An injury I don't want to see.....

Last night, at the Florida Panthers-Buffalo Sabres hockey game, Panthers forward Richard Zednik fell on his teammate's skate blade, which slashed his neck. (Story from FoxSports.com here.) He was rushed off the ice and taken to a local hospital in an ambulance. He's in stable condition now. I wish him all the best.

Several years ago, Sabres goalie Clint Malarchuk suffered the same injury. (I believe there's a video of it available on YouTube, but it's NOT for the squeamish.) Since then, goalies have had to wear neck protection. But skaters haven't had to wear the same type of neck protection. I wonder if that will change as a result of this incident.

It's sad that this is about the only time the local TV news even mentions hockey.

It still dices and slices.....

One of the kitchen appliances I "inherited" from my parents was an old Veg-O-Matic manual food processor. This past month, it's been getting some use. Last week, I made lentil soup, and used the Veg-O-Matic to dice an onion and to slice the celery and carrots. Today, I have beef stew in the slow cooker (I believe "crock pot" is a registered trademark). I'm using a co-worker's recipe, which doesn't list exact amounts of most ingredients, so I had to guess at the amounts. Once again, the Veg-O-Matic came in handy in dicing the potato and onion, and cutting up the carrots and celery. (Oops. I didn't mean to include celery in my stew, but it's in there.)

The hardest part about cleanup is picking out the vegetable pieces from the top of the unit.

As far as I know, Ronco no longer makes the Veg-O-Matic.

The only thing I'd change would be to make the body and "hammer" of the unit out of high-impact plastic. Even though they may have used the best and strongest plastic at the time, I have a feeling that it may break someday. At least I can get another one on eBay.

Tell me about some of your favorite kitchen gadgets.