Do you need a blender a food processor or both?

Countertop space is valuable real estate so do you really need both a blender and a food processor? In Consumer Reports tests, we found they excel at different tasks. A blender is better at mixing drinks and whipping up smoothies, while a food processor is ideal for chopping, slicing and shredding.

You can puree foods in either appliance but crushing ice in a food processor can damage the plastic container. "Crushing ice is the blender's job, but the blender can't slice or shred, and can only chop a few foods, like Parmesan cheese, and vegetables for soup if they're already cut up," says Cindy Fisher, who has tested blenders and food processors for Consumer Reports for more than 10 years.

Blenders have a tall, often tapered, pitcher with a tight-fitting lid and one blade. Most have a number of speeds from slow to fast. In our blender tests, the $450 Vita-Mix 5200 was the only model that was superb at serving up smooth icy drinks, crushing ice, and pureeing soup and grating cheese. The manufacturer claims this blender does more than most but even so those claims do not include all of the tasks a food processor performs. If $450 is too pricey, check out the Ninja, a CR Best Buy that's $60 and performs nearly as well as the top-rated Vita-Mix.

Food processors have a big bowl with a feeding tube, an S-shaped blade and a top that locks into place. Most come with other blade options for shredding and slicing. Typically, a food processor has one speed and a pulse option so you can better control the texture of the food you're chopping. In our food processor tests the top-rated Breville Sous Chef BFP800XL, $400, was excellent at chopping, slicing, shredding and grating. Pureeing vegetables was so-so. The owner's manual suggests using this food processor to chop nuts and dried fruits, shred and slice veggies, make peanut butter and dips, puree soups, and mix bread dough, among other tasks. If you're shopping for a food processor, our Ratings include seven standouts, including a $100 CR Best Buy.

Worst City/Gardener Clash Ever.

UPDATE: Thanks to our alert readers for pointing out this Change.org petition you can sign.

Meet Denise Morrison, a Tulsa gardener who carefully read the city code and followed it, planting nothing in her front yard that exceeded 12 inches in height unless it was edible. She grew an assortment of medicinal herbs, food crops, edible flowers, etc.

And when the police showed up, she explained that to them. Nicely.

And when the whole thing finally went to court, the charges of illegal gardening were dismissed.

But not before city workers cut down and destroyed all her plants. Seriously.

I know weve got some readers in Tulsa. Anybody have a more updated report? Are there any efforts underway to help her replace some of the plants shes lost?

I cant tell for sure who her city council representative is, but a close watching of the video reveals a fragment of a street address, and using the Tulsa City Councils district finder tool, I believe she lives in District 1. Click here if youd like to email her City Council member and let him know what you think about city employees destroying a residents front yard garden in violation of their own codes. And if youd like to contact the mayor, heres a way to do that.

Can this possibly be Tulsas biggest law enforcement priority? Or even its biggest code enforcement priority?

Is it even remotely possible that Tulsa should be encouraging and rewarding people who grow food in their front yards, not punishing them? According to the news report, Denise has high blood pressure, diabetes, arthritis, is recently unemployed, and has no heath insurance. Could anything (short of a job and health insurance) be BETTER for a woman in her situation than planting a garden that puts a little fresh, healthy food on her table?

Grrrrrr.

HGTV as fake as we always thought

Like many of you, I stopped watching garden shows on HGTV when they effectively dropped the G. But during my recent adventure in the buying and selling of houses one each I watched their real estate shows like a crazywoman. Could not get enough of them, as fake as they seemed. Especially fake-seeming is the formula of presenting all homeowners having to choose between just three, and exactly three homes, to fit into half-hour segments, I suppose.

Still, I felt like I was picking up bits of useful information about what people want in a home they might buy. Like granite countertops the absence of which sends some potential buyers right back out the door. And another, more disheartening one that the absence of a yard or even a tree or two is often seen as a good thing. Ill never forget the alarm on one shoppers face at the sight of a tree-filled back yard. That means bugs! she shrieked, before instructing her realtor to focus on high-rise apartments, which is clearly where she belongs.

And kinda fun, though not helpful, is House Hunters International, which showed me what a million bucks U.S. will buy in New Zealand. Turns out, surprisingly little.

