We have a hand-crank Donvier we got when we were married in 1995 that is almost constantly in use from about the 4th of July to mid-September. (The brand-name one is overpriced. Get a clone, which can be had for under $20 on sale.) DH wants an electric and I may get him one for his birthday (which is 2 days after Christmas LOL) if end-of-summer sales yield any REALLY good prices on reliable machines. Here's the base recipe we use, from the Ben & Jerry's book... I don't think you could GET any simpler, and it's surprisingly good. We pretty much never use a custard base because our kitchen is not air conditioned, and diddling around making custard in a 90-odd degree kitchen is officially Not Worth It in our book. For a 1 quart ice cream maker, combine 1 can sweetened, condensed milk (many of us remember it as "Eagle milk") with 2 cups light cream, a splash of vanilla extract and a pinch of salt. Do NOT leave out the salt! Stir well, chill at least 2 hours before putting in the ice cream maker. You can substitute full-fat ("cream top") vanilla yogurt for half the cream but it doesn't really save you much calorically, just does interesting things to the flavor and can make you feel a little virtuous LOL! Lower-fat yogurts give a strange chalky texture and unsweetened yogurt makes for very sour product. (Found from unpleasant experience that just chucking a quart of yogurt straight from the container into the ice cream maker, no matter how yummy it is normally, does not make nice frozen yogurt, oh no not at all!) There's a simple plain base, now start playing... A super easy way to get a delicious fruity flavor ice cream is to substitute 1 cup of a good strong jam for 1 cup of the cream. (I don't recommend doing both jam and yogurt and eliminating all the cream. The result came out... the only word I can find for it is "stretchy".) The jam concentrates the fruit's flavor; warm "seedy" jams like raspberry or blackberry until they're liquidy and push them through a strainer if you don't want to be picking seeds out of your teeth for days. If you want fruit pieces, line a cookie sheet with the nonstick foil or baking parchment (or a Silpat if you're blessed with one), spread out a layer of finely chopped fruit with the pieces not touching, or minimally touching, and freeze rock solid. Add the fruit pieces at the very end of churning. Toast any nuts you wish to add for a stronger, "nuttier" flavor; and grating frozen chocolate bars on the largest holes of a grater (use an oven mitt to hold the chocolate so your body heat doesn't melt it) gives a better result IMO than using chocolate chips, even the mini kind. If you want to use something like butterscotch chips, freeze them and break them up in small batches in a food processor on "pulse". Good use for one of those mini-chopper types. Remember that your liquid ice cream/sorbet/yogurt mixture has to be almost sickeningly-sweet in its unfrozen state to taste "normal" as a finished product - the cold numbs your taste buds so all the flavors have to be STRONG. Oh, and filling the churning chamber more than about 2/3 full, 3/4 at the most, can be a recipe for a Big Sticky Mess. So don't do it. Honey-sweetened ice cream does not store well more than 24 hours - it gets crumbly and weird-textured, so if you want to do something with honey, have enough people around to scarf it down within hours of curing. Alcohol will interfere in the solidifying process so if you really load it up even with an overnight cure you may not get more than a "soft serve" texture. We bought a whole slew of nice little (not quite 1/2 cup) lidded plastic containers into which we portion the ice cream while it's still in the "soft serve" state. Pop them in the freezer and in 4 hours it's solidified enough to have the proper ice cream "mouthfeel", although I like 8 hours' curing time. If we don't pre-portion it DH will go WAY overboard! Oh, and the famous Mark Bittman/New York Times "eggless ice cream" was IMNSHO utterly REVOLTING.

I am a cabinet maker by trade, so I can give you my perspective on the situation. No, you are not offending the KD. Would the KD like you to buy from them? Of course! As part of business, one cannot take it personally because it is not personal. I lost a project last year to a lumber supply center that has in house kitchen design. I figured it was lost due to the price, which it wasn't. When I asked what it specifically was, the owner said it was my presentation. They thought my price was very acceptable, my cabinets were obviously way better quality than the KD center, I could get it to them in less time, and they were close friends of a close friend of mine. They just felt the salesman was "a nice guy" and presented better. No matter to me, I am not a salesman and he is not a cabinet maker. Not hiding that fact anywhere. A month after their installation, I hear the never ending statement from the customer "oh I wish I didn't make that decision" I still did not take it personally. People don't buy the product any more, they buy the feeling it will give them. Go with your gut feeling. It is usually correct. If you can get the same exact product from someone else for $20K less....does anyone really need to tell you what to do? That is one heck of a mark up. Also, just to address the original question...just make sure of the number you are getting that you know the difference between an estimate and a quote. I can give an estimate over the phone. A quote is going to cost money because it takes time out of my life to do that. I truly appreciate the ones here who empathize with us cabinet makers on our time we spend drawing up plans for your kitchen or bath. It takes time. My time. It is not free. If ones intent is to take my FREE design and hard work and shop it around to three other places to get a better price, then I have better things to do, like spend time with my children, because I am not going to be less than a KD center and they are not going to have the attention to details and quality and service that I provide. One can call me on a Sunday evening and I pick up the phone. Does anyone know of a KDCenter that does that? Now if you pay me to design a kitchen and tell me up front that you will be shopping my design around and getting apples for apples comparison, I have absolutely no problem with that. Don't tell me AFTER I hand you the design.

"Maybe you should send your 2-hole/2-slit idea to some of the punch people. Maybe you could get a kick-back somehow? (Free punches for a year? *grin*)" that would be great. But if you do send a copy to yourrself in the mail and don't open the letter. I think that's called a poorman's copyright. My mom sent an idea in to "Barbie" about making one with different wigs. That was a few years after they came out. She got a letter saying something to the effect that it wasn't feasible at that time. Of course years later they did.

I am a fabricator. I have been following this thread with interest and find it contains a lot of disinformation and skewed perspectives. Over half my business is high end homes where money is often not a consideration and interior designers are common. Natural stone is still the preferred material for the majority of the work we do even though we provide a wide variety of engineered surfaces includes the various quarts brands and the new materials like Dekton. The quartz products are rapidly losing the panache they enjoyed for years as the new alternative to natural stone. This change has been exacerbated by the emergence of discount brands and discounting among the big suppliers as they fight for market share. Granite has changed in that "exotics" are much more prevalent and alternative finishes to the traditional polish are increasingly common. The buying public has also become more educated and recognizes the actual maintenance for natural stone is minimal unless the material is one of the alternates like marble or travertine which have inferior material properties. My advice to my customers is always to pick the "look" they want and make sure they understand the material properties. Marble is extraordinarily beautiful but it is only a little harder than jello, wicks up liquids like a sponge, and dissolves readily in common organic acids like acetic acid.