This is all about "performance" -- range performance, car performance, cooking performance. This is also about status, fantasy and guilt. It also might be about property value. Some very famous cooks didn't have "high performance" equipment. And it's amazing how home cooks in other countries don't have all this fancy equipment and yet manage to turn out delicious meals. I've had wonderful food cooked in a fireplace and on a hot plate. If you can cook, a high performance range makes it easier and can give you more control and eliminate a struggle against a range (which is certainly annoying). If you can't cook well, and don't learn to season, no appliance will help.

I do the same as Mustangs, more or less. 1 lb bacon, cooked, placed whole on the top 2 tablespoon vinegar 1/2 C ketchup 1/2c molasses 1/2c brown sugar 1 medium onion, chopped and fried in bacon grease 1 3lb 7oz can B&M baked beans Bake at 350 until hot and bubbly. Be careful that the bacon doesn't burn. If you want to bake for a while, put the bacon on uncooked. This is what my mother - from Boston - used when she made her beans. It was always a hit at the potluck dinner. We ONLY use B&M baked beans - my dad grew up around the corner from the factory. They are getting harder and harder to find.

Angelaid, would it help to retrofit your lower storage to rollout tray shelves? The cupboards would hold a little less but it would be a lot easier to get at what you have. Definitely get rid of the Fry Daddy since storage is out. Maybe you can rearrange the contents of your cupboards and baking rack so that the only things that are downstairs are once a year kinds of things that you can take up and down in stages and at leisure, and more regular things, like the roaster, even though it's big, can live in the kitchen. Maybe even keep a small table or basket by the stairs on each level for things that are going up or down. I do that and it works well for me. For frozen things going down to the big freezer I leave a nylon tote bag there to remind me to take them. I'd keep all the "discards" for at least a year, though, to make sure I really didn't want them anymore. Whenever I don't do that, I get rid of something I end up wanting. DC, good idea about the rice noodles. I have them. :) It won't get me to put away the thermometer, but definitely easier to use. :)

foodonastump...I read, re-read and read a third time the entire post, paying particular attention to the third paragraph. And no, I can see nothing that deserved responses such as I read. It seems to me that a mention of another forum and how much one appreciates the posters who contribute to it can not be taken as negative by anyone other than someone who is looking for a reason to be offended. It may be that you have a negative history with dcarch that I am unaware of, in which case I wonder why you bother to involve yourself in the topic begun by someone with whom you have experienced such unpleasantness? I'm sure it was not your intention to ruin the topic for everyone else, but that is turning out to be the result. I don't know who upset whom in some past topic thread, and I don't care. I am interested, though, in the idea of people making fun things out of throw away stuff. The soda bottle pots crack-ah-me-up! Gotta try some. One can only use so many hummingbird feeders. Oh boy, just what I need is another project.