But back to the fakiness of HGTVs real estate programming. One hard-working blogger did some actual legwork like real journalists sometimes do! - contacting people whose real estate dealings had been featured on HGTV, and told the sordid results in her story What it was like to be on the show. Among her discoveries was that HGTV will wait until a buyer has already finished with their shopping and closed on a house before choosing them as a supposed home-shopper. Then to film the episode, the so-called shopper had to scramble to find houses to tour and pretend we were considering. Some of the properties werent even for sale; they were homes of friends.

The blogger found these other truth about stories behind the curtain that is HGTV:

• The Truth About House Hunters
• What Happened to Suzanne Whang?
• The Truth About Designed to Sell
• Sandra Rinomato Quits Property Virgins
• Want Ahmed Back on Yard Crashers?

Notice that last link is about a gardening show? Okay, yard, but close enough. Yeah, turns out they still have two of them, more or less The Outdoor Room with Jamie Drurie, which admittedly may be more about furnishing than gardening, and Yard Crashers with Ahmed Hassan, whos not just good-looking and personable but an actual landscaper. Seems hes being quietly replaced with no explanation with a licensed contractor. Why are we not surprised?

Revisiting the wasteland for gardeners that HGTV has become makes me nostalgic for the relatively good old days of gardening on that channel. Remember the goofy but damned knowledgeable (and organic) Paul James (shown here dining in Baltimore)? Remember the wonderful in-depth garden tours and interviews that actual horticulturist Erica Glasener did on her show Gardeners Diary? (Shown here in a photo also taken in Baltimore. See, there used to be TV hosts worth driving up I-95 to hang out with.)

Well, at least Hulu is still showing us some of Ericas wonderful episodes, just a few at a time, but they rotate them. Click here and weep.

Samsung pushes innovation with its 2012 appliance line

The largest French-door refrigerator in its class and a washing machine that will notify your smart phone when the laundry is done were among the innovations on display at Samsung's Make Your House Work Event, held yesterday at Milk Studios in downtown Manhattan. Ranges, dryers, and other appliances joined the unveiling of 2012 products.

To help talk up the new product lines, Samsung brought in a panel of lifestyle gurus, including Liz Pryor of Good Morning America; Christina Stanley-Salerno, founder of TakeBackYourTable.com; and Julie Morgenstern, a professional organizer and best-selling author of Organizing From The Inside Out.

Some of the new innovations were a harder sell than others. Take the Grocery Manager app on Samsung's new four-door refrigerator with wifi-enabled LCD screen, model RF4289, $3,500. Is it really a time-saver to have to manually enter your groceries into the app, plus their expiration dates, so that the fridge can then notify you when foods are about to spoil? Whatever happened to checking the milk carton? More useful is the ability to access Epicurious from the fridge to get recipe ideas for those items inside. And the Google Calendar app is a helpful organizing tool for busy households that keeps the fridge from being plastered with sticky notes.

The biggest-in-class refrigerator distinction belongs to Samsung's new RF323TE, $3,300, with a 32 claimed-cubic-foot capacity that beats the previous leaders from LG and Kenmore. The question with these super-size refrigerators is still whether so much storage space is really necessary. For example, Samsung says its new behemoth will hold up to 32 bags of groceries, a larger haul than most households will likely see each week. But if capacity is your top priority, this new Samsung could be promising.

Among ranges, the news continues to be induction, which more consumers are embracing. Samsung's current 30-inch induction range, $1,700, makes our recommended list. The new model NE597N0, $2,000, adds a flexible cooking surface for griddles and a nifty boil sensor that automatically reduces the heat to a preset level once the contents in a pot reach a boil.

As for laundry equipment, smart technologies were again the big story, though some seem more useful than others. A huge benefit for consumers is the dryer sensors on models DV456 and DV457 dryers, $1,100 and $1,700 respectively, which detect clogs in the duct work, greatly reducing the risk of fire. These sensors should really be on all dryers. The smart phone app that provides status updates and lets you start, stop and pause the machines has less practical value, though some consumers may find it useful.

