several friends through the years. You pick them up virtually NIB at Goodwill here for next to nothing after Christmas every year.

Sheesh.

Geez, mine must be ancient...  No rivets in the knife blade so I'm not eligible for the recall.  

Wonder if they'd have asked where I got it... "Oh, at Lorraine's garage sale in 2012..." is probably not the right answer.

Panthera, I wish I had your Goodwill!

I think here a Cuisinart that's 20 years old, missing all but work bowl and cover, and has cloudy plastic on the work bowl could still run $20, er, $19.99 here. I shudder to think of what they'd price it if it were new, with box...

And there was none of the usual American bullshit nonsense of pretending things aren't what they are.

"Don't use it, we'll get one out to you just as soon as we can."

Clear and honest.

First genuine thing this company has done in years. I've seen their quality slide downhill the past few years at a sickening rate.

So sad.

the recall only applies to blades with a total of four rivets? Here's the official pic. and a link to the page from which one may order a new blade. I phoned them, but this is faster.

My DLC-7 Super Pro has the 4 rivet blade.  I'll be curious to see if the replacement blade is still stamped "Made in Japan". 

Speaking of Goodwill, I found my DLC in a northern Chicago suburb a few years back, with the service stickers still on the base.  It was probably used two or three times as most of the blades that came with it still had the protective paper on them.

All for 8.99. 

Ben

And this differs from 99% of other companies in what way?

Lord Kenmore sighs, cynical thoughts bouncing about inside his head.

I wonder if it's entirely "past few years." I got their really small food processor (the one with bowl that only holds a cup or two) at a thrift store maybe 15 years ago. It worked, but I was never really very impressed with it. I used it, but not heavily, and it didn't seem to last long before one of the buttons broke. Admittedly, I have no idea what the history was like before I got it...but it looked like "low miles" when I got it. And other products they made (as mentioned above) seemed to have lasted forever under heavy use.

I replaced it with a KitchenAid. Also certainly a thrift shop find. I imagine that's not the product that it would have been in the Hobart era, but it has impressed me more. 

One thing I note about Cuisinart are their cheap pans. Albertsons did a promotion with them a couple of years ago or so. They didn't seem bad, but they really didn't wow me. They felt like a passable but cheap stainless steel pan. Nothing wrong with that. But the price was higher than other choices. Probably buying the name. I also note they have enamel iron, which I think is Chinese.

Wish I had that sort of Goodwill pricing here!

every district is independent. The Denver district has consistent pricing (slightly high) but also consistent discounting policies from week to week.

The Nebraska district (under which our town is cursed) has no discounting, not ever and no consistency in their pricing.

I picked up a power-line network set there a few days back for a friend. They had the hubs priced at $20/hub. Having learned through the years how to deal with them, I asked the manager to put a date on the hubs, so I could come back in a few weeks and buy them at a realistic price.

To my shock, she took me into the office, called up the hubs on the ebay and immediately went down to $4/hub.

I know it's hard to price things, gosh it's hard. You just have to have some sort of consistency and discounting - this was a real exception for the our district.

Probably the very worst thrift stores on the planet are in Salt Lake City. Uuk - I wouldn't wear anything they sell in those places until it had been disinfected with a bath in the sun. I mean, literally, in the sun.

I know Goodwill "systems" are independent, but it's a good point to raise. Many people have a vision of Goodwill as being a big, national chain or something like Target. While I think there is some national "mothership", the stores one shops at are parts of a regional system. 

I've been very conscious of that, because there are two major systems in my area. Indeed, I'm in middle between 2 Goodwill stores that belong to different systems. And what makes it fun is that there seem to be logic flaws with how things got divided. I have speculated that some of the division may have simply been whoever came to town first, and planted their flag...

I noticed differences in pricing...but neither system really ever had killer deals. At least, not in recent memory.

Goodwill, after all, does good for people trying to earn a living. Some other thrift stores, Habitat in Wyoming comes to mind, are run by gay-bashing haters who impose the worst of Christian dominionism on their staff and customers.

Killer deals, though - you get them every so often. Mainly on items which are of value to people like us but not to the young women with kids at whom their pricing is directed. 

Fair prices are, I suppose, reasonable for a thrift shop. They do have a mission, and every dollar helps.

Well, good thrift stores have a mission...

But there are bad stores, and I've heard the stories about those. 

One thing that gets me about Goodwill pricing isn't so much the killer deal. I love killer deals, and, frankly, at this point it's the only way of getting luxuries. Since my economic downturn, my thrift shopping has mostly been window shopping...with a few practical buys here and there, and the very, very occaisional "fun buy." It's been months since one of those.

