Anna bought me one and two sizes of bags for Christmas. I put some leftover lasagna in one this evening and it worked. I tried it the other day and had to resort to lilliepad's way of doing it. I have another vacuum sealer ( besides my big food saver one ). It has a hand held pump and a tube on it that fits inside regular zip lock freezer bags. It works pretty good. It is in a corner cabinet on the bottom. After our yard sale tomorrow Anna is going to pull everything out of there for me so I can get to the stuff I want in the front part. Linda

I also bought one based on all the positive reviews here and absolutely love it! It worked from the very first try. Just make sure to keep the round, plastic suction cup flat against the bag, applying downward pressure, and not at a slight angle, making sure the bag is sitting flat on the counter also. So easy. I put a block of sharp cheddar in a qt. bag, too. Really like this thing and much easier and more convenient to use than my FoodSaver. Can't really use it, however, for liquids, as might get sucked up into the vaccuum tip.

Well, I guess it's fund raiser time again, because my manager's wife (she works there too, in a different department) just brought in a book of stuff her daughter was selling. I never buy from those things, but I wanted to "be a sport" since everyone else was doing it... I stayed far away from the candy/cookies (they had labels for snickerdoodles and sugar cookies transposed on the wrong pictures!)... I got something called a bash and chop. It was only 6.50, cheaper than the 14.50 Vanilla Ginger candle I also got :o) It's kind of a bench scraper/prep taxi with a sharp edge. I thought it would be useful for cleaning the countertop after baking something with dough (I have a plastic pan scraper version I've used before that worked well) and for transporting ingredients for soup to the stock pot. I don't know how much real cutting I will be able to do with it, but I like my knives anyway :o) It has one curled edge to form the handle and numbers on the business end for measuring... has anyone used one before? Jude, I tried some silicone tongs before and the silly things wouldn't hold on to anything I tired to grab with them. I hated my silicone bakeware and threw the tongs and bakeware out on the same day, banishing silicone from my kitchen "forever". Well, I guess not because dollar store pastry brushes still reside in the drawer and I've gotten a lot of use out of them. Maybe I should check out the Zyliss... I don't have any Zyliss products! I tend to stick with Oxo and Farberware. Cookie, do you have the green garlic thing with the teeth inside that was an "as seen on TV" thing. I got one a few months ago and I do prefer it to the garlic press.

You should go up on the Food Saver site and read all the directions. It won't work right if you aren't using it AND the bags correctly. The bag edges have to be clean and dry and have at least several inches of space between the top of the bag and the food, and meat has to be frozen for about an hour before you can seal them as the juices will flow right out of the top of the bag and will not allow sealing. I'm almost positive the site has the directions for use within the pages, that will be valuable info for you. If you are using it correctly and it still doesn't suck every single bit of air out of the bag, you've got yourself a useless lemon. I have one and have had it for about six years. I use it *all* the time, several times a week. It is simply wonderful, it has cut way down on waste, never have freezer burn and I can take advantage of sales on meat and freeze it for later use, even years and years later. I recently defrosted some fresh salmon that had been cleaned, then sealed and frozen for three years. It looked, tasted and had the consistance that it did the day we sealed it up. That is quite remarkable. It's worth the money spent. My only advice is not to store it away where it would, in any way, be inconvenient to get to. I don't store mine on the counter but I do store it on a shelf that is extremely fast and easy to get to, with nothing at all in front of it. I can grab and go with it. If I had to work to get to it, I simply would never use it. I've learned that for me, this is true about all appliances, even the ones I really want and need to use.