Did you see this post about Mark Bittman’s kitchen? Granted, it’s not his only kitchen, but he obviously cooks there fairly regularly. Like many of the commenters I can identify with his tiny patch of counter space, his unusable fourth burner, and his shortage of storage. Of course there are a few pieces of kitchen equipment that can make a big difference, like good knives and heavy pans, but good ingredients trump fancy equipment every time.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, I somehow got on some mailing list that has clearly mistaken me for someone else; today I received a catalog in the mail called Frontgate and on the cover it says “outfitting America’s finest homes.” Heh. While most of the catalog is devoted to items like $1000 fake Christmas trees and $700 “luxury pet residences” there are a few pages in the middle dedicated to the appliances you never knew you needed. In this category falls the Tahiti Margaritaville frozen drink maker that blends three pitchers of beverage at one time, as well as the “cinema-style” countertop-sized popcorn popper which is, I must admit, about the size of my countertop.
The most seasonally appropriate item in this fine publication is most certainly the “Infrared Oil-less Turkey Fryer” though, I’m sorry to note, it is not available until next week so you cannot have all 32 pounds of it overnighted to your house in time for Thanksgiving. I guess that’s ok though, since it can only hold up to a 16 pound turkey and the smallest one I could find at Costco was a 22-pounder.
Travels With Snacks 
Ummm… even though it only does one thing I still love my waffle iron. 🙂
oh! there’s one in this catalog for only $179.
no flipping necessary: http://www.frontgate.com/jump.jsp?sort=-1&itemID=18932&AS=1&itemType=PRODUCT&keyword=35115
I love the idea of multi-purpose tools (hey, I’m a guy), but on the other hand, if your printer/scanner/fax/copier/answermachine breaks down, you didn’t lose just one peripheral, you lost a handful of peripherals in one blow. I guess the trick to the one-trick appliance is that if you get one, you should be able to lots of things with that one trick. (I keep a pocketknife on me. All it does is cut. No compass, no light, no frou-frou. But it cuts lots of stuff, like envelopes and string and boxes…)
uhhh, who flips waffles? have i been missing something all these years?
Dave, true. We were worried about that with our TV/DVD combo, but in this case the DVD player has outlasted the lifespans of the previous three we had combined *knocks furiously on wood*. I agree that I make a distinction between a tool that does one thing (a blender, for example) and a tool that can only be used for one thing (though yeah, a waffle iron is probably my one exception too. Stuff like avocado slicers though? Don’t these people have spoons?)
I think the “flipping” must refer to those waffle makers you see at hotel breakfast buffets.