I have been collecting kitchen gadgets for over 20 years. My definition of a gadget is anything that I think would make my life easier. I was a bachelor for 47 years and 20 of those were in the military. While the chow hall food could be considered okay, I tended to cook in my barracks as well, to supplement my meals. I lived in the barracks for 17 of my 20 years in the military. The one major rule was no open flame. Most of the barracks I lived in had a TV room with a microwave. I can only remember one having a kitchen, while I was in Iceland, which I think I used twice in the 13 months that I was there.
My first kitchen gadget was a Presto Kitchen Kettle. I could brown my ground beef and made chili con carne a lot or a beef stew. I am a big fan of bowl-o-food (pronounced as bolo), meaning no sides dishes, everything in one bowl. I have since owned kitchen top rotisseries, microwave egg cookers, and dozens of those specialty cookers that run the gamut from cake pops to quesadillas. My wife made me give some of the ones that I don’t use frequently to the local thrift shop. I have at least three in the kitchen currently and a full set of shelves in the garage as well. It is my vice; I can’t pass a cooking store or section without stopping to see what’s new. This is of course in addition to my slow cooker, rice machine and electric skillet.
For Father’s Day this year, my wife bought me a Nostalgia Electric pretzel maker. I currently live in New Mexico, but grew up just outside of Philadelphia, PA. Philadelphia, as well as many places in the Northeast, sell soft pretzels as street vendor fare. There is nothing like a great soft pretzel and mustard. They have soft pretzels in our malls and some fast food restaurants here, but there are times that I want a soft pretzel without having to drive a half hour to get one. My two year old daughter must have inherited this gene as well, since every time my wife and her pass a soft pretzel place in one of our malls, she points and throws a tantrum until she gets a pretzel.
The 2-in1 Soft Pretzel and Nugget Maker was a dream come true. My mother in-law saw it first, when my wife and her were shopping and said to my wife “That’s so Jim!” Now mind you while I love to cook, my first and last time trying to bake was a bunch of burnt cookies. The pretzel machine was a discontinued item. Nostalgia Electrics comes out with a lot of fine machines, but they also discontinue a lot that don’t sell well. My pretzel maker would lose its nugget capability to instead make two sizes of pretzels in the new version.
The set up for the machine is fairly simple. It comes with some recipes for pretzels and dips. You plug in the unit and wait for the machine to warm up. Then you mix your ingredients. When the green light goes off, you place a pretzel, cut from the dough with the included pretzel cutter, on to the plates in the maker. The recipe says 3-7 minutes, but after a little experimenting I arrived at 5 minutes. Then you brush on some melted butter and some salt. My wife and daughter devoured the first two before I even got a bite. Cleanup was a breeze as well. You let the machine cool and remove the pretzel shaped plates to either hand wash or put in the dishwasher.
I have looked at several more machines from Nostalgia Electrics. I would love to see if Nostalgia Electric could come out with a set of plates for each function that would be interchangeable, so I would have one machine that would make pretzels, nuggets, pigs in a blanket, cake pops, etc. Lastly I hope I can get the hotdog machine that looks like a toaster before they discontinue it!
