The spatula and salad shooter threads got me to thinking about kitchen gadgets. Especially the ones that were really neat until the novelty wore off, or the ones that are completely useless. In the first category, I have a sandwich griller, which was great at first, but it's made for standard sized square bread, and I prefer Pepperidge Farm Home-Style, which is rectangular, and won't fit. Although it also works if you put pancake batter in it. My pancake making skills are pretty bad, and it makes perfect (square) pancakes.

Also in the first category is my bread machine. I love it, but unfortunately, it produces cylinder shaped loaves of a size impractical for sandwiches. I pull it out about once a year when I get invited to a pot-luck dinner. It's interesting watching the host try to figure out the best way to slice it.

I'd also like to get a Ronco rotisserie, which I've seen on the late night infomercials, but I'd like to hear from someone who has one first. The same with the Ronco pasta maker, which looks cool, but I'm sure would end up in the closet after a month. I keep telling myself that pasta occures naturally in stores, and it's easier to buy it than make it, but it still looks so damn cool.

Under the completely useless category is an electric potato peeler that a friend got as a wedding present. It's a container with ball-shaped blades at the bottom that guarentees perfectly round, uniform size peeled potatoes, which means that most of the potato goes to waste, but it peels a bunch at a time. Neither he nor his wife have ever used it.

Your turn.