Cooks spend most of our spaghetti making time on our sauce. I paid little attention to the pasta … dried, store bought fresh and even home made … i.e. pasta, it seemed, is pasta, Costco is as good as anyplace for the bas8c stuff.

So I spend say $10-15 on a good homemade sauce… then I pour it over $1 of pasta. No more. As pasta has become less dietary friendly, one must, none the less, periodically get back to the stuff. If you must have pasta to maintain your life force, but have cut it back because of the carbs, don’t eat anymore with $1 pasta … splurge for a more complete experience. It may look expensive, and it is by comparison and your mate may suggest that you’re out of your mind to pay $8 versus the $1. I’m convinced (as is my suprised wife) that this may be as good as a pasta gets and surely enriches the reduced pasta eating events.

Not only did it pass the hype test, it did so with flying colors.

Let me just say that if you are doing research on this machine, you will discover that people just rave about it. Review after review say it is worth the investment.

Add this review to that list.

PROS:
It works not just as a coffee maker, there are also tea K-Cups available and it also can be used to heat water in less than 20 seconds. So if you have a tea bag and just want hot water, there is not need to use a kettle. Ever.

You can buy a filter that allows you to place your own GROUND beans in the machine and make your favorite coffee blend.

It is ridiculously easy to use. No paper filters needed. No grinds in the bottom of the cup. No wasting away of drinking coffee in the morning.

KEURIG’S CUSTOMER SERVICE ALONE MAKES THIS A BEST BUY. If you have ANY problems, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, Keurig operators are at the ready. I once called then at midnight because I thought I was having an issue setting up the machine. The customer service guy (had a Boston accent) was very nice and answered all my questions. He also registered the machine (it was a “gift”- to myself ), so there was no need to mail in the warranty card.

The blue LED lights are the best kept secret about this machine. It is very modern and fits into any kitchen, both during the day and at night.

CONS:
The K-Cups are hard to find in stores. I have only seen Bed Bath and Beyond sell K Cups in the store. 18 k-cups for $10??? That’s ridiculous. ENTER AMAZON… They sell 50 K-Cups for $19.00. That is a better deal by FAR. You would be well to do to buy a coffee variety pack so you can see which one is the best for you. You don’t want to get stuck with 50 K-cups of a flavor you don’t like.

If you are having a group of p…

For starters, it’s first chapter of recipes has seven (7) recipes for major, classic salads, almost all of which originated in French, Italian, or American cuisines. These are:

Caesar Salad

Cobb Salad

Potato Salad

Salade Nicoise

Celery Root Remoulade

Insalata Caprese

Ambrosia

The second `big’ thing it gets right is that the next four chapters cover salads appropriate to each of the four seasons. While your average megamart has virtually all fruits and vegetables throughout the year, there are still some important seasonal considerations that make a difference in the quality or cost of a salad. For example, asparagus and artichokes are far cheaper in the spring than at any other time of the year; tomatoes and fresh corn are at their very best if obtained locally in the summer; apples and pears are freshest in the fall, and citrus is most abundant and least expensive in the winter.

The last chapter of recipes gives us seven (7) `picnic’ salads whose taste improves over time or which are easily assembled at the last minute `on site’. They are also very good for extended periods without refrigeration as they contain no mayonnaise or any other uncooked or semi-cooked eggs.

There is a non-recipe chapter at the end on `Salad Basics’ covering the primary ingredients and techniques including vinaigrettes, creamy dressings, types of greens, and varieties of other ingredients. It is beyond me why this chapter is put at the back of the book when it is something you should read before embarking on the recipes or on a career of ad libbing salad making.

The only other quirk of the book’s organization is that the two potato salad recipes are in two different chapters, one in the classics and one in the summer chapter. Otherwise, in general, this is a very well thought out book organization, making up for the slightly pricy $16.95 list price for 43 recipes. We are also well served by the fact that there is a full-page color snapshot of the results of each and every completed recipe. For a glossy book like this, one would feel cheated if there were pics of only half the recipes.

With all this good stuff going for it, I did find some things that were just a littl off. In the recipes for the classic salads, I found at least four instructions that concerned me. The first two were where poaching chicken and cooking hard-boiled eggs were done at substantially longer times than what I have found to be necessary from both other authoritative recipes and from my own experience. I was inclined to think that the author was just trying to be careful with microbes, until I read the Caesar Salad recipe, where a totally raw egg was used to make the dressing. In all the very best recipes for Caesar Salad, the raw egg is `coddled’ before adding it to the dressing. That is, it is cooked in boiling water for about a minute to kill off any microbeasties. I was also just a littl concerned with the amount of fresh garlic used in the Caesar salad, and the method by which it was added. It called for first making the toasted croutons, then rubbing the fresh garlic onto the sides of all those littl cubes. This seems to be a relatively tiresome method, which could easily be replaced by toasting the bread slices, rubbing on the garlic, then cutting the toast into littl cubes. And even better and quite traditional technique is to rub the cut garlic into the wooden salad bowl before mixing the dressing.

All in all, this is a better salad book than others I have seen and it is a very good first salad book.

I had actually purchased the coffee without realizing that the beans were whole-bean. I quickly purchased a grinder. The grinder came four days after the coffee did. If I had known how good this coffee was beforehand, thos four days would have been torture.

Mind you, I’m basing this review on the fact that I have only brewed one pot so far, but one pot was all it took. This coffee is amazingly silky smooth and doesn’t leave a harsh aftertaste like other coffees. It’s a little on the light side, so if you like your coffee strong, I’d recommend about 1.5-2 rounded tablespoons per cup.

I am definitely a believer in Kona Coffee now. I will be buying more of this in the future for myself and as gifts, though I’ll probably use it before I have a chance to give it out.