Cuisinart FP-8 - I grew up (culinarily) with the Cuisinart
14-cup processor, at one time called the DLC-7, and that is
the standard against which I judge such appliances to this day.
For some reason, I didn't ask, Rosemary replaced her old
14-cup model with a new FP-8 (8 cup), which truth be told
gets fairly good reviews. I found it substantially wanting,
lightweight, undersized, underpowered, and flimsy with big
clearances, which means that there's more waste from mangled
or improperly chopped food. One culprit is the undersized blade,
more like the KitchenAid processors (which I hate) had and quite
unlike and inferior to the old Cuisinart ones. In fact, there is
more in common with off-brand processors than the proud old
Cuisinarts. It does come with these ingenious reversible discs
for grating or slicing, the downside being that neither side
works quite right. On the whole, barely adequate for a family of
4, quite useless for a big party. Bear in mind that 8 cups
really means 5 cups or less of useful space.

Ninja food processor at Ruth & Stephen's - it's an impressive
piece of machinery and has four cutting surfaces as opposed to
the two of normal appliances. To compensate, the rotation rate
is slower. The advantage is that it's less noisy and uses less
power. A disadvantage, as I discovered, is that blending very
small quantities (as in 8 cloves of garlic), is less efficient.
I imagine that with a full load of meat or something, the design
is probably advantageous. The settings took a while to figure
out, as there are lots of them, as opposed to the Cuisinart's on,
off, and pulse, but the settings must be optimized to various
kinds of activity: there's a separate button just for smoothies,
for example. I made skordalia in it, and it behaved a bit
differently from what I'm used to, not cutting quite as fine as
I'd figured, the result being that the finished product was more
shall we say country-style, less smooth and with garlic bits;
also, it didn't incorporate the olive oil as thoroughly as a
faster blend would, but part of that might have been the choice
of potatoes available at Publix.

Tropicana pineapple mango with lime [in small almost unreadable
characters "drink with other natural flavors"] no artificial
sweeteners no artificial flavors. On the back we read 25% juice,
which are mango, pineapple, apple, orange, passionfruit; citric
acid, lime, and ascorbic acid. Not surprisingly, the flavor is
rather like a very dilute and not so sweet Hawaiian Punch.
Do not buy.

Campari tomatoes from Canada are pretty decent still, less
richly tomatoey than before, fairly sweet, very juicy. Not a
patch on the cherry tomatoes from the Wake Forest farmers'
market, though, which were superb.

Sunset Kumato "sweet brown grape tomatoes" from Mexico
were tomatoes but none of the others - they were almost
completely tasteless, not sweet at all, sort of a mud green
color, devoid of flavor. They had little in common with
(shape, color, anything) what I've come to know as grape
tomatoes. Do not buy, despite their being from the same
company that grows Camparis.

Pringles Jalapeno flavor - a somewhat attractive green
pepper aroma, moderately spicy, a good peppery heat and
taste on the finish. Rather moreish in an MSG-laden way.
I'd buy these again, even though I do prefer the original.

Jose Cuervo Margarita mix. Doesn't taste like anything,
vague acid and an overwhelming sweetness. Guess what - zero
fruit of any kind. Ingredients: water, HFCS, citric acid,
sodium citrate, natural flavors, sodium benzoate and potassium
sorbate as preservatives, gum acacia, cmc gum, saib,
polysorbate 60, yellow #5. The unrecognizable ingredients are
carboxymethyl cellulose gum and sucrose acetoisobutyrate, a thickener/emulsifier and a "weighting agent."

Two duds from Trader Joe's

White Stilton with apricots - here is what I wrote about
sampling a similar TJ's product about 15 years ago:

White Stilton with mango and ginger - Carol turned her
nose up at this, but I tried it. A mild, almost babyish
tasteless cheese with a sweet fruit taste and just a bit of
spice - reminded me of the filling of a not-too-successful
cheesecake.

The 2019 apricot version was if anything worse. Bonnie
wanted to toss it right away, likening it to vomit. I said,
no, provolone tastes like vomit, to which she answered, yes,
but in a good way. I'm not sure about the difference between
vomit in a bad way vs. vomit in a good way. Anyhow, this
tasted like chalk with apricots to me, not a trace of anything
distinguishing like vomit. Way too little fat, so it burned
without browning when I did my usual salvage job. The burned
bits tasted sort of like blintz filling that has oozed out
and burned to the pan, so not horrible. Do not buy.

Organic orange juice, not from concentrate - no pulp, even
though the carton didn't say so. Rather sour and tasteless,
like Minute Maid from concentrate only not so good. Nowhere
near so good as any respectable store brand orange juice.
Mixed half and half with the following, though, it made an
acceptable facsimile of an Orange Julius, only not sweet,
Do not buy.

Silk very vanilla soymilk, new formulation - a much improved
product, good vanilla flavor if still a little on the sweet
side. Enticing milklike mouthfeel, courtesy of gellan gum.
What's gellan gum? glad you asked. It's a thickening agent
derived from some Pseudomonas bacteria.
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Hello Michael,

On (01 Oct 19) MICHAEL LOO wrote to ALL...

Ninja food processor at Ruth & Stephen's - it's an impressive
piece of machinery and has four cutting surfaces as opposed to
the two of normal appliances. To compensate, the rotation rate
is slower. The advantage is that it's less noisy and uses less
power. A disadvantage, as I discovered, is that blending very
small quantities (as in 8 cloves of garlic), is less efficient.
I imagine that with a full load of meat or something, the design
is probably advantageous. The settings took a while to figure
out, as there are lots of them, as opposed to the Cuisinart's on,
off, and pulse, but the settings must be optimized to various
kinds of activity: there's a separate button just for smoothies,
for example. I made skordalia in it, and it behaved a bit
differently from what I'm used to, not cutting quite as fine as
I'd figured, the result being that the finished product was more
shall we say country-style, less smooth and with garlic bits;
also, it didn't incorporate the olive oil as thoroughly as a
faster blend would, but part of that might have been the choice
of potatoes available at Publix.

If I had known you needed more the blender, I would have gotten that
part of the Ninja out. That has a tower of three sets of blades (six
cutting edges) and spins faster than the food processor. It would likely
have gotten the finer cut that you wanted. Alternately, we have a couple
of smootie jars with one large blade topped with a second tiny blade set
more vertically. However, they would have been too small for the
quantity you made.


Regards,

Stephen
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