My Waring Pro waffle maker finally gave up the ghost about two months ago. I used the Waring extensively in the nearly five years that I owned it. In fact, it died because I used it so much The metal hinge screws completely stripped the plastic mounting holes.

I wanted a replacement, but I wasn’t willing to spend $70 to get another one online, or about $100 if I found one locally.

Amazon.com was there with the rescue, and in two days I had a Presto Flip Side for less than $40 delivered.
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In March of this year my trusty Melitta FastBrew drip coffee maker bit the dust. The FastBrew was a great, no-frills machine that made countless gallons of coffee at temperatures higher than most of the more expensive fancy-pants brewers out there. Best of all, the FastBrew was $30 and used to be available just about everywhere.

Unfortunately, Melitta stopped making the FastBrew. I think people would rather spend money on timers, “flavor settings,” and built-in crappy chopper-style grinders, and the FastBrew probably didn’t sell as well as it should have.

When it came time to replace my FastBrew I had to turn elsewhere. I figured I might as well get the most bad-ass spiritual successor to the “no-frills, high temperature” FastBrew, and I found it in spades with the Bunn NHBX-B.
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After about three and a half years of heavy usage, my Melitta Fast Brew coffee maker finally bit the dust. I noticed a few days ago that the coffee wasn’t as hot as usual. That was a bad sign, especially since I put the finished coffee directly into a glass-lined Thermos air pot to stave off overheating by the burner and heat loss.

I threw a fresh pot (water only) and put my thermometer inside the carafe as soon as the Melitta was done brewing. The proper brewing temperature for drip coffee is around 195°F. Accounting for some heat loss by brewing into a room-temperature carafe, I’d expect the final temperature to be around 180°F or so.

The Melitta brewed at 160°F. Definitely a bad sign. The stainless steel heating element in the Fast Brew is surely dying.

We’re limping along with the Melitta for now. I figured it was time to order a new machine to replace the old bird before she died, so a Bunn is on the way. I’ll run the Bunn for a bit before doing a write-up and give the Melitta a proper burial.

Rest in peace, my sweet.

Whew, that title is a mouthful.

It’s been almost two years since I last mentioned an airpot on Gibberish in my insulated coffee mug shoot-out. I had a Thermos-branded glass-lined airpot back then, too. It was $15 before tax at Target. In the years that followed the write-up, the plunger started to wear on the old Thermos. I expected to find another easily — but not so fast.

Target has apparently stopped stocking the airpot in stores and instead offers one that is about $60. I searched Amazon.com and a few other coffee sites (including where my conical burr grinder was purchased), and $60 turned out to be about the bottom of the price range for “real” airpots. There were some that looked like my old Thermos airpot for about $35, but I’d be dammed to pay and extra $20 for something that gave up the ghost on me.

Leave it to the guy who’s made a career on the Web and e-commerce to look at Target.com dead last. Sure enough, there’s the 2-quart glass-lined airpot for sale. It’s still $15, and the lid was updated a little bit. I bought three: one for home, one for the office, and one for the attic — just in case I couldn’t find them again.

How does it stand up to the original? Pretty damn well so far.
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Almost four years ago I reviewed the Dyson DC07 Animal vacuum cleaner. Since then I’ve moved on to a DC14 Full Kit model. What I have never done in those four years is properly remove the trim to clean the “beater” brush bar that sweeps dust and other stuff into the vacuum.

Before I went back and read the directions (cough) I would just take a razor blade and cut away any hair or rug yarn that was wrapped around the beater bar. After reading the directions, I discovered that you can remove the plastic trim at the bottom of the vacuum. I wasn’t entirely sure how hard this was going to be, or what to expect, so I got out the camcorder and went to work.
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Snap. My flimsy sponge holder snapped at an arm, rendering it into a $2 suction-cup-and-plastic piece of garbage. Oh well. I was headed to Target anyway.

Target, in an effort to distance themselves from Wal*Mart as a “bargain” store, refuses to carry any sponge holders at less than $7. I know, because I bought the cheapest one I could find. I didn’t want a stainless steel sponge holder, or a combo dish drying rack plus sponge holder plus time machine.

The KitchenAid holder I bought spoke to my consumer emotions. It was more than $2, so it had to be good, right? It was made of thick plastic, so it had to be tough, right? And with giant, over-engineered suction cups it had to stick better than that $2 piece of shit I got at Wal*Mart, right?

That’s right. I got Jedi mind-tricked into buying a seven dollar piece of plastic to hold a sponge in my kitchen sink.
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I have owned some apparently very nice clad stainless steel cookware made by Cuisinart. I bought them on the advice of my (at the time) boss, who swore up and down that stainless steel was the best way to go. I shouldn’t have listened him, about the pots and pans or about buying a home, as the cookware proved a pain in the ass for day to day cooking, and he laid every last one of us off four months later.

I spent a pretty penny back then. The Cuisinart set was great at conducting uniform heat, but sucked as far as stuff sticking to the pan. I had to use a fair amount of oil or butter to keep even simple things from adhering to the surface like a mother of nine to her welfare check. Sure, the pots looked pro but the burnt remains of food did not.

I wanted something different, something non-stick, and most importantly, something cheap. I asked Starbuck for help in picking something out. She’s my go-to-gal for anything cooking related. She thumbed through some of her cooking magazine back issues and scoured a few culinary Web sites. She sent me links to a few sets, and I finally decided on the Wearever hard anodized non-stick cookware set.
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Nothing like a new car to jumpstart the desire to keep things clean again. I have a kit in the hatch of my MazdaSPEED 3 with a quick auto detailer spray, an interior cleaner spray, two microfiber cleaning cloths, a wheel cleaner spray, a tire cleaner foam, and a dash duster. So, we have the exterior and the dash covered, but what about when I chow down on two “sausage” biscuits from McDonald’s while I am on the road? The biscuits are yum, but they get crumbs everywhere. I wanted a portable vacuum that would allow me to keep the carpet clean while I was away from home.

For $10 before shipping, the ReadiVac 36104 seemed to fit the bill. Even if it was junk, there aren’t a lot of items I can pick up for ten bucks and review for Gibberish. :)
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My review about the ThinkGeek caffeine molecule insulated mug got me to thinking. Sure, I slammed the mug because it was thin and didn’t seem to be that great at keeping things warm, but was that assessment because of bias against the build quality?

I liberated a thermometer from work for a few days and tested all the mugs I had. It was time to crown a king among my insulated mugs.
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Sometimes I’ll buy something and will have to wait for the right time to review it. The Bissel Little Green Portable Deep Cleaner is a good example. I started thinking about buying a portable steam cleaner after I got Pearl. She had the shits off and on for her first month here, and after watching Lady Jaye spend nearly an hour get poo-spew out of the carpet I was like, “fuck this, I’m buying a steamer.” And then Pearl got better. Heh. I’ve used it a few times before I started this review, but I was waiting for some gnarly incident to happen. Luckily, Porter was willing to oblige by barfing up a nice present on my cream-colored carpet.
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