Seeing as Valentine’s Day is around the corner, I’m going to feature some related kitchen items on here the next couple of weeks. These interesting stainless steel heart-shaped measuring cups might be a nice V-day …

For those folks who’ve been looking to get a KitchenAid Blender and can’t afford the high price tag, if you are willing to live with slightly used accessories then you might want to look into a “reconditioned” KitchenAid Blender on Amazon.com.

The price cut will generally be about 50% off, since new models go for around $100 and the reconditioned ones can be found for $50. That is, when you can find them. Most of the reconditioned stock varies in color and availablility is actually sold by third party vendors… the best advice is to keep checking to see when the color you want becomes available.

I’ve always thought that “Griddler” was sort of a funny name for this portable grill line by Cuisinart. It just reminds me too much of Batman’s “Riddler”, hehe.

The George Foreman notwithstanding, the Riddler is one of the most popular portable clamshell-type grills. You can just read all the amazon comments to see the fans that it has. One of the most important things about this model is that it has removeable plates which is a reason in itself to get this over its lower priced siblings (GR-2, etc..) Not being able to remove the grills could get extremely tiresome after awhile.

This is a very attractive wooden salad bowl set by Pomerantz. It’s actually a full set unlike many other wooden bowls being sold that are just the bowl plus tongs: with a twelve inch serving bowl and four smaller seven inch bowls, plus the wooden fork and spoon, it can be used for either family or entertaining.

The bowls and tongs are made out of “cherry-colored” wood, which I wish would have been clarified more. In other words, this doesn’t necessarily mean the bowl is made out of Cherry Wood. Just that the reddish finish looks like it. Still, it does look like a rather handsome set of wooden salad servers. I’m not sure why they call the smaller bowls “Nappie”.

We’ve had our OXO Potato Ricer for a good number of years now and are pretty satisfied with the overall quality and performance of the device. In addition to making short work of potatoes, it can also be used to squeeze out excess water from cooked veggies like spinach and mash up fruit into pulp for toppings, desserts or baby food. I haven’t tried it, but apparently it makes pretty decent applesauce as well.

The handles have a nonslip soft rubber handles for extra comfort when squeezing. One thing to keep in mind is that because the output holes on the bottom are so tiny, you can’t really crush up uncooked or harder vegetables very well without using an inordinate amount of force. It just wasn’t made for that type of work.