I have become better about it over the past few years. But there was a time where I really loved watching infomercials about interesting cooking gadgets. I think Alton Brown help me to get over it. The first one I ever bought was the Runco dehydrator and let’s face it the dehydrator is a very useful device. I bought mine back in 1993. It was crude by today’s standards but did the job. Because it the old dehydrator did not make any noise cuz there was no fan and then I had cats and they would knock it over and eat the beef jerky that I was making. I created a wooden plywood deck with eye hooks on it and which I would criss-cross bungee strap the dehydrator down so they couldn’t knock it over. My next irresistible cooking gimmick was the brown and crisp bags of the late 1990s. The infomercials would show chef Tony and some ditzy brunette woman cooking gourmet meals in the little pouches that are paper on the outside and had soil residue on the inside. Tony would nuke up this amazingly delicious meal and the girl let’s call her Barbara would go all gaga over it. T-bone steak, asparagus, pork chops, broccoli, mashed potatoes, whatever it was chef Tony would cook it and Barbara would act so surprised you would think she was eating canned raviolis all of her life prior to this day. What about the plastic tube pasta cooker built of a space age polymer that was virtually indestructible. Just place the pasta in the tube filled with hot water put on the live in in just a few short minutes drain the water out using the strainer of it and dump the pasta into a bowl or plate. Perfect pasta every time. I used it once but because I bought it I feel obligated to keep it in my cupboard for many years to come. And yes of course the NuWave Oven that I just could not resist it tortured me the things you can do with the new wave oven was amazing periods I think the most intriguing thing about the new wave oven was evidently you could cook food in much less time but even more amazing what you could cook food that was coming directly out of the freezer. It definitely had to be some sort of miracle device in order to do that. I will say that cooking food directly out of the freezer is crazy and you shouldn’t do it because I cook the chicken for the better part of what seemed like two and a half weeks and I had to keep putting it back on to make sure that it was actually cooked. The new wave oven is not all bad it does serve a useful purpose sometimes such as when you want some roasted chicken that is not frozen. I would not say though that it is worth to say that it occupies. In reality the only great cooking gadgets are the tried and true ones that have been around forever the cast iron and stainless steel chopsticks but that’s a whole other blog.