Ya' Never Know Until You Try!

We have horrible water (never mind the fact that we pay GOOD money for it) so when we got a dishwasher I was nervous that it really wouldn't do that great of a job. I'd had a dishwasher early in our marriage and it died after 6 months of use and never did do that great of a job on my dishes. This time around, I started out rinsing every single dish almost clean before even loading it. Then I learned a trick from my friend about running it through a rinse (pre-wash for those of you with newer, fancier dishwashers :) before doing the actual washing. That worked good and saved me time. Then I happened upon Cascade Complete. It's claim? "Cleans so well...no need to prewash!" My thought? "Yeah, right!" So I used it while continuing to prewash. I did find that I only needed to fill the detergent compartments half-full to get a nice clean shine.

Finally one day I decided even if I had to fill them full, it would be cheaper than paying for all that water for a prewash so it wouldn't hurt to try. Guess what? The claim is true! So now I've tried all forms: powder, gel and action pacs. Here is my discovery:

• Powder - works great, no complaints
• Gel - worked great but got less loads for the same price
• ActionPaks - nice not to have to measure and cost was the same as the powder but I do notice a powdery residue on my plastic cups and containers on occasion

We recently tried a new restaurant that we had been noticing on W 86th St (in Indianapolis). After we ordered (from a rather condescending waitress), we became a little nervous thinking that for the price (and her attitude), these burgers better taste wonderful! We weren't disappointed.

PROS:

• no-nonsense menu - two burger choices (little, which is one patty or regular, which is actually two patties) unlimited number of toppings for the same price; two size choice of fries
• fresh, not frozen meat and potatoes
• overflowing cup of fries...we ordered a large which would have been equivalent to a 16 or 20 oz styrofoam cup and they gave them to us in a bag with the cup buried under mountains of fries...plenty for the ENTIRE family

CONS:

• no children's portions - so we ordered the regular burger for Kerrigan and Janae to share as they don't always eat the entire bun anyway
• buckets of peanuts and use of peanut oil - bad deal for those with peanut allergies, but does make the fries taste yummy for those of us who don't :)