Sunday, August 27, 2006

A New Addition to the Family!

Some people add to the family with babies. Some ease into things with pets. daN and i, on the other hand, not being ready for babies nor have the space for a pet, have been adding nice appliances that are expensive but highly rated and should last a long freakin' time.

It all started with the Kitchen Aid mixer. I love this thing to pieces and use it at least once a week. Next, we moved onto getting a Cuisinart drip coffee maker. Ah, the blessings of consistently good drip coffee. Today, we finally got a new toaster oven.

I feel the need to "bury" the old one, as i bury a remnant of my past with it. We've been using a toaster oven that i found at the swap shop at the Camden (Maine) dump. It looked perfectly fine, so i scrubbed it out as best as i could, and it worked! Recently, it's been showing signs of its age, and finally shit the bed as it doesn't toast consisently at all, burns the outside of the damned piece of bread while the inside remains cold and untouched by thermal energy at all.

All in all though, it did a good job for the four or five years that i had it. I did a lot of research online so we could find just the right one, when, surprise-surprise, Cuisinart and Kitchen Aid had the highest ratings. What is more, the brand that i picked up at the dump is reported to have gotten worse. All the reviews i read said that while the old models worked for a long time, the new ones barely last at all. Also, word to the wise, don't buy a DeLonghi electronic. They've got terribly reviews across the board. I based most of my research off a great consumer page called www.epinions.com.

At any rate, today, daN and i went to Bed, Bath, and Beyond (we have a stockpile of 20% off coupons there that never expire at that particular store) and picked up the $100 toaster oven for a mere $80. Well, it's a smart looking piece of equipment on our counter in a professional mat black finish, and we could make muffins in it to boot.

To see the most recent addition to our family, check out the link below: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/product.asp?order_num=-1&SKU=12924216&RN=685

Rest your soul, 1970's Black and Decker toaster oven. Your generation has served us all well, and we have graduated to a higher class of toaster ovens. Thank you for setting the standard even if your children couldn't keep it up.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really need to take credit for this nightmare. Do we NEED a $100 dollar toaster oven? No. But, and here is the kicker, do we need a 40$ toaster oven that I'm going to hate for two years before its gives up and catches fire? Heck No! On top of that, I'm just tired of buying junk. We did that in College. Because we were really broke (more broke than we are now), and were going to mistreat the thing anyhow. Now that I'm an adult, I'm tired of garbage. That's my piece.

Melissa McCue-McGrath, CPDT-KA said...

oooh- cute! proud mamma and pappa! so, what's it's name?

Anonymous said...

Heheh. Hi Dan and Lindsay! Sorry I didn't answer sooner, but I moved on Monday and I actually have stuff to keep me occupied at the job so I am slow and lethargic (read: easily distracted by shiny objects) in replying.

Nice to hear you're doing well; seems most of high school went to live in Massachusetts. Weird. I myself am in Albany, NY. Seems like there should be a big visitin' weekend at some point.

I work for 1st Playable Productions, which makes handheld video games. They've made three so far -- 2 for the GBA and 1 for JakksPacific. Our next projects involve the Nintendo DS, so that's quite cool. It's a lot of fun -- I'm surrounded by geeks!