubber, honey dipper, orange peeler, corn butterer etc. They hardly ever get used, and oftentimes I just forget I even own them. On the rare occassion when I do remember one (ususally when there is company around) they spark so much conversation, that I guess in the long run they've earned their keep.

Two items:

1) egg yolk seperator.... I just find it easier to move the egg from shell to shell!

2) egg poacher... got this thinking it would make life easier and it just does not work great. I find boiling water with a little bit of vinegar works just fine!

cheers

A warning to all foodies, when buying kitchen cupboards I'll bet you'll do MUCH better by retaining a custom kitchen cupboards company. We made the mistake of purchasing cupboards by Canac, and they were the worst, most expensive bits of junk I've ever seen. Installation was completely incompetent, mis-measured, mis-aligned, door finishes that didn't match. A disaster. Had we not held a 50-per-cent holdback on successful completion, I'm sure we'd have never been attended to. A horrible experience from start to finish.

I have a few useless kitchen gadgets too, some I've purchased some were gifts. Like the electric juicer that sprayed juice and pulp all over the place when I tried to use it..it didn't last long. I also have a garlic masher/grater that's just such a pain to clean....but I can't get rid of that one since hubby bought it as a Christmas gift.

We moved a few years ago and I did a huge purge of useless/un-used gadgets when I was paking up. It was nice to move into anew kitchen without the clutter.

I am a kitchen doo-dad queen and own things that even I forget what they are for.

Sadly, my most useless was my Cuisinart soft ice cream maker, which was a gift at Christmas.
It is adorable, and has a Donvier-type bowl that you keep extremely frozen until you are ready to make ice cream. And we had cold and frozen everything (as recommended by others who own this unit, who found that it can be pretty worthless) and still -- watery slush.

And I live for ice cream. :-(

Mine would have to be one of those food slicer/shredder all in one things where you have to chop up the food first before fitting it in there to slice or shred. Once your done cutting up the food to put it in there, you might as well have just kept chopping!! It was from Pampered Chef...having said that, everything else I've bought from them has been great!

Here's a great topic for my first post!
The most useless kitchen purchase I own (it was a gift) is an egg separator. I never use it as it's easy enough to separate an egg without fiddly tools.

BakinBombshell - Welcome!!!