it works!

oh, you are a miracle food cutter!

I make a lot of sweet potato fries, and it's not particularly hard to cut them into fry shapes with a knife. I'll admit it. It's not that I needed a fry making gadget, I just thought it would be nice to have one.

I started with the Starfrit fry maker. Basically, it's a device where you pop your potato in, then use all of your brute strength to force it through a grate of tiny blades, thereby producing fries. Mom managed to find this on clearance, and I just have to say, no wonder it was on clearance. First I had to cut the sweet potato down to size to fit into the slot, then not even Idle Husband's manly strength could force the darn thing through. After cutting the spud to a completely small and manageable shape, (so small and manageable, I might as well have just cut it into fry shapes, old school) I still had to use my entire body to force it through, only to get it stuck halfway in, which then ended in me popping two of the blades off. I think I could fix it, but it's been sitting in my pantry (unwashed) and broken since then.

Fast forward to last weekend, when mom presented me with another potential fry chopper. The Dial-O-matic. This one she found in a thrift store and thought for the price, we might as well give it a go. It looked all full of potential and so dandy when I first saw it.

look at everything it can do!

The great thing about it is that the only thing that's removeable is the front blade. All the specialty attachments are built right in and all you have to do is turn a dial to change the setting. Oh fancy! The other thing you can do is raise or lower the blade to change the thickness, and again all it takes is a push of a button and it slides out and back in very easily. So far so good.

labels negate the need for a manual. How considerate of them.

We're having chicken tonight and it's not really a meal I'd typically associate with sweet potato fries, but I just couldn't wait any longer to try this machine! I cut the sweet potato in half (fully expecting there to be problems), positioned the safety handle, and thunk. No go. There was no way that hard as rock potato was going through. Nice. Another useless machine. But then...as a last ditch effort, I decided to put the blade over my sharpening stone a couple times to see if that would help. It must have been duller than wood, because afterwards, I had absolutely no trouble getting my sweet potato through! Finally!

check out those beautiful uniform fries!

I was so excited, I julienned a cucumber for our salad.

I'm pretty sure cucumber doesn't typically get julienned.