I bought this food chopper this evening at Walmart to chop vegetables so it is 's at least some what garden related; since my garden is where I fail to grow vegetables that I could, at least in theory, chop.
I've seen these on TV. You put an onion on the cutting board, slip this "handiest kitchen gadget you'll ever own" over the onion, hit the handle a few times and a matrix of blades turns the onion into minced onion in seconds. It's all done inside the chopper so there's no mess and I don't have to cry.
Well I got my $8 prize home and decided to give it a try. Had half an onion left over from dinner in the fridge, put it on the chopping board, and opened the box my new chopper came in. I spent the next 15 minutes trying to figure out where all these parts go. Me. I actually once attended college for engineering and I fix mechanical things for a living and I was practically beaten by a late night TV kitchen gadget.
After a couple of false starts, I figured out where all the parts went and started chopping. After the first chop, having spent 20 years fixing all sorts of things mechanical, I realized something wasn't right. My onion wasn't chopped, it was stuck in the blades going up and down with each press of the "soft grip" handle. A few more chops should free it I thought, it didn't. So I had to lift it up, spilling a few bits of onion that were no longer contained in the "easy to clean" container on the cutting board. A minute with a knife to free the stuck veggie from the blades and I was back in business, except the spilled pieces prevented me from getting it down where it belonged on the cutting board, but with the same skill it takes to get Rosie O'Donnell fitted at the Men's Warehouse, I tucked the loose pieces inside and chopped again.
Stuck again. And yet a third attempt: stuck again. What a piece of crap. Normally, when I buy something for $8 at Walmart, I know it might not be the Rolls Royce of kitchen gadgets. But this one makes me mad because it's so bad that it has to be on purpose. This thing is so awfully designed, in so many ways, that there is no way anybody at Farberware (oh yeah, I'm naming names) believed it was anything other than complete junk.
My list of complaints:
- The convoluted blade design has a narrow little uncleanable area at each bend. I can't even get the tiny nipple brush from my son's bottles in there.
- The blade falls off the shaft, both for cleaning and to frustrate the user.
- There's a worthless, plastic thing with a cut out the exact shape as the blade that the blade has to be inserted through. Not a problem if the blade was a circle or square, or some shape other than a zigzag.
- There are more parts than it needs, a lot more parts than it needs and when you "open for cleaning" it comes apart like a swiss watch.
- Oh, and there's the little detail with it not chopping anything.
Email me if you'd like to buy a slightly used food chopper...only $10.
UPDATE: Just be fair, we tried chopping some carrot. Still a piece of crap!
2 comments:
Clearly the challenge here is to design a better chopper....
I bought one similar to that food chopper, used it once and forgot all about it in my cupboard for 2 years. Found it and tried it on my onion and green peppers and then realized why I haven't used it in so long. This time it's going in the garbage. :)
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