2d ago

I thank god for giving me a popcorn maker. What is your favorite gizmo?

Had a lovely night and need a little snack before bed. The popcorn maker makes me perfect popcorn everytime no jhudgemnt no questions asked. I live in an otherwise-gizmo-free household, but I do genuinely use this things twice a week on average. What gizmo are you not ashamed of?

I also got an immersion blender for $20 a week ago and used it once to make squash soup. Perhaps that isa second gizmo... It's gotten more use than my microave in the same timespan...

64 comments

This is gonna sound silly, but dishwasher. I got a small one only this year after many, many years of being the dishwasher (and not cooking as much as a result). But since getting a dishwasher, I've been cooking loads. It's genuinely amazing the difference it makes, knowing that you don't have to leave a big pile of stuff to clean up later every time you cook. I can even put my whole air fryer basket in there!
Plus it uses a controlled amount of water for the whole load so you aren't running the tap constantly and wasting water.
- Never used to have a dishwasher and getting one was a huge difference. It saves a huge amount of time in washing glasses and cutlery most of all.

Everyone’s already said it, but rice cooker.
I don’t have to even put much thought into making rice, and just season it how you want and you get an easy comfort food whenever.
(True science fact: put in a quarter cup of rice vinegar and a teaspoon of sugar for every cup of short grain white rice to get sushi rice. Then just add in crispy tofu and stir-fried vegetables and you get what is objectively the best bulking meal possible.)

Why did I misread the title as "I thank god for giving me a pronoun maker"
I immediately said, "The woke have gone too far this time!" of course.
My answer would have to be my audio interface... let's me directly input audio into a DAW. Definitely something essential for me to have. Honorable mention to my portable charger thing that I got during Milton.

Kobo eReader. It gets used for multiple hours a week. I never would have thought a device used for reading would be my favorite gizmo.
- I have one too! The warm backlighting is nice.

either air fryer or stick blender
beautiful crispy tofu (among other things) vs lovely sauces
🤔

Basic bitch answer, but ceiling fan 100%.
- No, that's a great answer. People take them for granted

Rice cooker. I do not want to fail at rice often enough to get good at it, and I never have to with my trusty rice cooker on hand

A rasp pi, I can make more gizmos!

Instant Pot. Cooks everything, requires almost no effort. If it had arms to hug with it could probably replace your family.

I love my induction cooktop. And my rice cooker. And my bullet blender thingy. The only things I use multiple times a week. Oh and my jaffle iron
- I love my induction stove as well, better than standard electric and gas by a mile.
  Mostly unrelated but hilariously if I place a small empty pan on one of the induction heaters and put it in "boost" mode it actually physically lifts the non handle side of the pan like a centimeter off of the cook top. I just find that interesting, must be eddy currents.
- Do you jaffle over the induction cooktop?
  
  No just have an electric one

Rice cooker and dishwasher are the two huge ones that I didn't use to have in childhood that have changed a lot for me. I am pretty good at cooking rice in a pot, but the constant anxiety that it will get burned and stink up the entire apartment gets to me, and the rice cooker is better at it than me anyway.
Otherwise (not really a gizmo but it was a huge change for me) I guess a stainless steel saute pan with a lid is my most used kitchen appliance. Cast iron is fine but heavier to handle, doesn't fit as much and is harder to wash. Non-sticks just start peeling. My trusty stainless steel pan has lasted years and is still just as good.
Oddly I wouldn't want a popcorn maker, was brought up making it on the stovetop, it took me a while to adjust to induction but I've managed. I get more unpopped kernels but they are ridiculously cheap anyway. When I am alone and get especially distracted I sometimes just have popcorn for dinner and then the leftovers for breakfast.
- I do that too with the popcorn dinner. A technique I learned was heat the oil with 3-4 kernels in it. Wait for them to pop and turn off the heat. Then add all your kernels and preheat them in the oil for about 30 seconds before putting the heat back to high.

