Useless must-haves | Page 2 | Vital Football

Useless must-haves

I have dug my electric breadmaker out of the cupboard, rustled up some ingredients of unknown shelf life and fired it up to bake a Panatene. If I can wrench it out of that wretched paddle thing without it disintegrating I'll update on the outcome.
 
This post is perfect for my wife. Pretty much everything she buys falls into this category. Not a day goes by when we don't get a delivery of some new must have useless gadget from amazon. About 1 in 10 is of any use. They usually fall into one of a few categories:

  • Don't do what they should do at all - Rotary Cheese Grater anyone?
  • Don't actually save any time / are probably more complex to use then a manual method
  • Involve far too much effort to set up/install
  • Work well first time, require way too much cleaning/effort/cost to use consistently
We've got a kitchen full of absolute tosh used once or twice. Pasta maker is one classic. We have a bread oven too actually that was used for a few months then banished to a cupboard). We also have a Pizza cooking stone - absolutely useless - not allowed to wash it with water apparently.

Only today i threw away a solar light for outside that didn't really work at all and never got put up, alongside our parasol that snapped because it was never put away. I'm also looking at a soup maker right now that was a 'must have' at xmas, and i think shes made one soup out of it. A plastic pyrex jug that catches chicken juices (once cooled down and the fat is on the top then it empties from the bottom by pulling a trigger) - huge jug - used once.

The list could go on!
 
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Captainreblue said:
Don't tell the wife about the removable plates or it'll be something else for me to load and unload into the dishwasher. Think it can stay hidden in the cupboard and I'll have one less job to do.(y)
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Cheese and pickle toasties are one of my favourite things to eat. well worth the mess, even before we got the removable plates. the removable plates are definitely good though. they come off very quickly (in seconds) and yes you do have to load them into the dishwasher, but it's worth it IMO!
 
Panatene removed with a large hole in the bottom as per usual. A bit heavy and not good to look at but basically, yum. I've found a use for this useless item, thanks to all.
 
Pizza stone is great. Get your self an outside wood burning oven, a cold beer, and throw some dough spread with garlic butter onto the pizza stone. Fantastic.

Of course it's far cheaper to pull one out the freezer and chuck it in the oven but not same on a sunny day.
 
If we stopped making and selling all the useless items in all the world do you think:

We could solve the climate crisis

Feed the world

Work part time

Solve the plastic problem

Clear queues at the tip

Loads more for sure, so

Let's Do It!
 
jogills said:
If we stopped making and selling all the useless items in all the world do you think:

We could solve the climate crisis

Feed the world

Work part time

Solve the plastic problem

Clear queues at the tip

Loads more for sure, so

Let's Do It!
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It's not us making it !
The majority is cheap and not designed to last. Imported crap , like you say , clogging up our tips.
 
WGUAFC said:
The latest iterations have removable plates which means that they are easy to remove and clean. Bought one recently as I love a cheese and onion toasty, and it cleans very well in the dishwasher.
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I use silicon pouches. They look like paper bags but you can wash them out. Just bung them in a normal toaster.
 
It doe
valenciagill said:
It's not us making it !
The majority is cheap and not designed to last. Imported crap , like you say , clogging up our tips.
Click to expand...
It doesn't matter who makes it; it's made because there is a demand and we are guilty of the latter. it wouldn't be here if we didn't buy the stuff.
 
Wayne.Kerr said:
It doe

It doesn't matter who makes it; it's made because there is a demand and we are guilty of the latter. it wouldn't be here if we didn't buy the stuff.
Click to expand...

Correct , we need to re-evaluate our throwaway society , and make things that last !
 
alphabet_king said:
This post is perfect for my wife. Pretty much everything she buys falls into this category. Not a day goes by when we don't get a delivery of some new must have useless gadget from amazon. About 1 in 10 is of any use. They usually fall into one of a few categories:

  • Don't do what they should do at all - Rotary Cheese Grater anyone?
  • Don't actually save any time / are probably more complex to use then a manual method
  • Involve far too much effort to set up/install
  • Work well first time, require way too much cleaning/effort/cost to use consistently
We've got a kitchen full of absolute tosh used once or twice. Pasta maker is one classic. We have a bread oven too actually that was used for a few months then banished to a cupboard). We also have a Pizza cooking stone - absolutely useless - not allowed to wash it with water apparently.

Only today i threw away a solar light for outside that didn't really work at all and never got put up, alongside our parasol that snapped because it was never put away. I'm also looking at a soup maker right now that was a 'must have' at xmas, and i think shes made one soup out of it. A plastic pyrex jug that catches chicken juices (once cooled down and the fat is on the top then it empties from the bottom by pulling a trigger) - huge jug - used once.

The list could go on!
Click to expand...

I don’t mind a rotary cheese grater tbf
 
alphabet_king said:
This post is perfect for my wife. Pretty much everything she buys falls into this category. Not a day goes by when we don't get a delivery of some new must have useless gadget from amazon. About 1 in 10 is of any use. They usually fall into one of a few categories:
Click to expand...
My brother works a day a week in a hardware shop to keep himself occupied. Apart from tools and DIY stuff, the shop is full I bet of the stuff she buys. I'll have a word.
alphabet_king said:
Don't do what they should do at all - Rotary Cheese Grater anyone?
Click to expand...
I have a small hand job which is good for parmesan.

Your list reads like the stuff you can only give away at car boot sales and only then if you are lucky.
 
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