Past my problems...the prices are often not that much lower than they are elsewhere. A Goodwill employee wants a can opener, but has decided to buy new. Goodwill has can openers, but they are disgustingly filthy, and not that much cheaper than new. I've heard people mutter: "I could get this for less at Wal Mart!" Someone lectured me about cookware, because it's not that much more expensive getting new at a discount clearance store. My favorite vintage example is a console radio at one store. I'd love a console radio. But the cabinet on this is horrible condition. Finish is totally shot. Hinge on the door over the controls is broken. And--best of all!--all the tubes are gone. And they want $40. I think that's a bit much...but  maybe I'm just cheap. Then, again, the way it's just sitting there suggests others think it's a ripoff, too.

And so the list goes on...

I like buying used--partly because I'm frugal--both with my money, and also wanting to see things fully used rather than going to a landfill. But at the prices I see, buying used is less and less appealing, given thatthere is often a search involved. (Let's say I want a muffin tin. That will turn up. But it may not be today's trip. It may not be tomorrow's trip. It may be in a month. Meanwhile, I can make one trip to another store and have a very good chance of finding that muffin tin in stock.) Then, the stuff is used...and often needs attention. Maybe minor fixes. Certainly a good cleaning.

I have a DLC 2011 N... I filled out the form, so mine is arriving soon...

(Yes, here are the pics of the discs as well as the blades & even the appliance itself!)

-- Dave

It's definitely a treasure hunt - I found a NIB Torrecelli barometer and a Galileo thermometer, both in hand blown glass with a beautiful wooden mount for $10.00 today. It's going to be a Christmas present for someone who appreciates such things. This particular set on Amazon is over $100.00.........

And, as said - new in the box. Unopened.

Between oven cleaner, self-cleaning oven and Mother's Mag and Alu cleaning compound, there's little I won't risk in pots, pans and ovenware/Pyrex. I once ran a 3 quart Presto which I'd wanted for decades through the dishwasher for 20+ cycles before the baked in oil and ick finally gave way - just ran it with every load. When they show up on ebay, they're frequently over $50.00 with shipping. Got this for $0.50 Wow.

But, yeah - you never know what you'll find. There's an ARC in Fort Collins which used to have lots of cashmere and silk and really good linen. When they expanded their store, they lost their production space and now all the good stuff goes to Denver, they get a 'consignment'. Bye-bye to the lovely stuff and hello to worn out poly/blend with yellow sweat stains, ring-around-the-collar and that awful smell of High Karate which nothing can ever remove.

Pity our ReStores here are such horrid, hate driven, anti-gay trash-heaps run by horrible people. Just over the borders to the East, North and South the ReStores are beyond words great places.  Our Goodwill Stores follow bad policies which have been unchanged and out of date since before WWII - it's the Nebraska District. But - they have people with obvious disabilities out working on the sales floor, something other thrift stores which purportedly have a mission do not do or even punish their management for attempting (like the ReStores in Wyoming.)

Who posted - I just passed on information.

Gosh, it's a testimony to their quality (once upon a time) that we all still have these!

Does anyone remember what the late Julia Child used to say about the plastic blade? "Useless, just throw it away!"

I think many bakers have problems with the first loaf vanishing fast... My father baked bread when I was young, and my mother years later said she thought one reason he lost interest was that the first loaf of bread went bye-bye in such a short time.

When I first started baking bread, I also noticed the first loaf tended to go quickly. I'd often end up baking late at night (the actual baking), and it was really funny that some nights the bread would be in the oven after my mother had presumably gone to bed. And yet, she'd suddenly materialize after the bread came out. (Yes. we would often cut into bread before one was "supposed" to...)

It's been 20+ years since I kneaded by hand, so I'm not as bothered by single loaves now that vanish quickly.

As for bread machines, they are convenient, but I've never been impressed by the bread. It's probably better than some stuff one can buy, but it's not the same as something baked in a regular oven. Histrorically, my big gripe with bread machines was that they weren't cheap (although now they are a lot cheaper than they had been), and they only do one thing. The advantage of a food processor is that it can do a long list of jobs past bread dough.

I certainly did not intend to open an extra-large, family-size can of worms! I was simply stating something I recall Julia Child saying on her early PBS show in keeping (slightly) with the Cuisinart blade topic. She also said "use genuine vanilla extract, the other (imitation) has a cheap, bad taste". I'm sure many people use a good quality vanilla flavoring and get excellent results. No food connoisseur could ever tell the difference. With my baking skills, I could use the most pricey vanilla extract or a quart bottle of flavoring from the 99 Cent Store and the results would be the same...lousy.