Onion Chopper Review

This weeks Kitchen Tip Tuesday is a product review. I'll try not to sound like an infomercial, but I really love this thing!

What is it? It's an onion chopper! The Progressive International Onion Chopper to be exact. I got a chance to use my grandma's when I was in Utah earlier this year and it's really pretty spiffy.

You first peel your onion and cut it into thick slices (1/2"-3/4" thick). Pop it onto the cutting grid, bring the lid down and press. Viola! Nice uniformly sized onion chunks. There's even handy measuring lines along the side of the chopper.

The reviews for this chopper on Amazon range from "this is a horrible piece of garbage and should never have been invented" to "THIS IS THE BEST THING EVER INVENTED." I think it's on the better side of good, but there are a few tricks to making it work for you. First off, fresher onions seem to work better than old onions. The user guide says you can just cut the onion in half, but I find that it works a lot better if you slice the onion into thirds or fourths (if it's a mega huge onion, more slices may be needed).

The chopper is dishwasher safe (big plus) and comes with a nifty little cleaning tool. I recommend you don't lose this, it's a huge help. I think it would be awful to clean without it.

I probably wouldn't use this if I was chopping more than two or three onions at once since a food processor would be faster, but for smaller chopping jobs it's great. I've also had success cutting zucchini, firm tomatoes (uh, make sure they're firm, they'll turn into tomato puree otherwise), cucumbers and carrots. I've had mixed success with bell peppers. If they're fresh, it works great. If they'd been previously frozen, not quite so great.

If you're really handy and less clumsy with a knife than I am then this tool may not be for you. However, if you stink at cutting onions into nice little dices I think it's a good investment. The model I have only has one size of blade, but I think their "Vidalia" chopper has a larger grid blade included.

I also have the garnish slicer made by this company and it died the first time we used it. It seemed like there was a flaw somewhere that caused the blade to bend and cut into the plastic. Progressive International advertises that their products have a lifetime guarantee so we contacted them... and waited... and waited... I'd about given up hope, but finally (almost 6 weeks later) one of their customer service representatives got in touch and mailed out new parts to replace the bad ones. So, the customer service was very slow, but they do seem to stand behind their products and I think that's a good thing.

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Cheap Phone Service with magicJack

Living in another country can mean having expensive phone calls if I want to call home. Martijn was concerned about this and set us up with a VOIP (internet telephone) service that usually works okay. It has some quirks though and if my mom wanted to call me, she still had to make an international call.

Enter the magicJack.

The magicJack is a USB device that has a regular old phone jack on it. This way you can plug a regular telephone into your computer and make free domestic phone calls (and very cheap international ones!). It's quite small -- about the size of a Zippo lighter and a little bit thicker.

My dad started carrying these in his store, and brought one home for my mom to activate and test. She got it going with no problem and started telling me how wonderful it was. The international rates to The Netherlands (and much of the rest of Europe) are 2 cents per minute which is quite a lot less than the phone card rates she was getting previously. I was really only half listening to her about how wonderful it was because we already had the other VOIP service and I wasn't really sure this would be any better.

We ended up meeting the guy that invented the device when we were in Las Vegas at the Consumer Electronics Show. It somehow came out that I didn't actually have a magicJack for myself and they gave me one to try out.

I gotta say, I am impressed.

Here's how to get started:

• You purchase your magicJack through the website (or a retail store such as RadioShack) for around $40.
• Try not to swear as you cut open the impossible to open package (seriously guys, why must the packing on this kind of thing be SO ANNOYING).
• Plug the magicJack into an open USB port on your computer and let the software install.
• Follow the prompts on the software to set up your account and choose your phone number.
• Verify the e-mail address that you signed up with.
• Plug any old telephone into your magicJack and make your first call!

I had absolutely no problems getting mine up and running (neither did my mom, and she's not as computer savvy as me). In about 5 minutes I was able to register and select that I wanted a Utah telephone number. You must be running Windows XP, Vista, or an Intel based Mac in order for the magicJack to work. You also need to have a high-speed (broadband) internet connection.

As with anything, you'll have both your pros and cons. Here are the main points I noticed.

Pros Quick and easy to set up Really inexpensive- the purchase of the device for $40 includes a years worth of service ($19.95 to continue after the first year) Local phone number for my parents to call me on You can take your magicJack with you wherever you go. I have a Utah telephone number but will be using mine in The Netherlands. It's not tied to any one computer so you can take it to a friends house and use it there if you need to as well. Call quality is pretty good. I did hear a little bit of an echo at the beginning of a couple of my phone calls, but I get that with my other service too so it's more of a VOIP problem than a magicJack problem.

Cons You must have the computer on to use this device. One of the things I liked about our other VOIP service is that we've got a little box that connects to the router which allows us to call even when the computers are off. If you have a slow or dodgy internet connection, your call quality can suffer. Doesn't work with Linux Chat-based web only support

I don't know that I would advise dumping your landline in favor of the magicJack, but I do think that it's wonderful for long distance and the fact that I can have a local to my parents Utah telephone number!

Cheap phone calls Work for Me! I'd love to hear what others do for long distance, especially for international calls.

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