The 8-Minute Full Family Meal Machine

Due to overwhelming popularity, all of the Bullet Express representatives are currently busy. Bullet Express appreciates my call, and will be with me shortly.

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Due to overwhelming popularity, all of the Bullet Express representatives are currently busy. Bullet Express appreciates my call, and will be with me shortly.


Let me back up a little.

Last week, I received an early Christmas present from my Dad. He LOVES watching QVC, so I can usually bet that whatever I get is going to come from there. He recently called me and said I needed to come get my present, because it was taking up too much room in his house. NOW I was curious. I met him for dinner, and before we left I was bestowed my large gift: The Bullet Express.

It slices. It dices. It grates. It juices. It makes bread. It food processes. It does just about everything short of take me out to dinner and meet my parents. It's slogan? "The 8-Minute Full Family Meal Machine".

My Dad thought this was just the end all be all of kitchen technology. He ranted about the infomercial, which I'm sure he had seen more than once. He raved about the sheer number of features and what it could do for me. And the best part, do for me in only 8 minutes!

I really appreciated the sentiment. He obviously had been paying attention to my conversations about learning how to cook, and throwing dinner parties. He just didn't question my appliance inventory before he dropped $120 on something that would make everything else in my kitchen obsolete. I already owned individual appliances that do most the things this machine does in one. So now what?

Immediately after receiving the gift, I began to think of ways I could get rid of it. Ebay? Try to return it back to the company without him knowing? All these options involved my lying for the rest of my life about how often I use this wonderful product, and that seemed like a lot of work. Out of curiosity I looked at ebay, to get an idea of how valuable this machine is to the American public. I type it in and....what? The highest bid on one is $35? But he paid $120 for this! I decided to check a few other websites, see what the story was. After going to Amazon.com, I found my answer.

Apparently, and met with not much surprise by me, this thing SUCKS!

The bad reviews were endless. "The Bullet Express shot cabbage clear across my kitchen", "The motor can only run for 30 seconds at a time before it shuts itself off to enter cool down mode", "Many of the parts broke right after the 30 day warranty", "This machine is slow, big, and useless". Wow. It all made me feel a little more superior inside. Technology isn't always what it's cracked up to be.

Thankfully, as if by divine intervention, my Dad calls the next day and says he didn't think it looked like I was pleased with my Bullet Express, and wonders if I'd like to return it. So he doesn't take it personally, I let him know about the bad reviews and suggest he get his money back so as not to waste it on something inferior.

Maybe it's me, although I don't really think it is, but I like doing cooking stuff the hard way. I don't own an automatic vegetable slicer, but I do own a cutting board and knives. I don't own a bread maker, but I do have flour, pans, and an oven. The reason I don't own things like that is because, simply put, I don't want to be done in 8 minutes! To me, that is so far from the point of cooking. It is against the idea of the Stoned Soup Club entirely. When my attitude changes from embracing the tears that come from chopping onions and the smells rising from my chili pot, to wanting to churn out mixed up slop in less time than it takes for my oven to heat up, I plan on hanging up my apron for good. Maybe this somehow is linked to my lack of desire to do the entire marriage-family-kids bit. Maybe there are people who really need to be done cooking in 8 minutes, because the baby is screaming and the kids need to be picked up from soccer practice and the husband doesn't want to take care of either. All I can do is thank GOD that I'm not one of them.

So now I wait, on hold with Bullet Express, who is still saying they appreciate my business, so I can get a return number and be rid of this thing for good. Meanwhile I'll be taking the full 5 minutes to cut the vegetables and 30 minutes to make the bread, while I use the money to buy an Xbox 360. Now THAT'S technology I can use.

-Nikki