I bought one of those a couple years ago - we couldn't get it to work reasonably either. Overpriced and not nearly as good as a heavy sharp knife.

Thank you! Dave I have used it on fruit and to me it had a little bit of a lemon taste. Didn't change the taste any in fruit but I just wondered if it did with corn. I will give this a try this year. I will be watching for your up date myfamilysfarm. I just dumped out my last four jars from last year simply because of the color change. Saved one jar for my husband because he doesn't mind the little bit of color change. In a few weeks we should have corn. I am planning to can more corn this year. We have about 1200 stalks at varying ages of maturity. This thread has been very helpful. Thank you all for the help. ~Tina

Thanks Billie, I know, our little boy is a little late arriving on the scene, with 8 years' gap between him and our twins and a 13-year difference from our oldest. But when my wife told me last summer that we just HAD to have one more before it was too late, who was I to stand in the way? It turned out nice that we got our first (and only) son out of the deal, too. Of course, my daughters are well appreciated and gets lots of love, but having both now feels good and well rounded. We're getting used to the idea that we'll be at retirement age when he graduates from college. Oh well -- might as well fill life up with good things to do, eh?

I'm concerned that you are going to find that your deep drawers under the baking center aren't big enough for what you want to put in them. With our 36" high counters and frameless cabinets, we have a bit over 28" of interior height in the boxes - the rest of the 36" is toe kick, cabinet box top and bottom and counter thickness. With 30", you will have about 22" to play - or less if you have framed. Your picture shows 3 equal size drawers - that means 7 or maybe 7.5" drawer face height. It varies a bit depending on the exact drawer construction, but interior drawer height will be about an inch less than that making your deep drawers about 6" deep. We have an 18" wide drawer stack for baking supplies. Our flour and sugar drawer interior is 10" high and 15" wide (those pesky cabinet box and drawer sides take up the rest). We decided on that height after measuring convenient flour storage containers. At that size it can hold a container with the sugars and 2 5-lb flour containers and a few smaller bags and boxes or 1 5-lb flour container and more smaller bags and boxes. We have ended up doing the latter. Our bread flour (because challah gets made every week) is stored there along with corn meal, cocoa, flax seed and some specialty flours. All purpose and whole wheat have to be fetched from the pantry. I wouldn't want to go any smaller than that. BTW, that is in our bottom drawer - since the containers are mostly tall, it requires less bending to get them than having small stuff where you need to reach to the bottom of the drawer. A slightly shallower drawer (7" drawer front) holds other baking supplies like baking powder, baking soda, etc. A much shallower drawer can hold a lot of the utensils. Our main pot and pan drawers are about as deep as our flour drawer. One 36" x 11" (drawer front dimensions - interior about 33" by 10") drawer holds a pretty complete set of everyday pots and pans (we have one for milk and one for meat plus a couple of smaller drawers for parve). Therefore, rather than having three drawers about the same height, I'd suggest a deep bottom drawer (10" interior depth at least), a medium size (~6" interior) middle drawer and a shallow top drawer. That's if you are going frameless and your cabinet construction is similar to ours. For framed, it might be best to go with just 2 drawers per stack. One use for the 9" cabinet by the range would be storing flat pan items such as cookie sheets, baking sheets and cooling racks. If they are half sheet size laying on their sides, that would take up the bottom 13" of the cabinet. We have ours in a 12" wide cabinet and 6 of each plus a couple of muffin tins take up the bottom. We have a pull out for other cake pans above. It might be tight to do 2 levels of 13" high flat pan storage. If you had a fixed shelf in just the right spot, you could do it. Our cooling racks and muffin tins are less then 13". You might do the bigger sheet pans on the bottom and smaller ones like muffin tins above. Cutting board storage is another possible use. Our food processor accessories are in a custom insert that my husband made for a pull out in another 12" cabinet. I don't think they would fit in a pullout in a 9" cabinet, but maybe if yours is smaller they might. 16" is very deep for a bookshelf. Is the cabinet to the right of the range all bookshelf? We have 12" to the left of our rangetop. It isn't ideal, but it works for us. What is the rationale for wanting at least 16" to the side of the range "for safety" when 4" at the back of the range is okay with you? We have an island rangetop and really like having the rangetop and prep sink on our island. But I'd rather have a foot of counter behind the range. If you had the space, you could do 12" deep cabinets on the back of the range. Rather than looking for cabinet companies with nifty inserts, I'd look for how they use the space in the cabinet - how much interior space do you get for a particular size cabinet or drawer. I think that the microwave will be really difficult to use where you show it. It will have to be accessed from the side making the panel difficult to read. Perhaps you are taller than me, but you mentioned kiddie cups so I assume that you have kids. That height and sideways access will make it difficult for your kids to use when they are old enough. I'd put it under the cabinet to the right of the fridge in the snack area. You might at least have an outlet there for it in case you find the other location inconvenient. The open shelves to the left of the sink would bother me. They will interfere with use of the counter to the left of the sink and you have minimal counter to the right of the sink. I'd suggest getting rid of them or doing only one shelf for more clearance between the counter and the shelf.