My to go-smoothie machine where you make the smoothie straight into the mug. It has completely solved my audhd tendency to not eat anything at all in the mornings/all day and makes it easy for me to get my daily fiber, berries and fruit. I use oat milk & vegan protein powder in it and it has also heavily lowered the animal product amount I use, which I love. It makes very little dishes too and seems to help my covid destroyed GI trackt as well.
And then there is my bluetooth sleep mask that has solved my lifelong also audhd related sleep issues. It used to take me forever to sleep because my mind will start planning stuff or daydreaming when the lights go out and it's quiet. So as I remembered how much it helped me sleep as a kid when my dad read stories to me I decided to try that.
I started listening to the Discworld books around 2019 and been doing that ever since, every single night. If and when I wake up in the night I just turn it back on and it makes falling back to sleep so much easier. I used to have such stress over this that it ruined my work and I was always tired before ordering this little mask from China.

toaster oven
whole oven is too big? usually. use small oven! it also works as an air fryer! the last one i had even worked as a dehydrator on the two times i year i might ever need one! broiling stuff too? why not! use it as a toaster! perfect for heating stuff up in one particular way!
- aww yeah I used to be about that life until my toaster oven mysteriously stopped working. I was gonna try to fix it but other stuff came up and I don't think I have it anymore.

got like a little plug thing for glass bottles that makes it easy as shit to pour without spilling

Oxo GoodGrips Reusable Lint Roller
As someone with many pets, it keeps me looking crisp and stylish
- I've used lint rollers before, had no idea they made a reusable one. I should get one - I live with a siberian husky!
- Oxo makes good stuff. There's clearly a lot of thought that goes into their kitchen products.
  I love their flipper spatula

Inside - air fryer.
Outside - kamado smoker/grill.

Mine is an ice cube machine, i cant imagine life without it specislly now with the heat waves in mx

popcorn maker
A microwave?

Anyway my favourite gizmo is those can openers that are just a hunk of metal with a blade and a bottle opener in one
- like this
  
  On over engineered stove top
  must make 100% perfect popcorns tho
- its a hotplate with a very wide heat distribution, an agitator for spinning the kernels and a big ol bowl for the popcorn

Rice cooker
- I got this microwave plastic dish designed for cooking rice that is like 90% as good as a proper rice cooker.
  The secret to it seems to simply be a perforated top (like 40% of the surface area would be holes of about 0.5cm diameter) so I imagine it would be easy to make one by punching small holes in some Tupperware, but also the real thing only cost about $15.
  A very economical almost-as-good option, and more space efficient.

Gotta be my electric trimmers, I get razor burn pretty bad otherwise, but keeping things at just a millimeter entirely prevents that

As someone who eats popcorn very regularly, I find the microwave to be 100% perfect at it (so long as the kernels aren't many years old). Also I super hate "microwave popcorn" because it's usually at a 10-100x markup compared to just a bag of kernels which are equally 'microwave'able.
I intended to follow up by joining in with a mention of a gizmo, but I think I literally don't have one. So now I'm just a spoilsport.
- a microwave is a gizmo comrade
  
  Is a bag a gizmo? Iirc its a yiddish word? Bags are neat
- I make my own bags of microwave popcorn with brown paper bags and a stapleless stapler…wayyyy cheaper and you can make your own seasoning up!
  
  This is very interesting. I just put the popcorn in a glass bowl. Actual paper bags could be fun

Stove top electric kettle and a projector
Also I have a compass as in the one for drawing and I consider that a gizmo

Immersion blender and those little grabby wand things for getting cat toys out from under the furniture lol
Oh and the hose nozzle with the multiple spray patterns for watering different plants and the sprinkler with the different spray patterns
I just think they're neat

Drawing tablet. Good for playing nds games, balatro and spider solitaire (and for drawing)

I like my Zoom R4

Nutribullet for just whizzing shit up. Easy as to clean.
- Yesss smoothies

Love my ice maker and reverse osmosis water filter, use them both every day and I can't imagine how i lived my life before getting them.

My pc is too general to count as a gizmo, so i guess my microwave

Breville Barista espresso machine.
It's pretty extravagant, but it's been very reliable for over 10 years. It's surely paid for itself many times over compared to going to a cafe.

an immersion blender is not a gizmo wtf. what are you gonna do, stab your soup a lot to make it smooth?
- It's a little gadget that introduces a new process or technique instead of refining an old one (e.g. induction burner vs gas range)
- big mortar and pestle or a food mill
  
  if an immersion blender is a gizmo so is a big mortar and pestle or a food mill
- Regular blender? That's what I used to do before I realized how cheap an immersion blender is.
  
  that's just an upside down immersion blender

popcorn maker is seconded

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