I Heart Cuisinart (and chocolate)

Please, go to your kitchens, grab all of our various appliances, and throw them in the garbage. Throw them away, I tell you! Now, do yourself a favor, and replace anything you've thrown away with a Cuisinart-brand product. I'm madly in love with Cuisinart, and I will try to convince anyone who will listen, that they should be, too.

You see, I've always been the kind of girl who buys what is on sale, not getting hung-up on name brand items. However, with age *ahem*, comes wisdom. First, I realized that a girl simply should not go through life wearing cheap bras. I'm sorry, but it is true. Then, I realized that sometimes it pays to splurge on certain hair care items (remember, I said sometimes). Now, as a homemaker, I spend way more time in the kitchen than I ever use to. I have a Kitchen Aid stand mixer, but I really only ever use that when faced with a recipe that requires heavy duty mixing (i.e., not often). As for hand mixers, I'd always owned one that I'd paid $14.99 for at a random department store, multiple times. That was until 2006, when I asked Santa for a Cuisinart PowerSelect 7-Speed hand mixer. I'm not sure what possessed me, because it was quite a bit more than I cared to spend on a kitchen appliance. The first time I fired that sucker up, however, I was sold. That mixer purred like a little kitty. Now I can't believe I wasted so many years on low-watt, wimpy mixers. This thing is awesome. The bad news is, after approximately one year of use of 2-3 times per week, the beaters decided they didn't want to stay in the mixer, usually while I was busy mixing. A pretty annoying problem. In steps my husband, thrifty man that he is, and fired an email off to Cuisinart to tell them about the problem. Last week, I was minding my own business, when the phone rang. It was a lovely man from Cuisinart calling. He proceeded to inform me that they'd received our email, and simply asked me to explain the problem with my mixer. I did, and he then informed me that they would send me a brand new one. No other questions asked. It arrived in the mail yesterday. Um, okay! I've told you before, I value good customer service. It is very hard to come by these days, which is pretty sad. So, I love Cuisinart not because they have the absolute best appliances - - I'm sure there are other great ones out there - - but because they have fabulous customer service. Seriously, I am jumping up and down and clapping my hands while I type this, I am so happy. Now, get thee to Target and buy yourself a new Cuisinart mixer. You know you want one.

While I am spending your hard-earned money for you, do yourself another favor and try to find yourself a Seattle Chocolates Truffle Bar. I'm not even supposed to eat chocolate, but if I'm going to be naughty and do it anyway, this is the chocolate I want to eat. It comes in a bunch of different flavors, but I like the Espresso or the Cappuccino Crunch the best. Yum!