Gadgets

Our apple peeler/corer/slicer is the one from Pampered Chef, and we like it. 18yo daughter, who did most of the apple-peeling the last few weeks really likes it. We took the slicer/corer blade off when we didn't want slices, and she peeled them with it. Personally, I think hand-peeling is a bit faster, but she prefers the gadget. However, when we are also coring and slicing, I prefer the gadget. It gives uniform slices, which is especially nice for drying. Also, it takes care of the peeling, coring, and slicing all in one operation. This has two slice-thicknesses to choose from. It doesn't take up much room, and we feel it has been worth the purchase price.

I really like the food mill, too. We use it mainly for tomato sauce, although I also used it for (extremely) crushed tomatoes this year, too. We don't have any additional blades/attachments that are available, but it says it has a salsa blade, which sounds wonderful. This takes up more storage space than I'd like, but we don't use it often, so it gets tucked away somewhere until time for sauce-making. It's a Universal Gourmet Tomato Sauce Maker and Food Strainer, model #800, which I'm fairly sure we got because it's what we could find that fit our desires. (Friends told us to go with this type of food mill, instead of the kind that is more commonly found, and at the moment, I don't recall what that kind was, unless is was one that has some sort of arm/blade/scraper thing that turns horizontally on a screen. They had that kind and switched to the kind we got and said it's a far superior design.)

Mary Susan