In sum, Samsung continues to assert itself as one of the most innovative appliance manufacturers. And in past tests, many of its appliances have been adept at the basics too, whether it's getting clothes clean or maintaining consistent temperatures in the refrigerator. We'll let you know if that's still the case when these latest appliances arrive to our appliance testing labs.

Patience With the Experiment

Future perfect

Though gardeners are supposed to put down roots, Ive made an awful lot of vegetable gardens in the last decade. When I first bought a weekend place in the country, I made a garden right behind the house. It worked well in high summer, but my fall crops did nothing. When the sun got lower in the sky in late summer, shade from some giant white pines, even though they were at a considerable distance, became a problem.

So I made another garden, in a fertile boggy sunny spot which I loved and which was perfect in every way, as soon as I figured out I needed to spend one muddy April on my belly in a trench, nailing cage wire to a fence to keep out the groundhogs.

Then I helped make a first garden at my daughters elementary school. We were given a spot on the east side of the school, and once again, shade turned out to be a problem, in this case, a sheet of afternoon shade cast by the building. So we moved the garden to a better corner of the schoolyard, to a spot that had the worst soil Id ever seen in my lifelifeless sand compacted by 80 years of traffic by small feet into cement. Yet in year three, after two years of intense application of city-provided compost and this year, a more casual sprinkling of second-cut hay, that garden is beautiful.

Last year, I decided my weekend garden in the country was no longer working for me, since my kids various interests no longer allowed us any freedom on Saturdays. So I made a new garden in the city, just by wheelbarrowing city compost over my sod. New garden, new troubles. Id never seen seedlings eaten off by cutworms before. Seedlings Id babysat for months in the basement. The only proper reaction is operatichair tearing, arm waving, anguished shrieking.

I seem to have solved that puzzle by mulching heavily last fall. Apparently, cutworm moths like to lay their eggs in grass and weeds, not on a blanket of maple leaves.

But my garden has other irritations. I sat on my screened porch this year and watched a squirrel just casually lift out a lemongrass plant Id rooted and pampered for months in a sunny window. The squirrel carried it up a treeand then five minutes later came back for the other lemongrass plant. (What is it about lemongrass? Its also the only plant in my garden that my dog likes to eat.)

Now that Ive seen that performance, I think I understand a few other crime scenes, including a young gooseberry plant found half-dead beside its empty hole.

Ive also noticed a lack of germination in the garden that puzzled me. It wasnt until I planted my pole beans and saw that the ones on the lawn side of the arches were fine, while the ones in the garden were nowhere to be seen, that I realized squirrels were responsible here, too: They were eating my seeds.

I dont know what the answer to this question is. My husband and my kids like to set up targets in the country and shoot at them for fun. But they have yet to do anything violent or useful with their weapons. And this is a city. I think if we tried to shoot squirrels here, wed be arrested.

Also, Ive been shocked to realize how pernicious the influence of the Norway spruces on the north side of the garden are. Thanks to the greed of their roots, the second half of the garden barely limps along. Potatoes seem fine. Other crops just dont quite work.

In other words, Ive been a vegetable gardener for 20 years, but nonetheless, I currently have some very serious problems.

But I also have faith: by improving my timing and tinkering with simple tools such as mulch, water, compost, fencingand our fantastic local tree removal guyIll get it right eventually.

Id like to give that information to beginners. Vegetable gardens take a few years to figure out. Have patience. They tend to be halting at first, and then they are ridiculously beautiful and productive.

When it's hot, help your refrigerator keep its cool

A refrigerator that hums along when the weather is fine may start to stress out when temperatures rise and humidity is high. The refrigerator has to work harder to do its job and that'll cost you. In addition to telling your teenager not to hold the door open while deciding what to eat next, there are a few simple things you can do to keep your refrigerator performing at its best and keeping food fresh.

To keep food safe, refrigerators should maintain a temperature between 35 and 38 degrees F and the freezer 0 degrees. Setting the temperature too high puts your food at risk of spoiling and setting it too low wastes energy. If your refrigerator doesn't have a built-in thermometer use an appliance thermometer. Here are some other tips from the U.S. departments of Energy and Agriculture.

Keep it clean. The front grill should be kept free of dust and lint to permit free air flow to the condenser. Several times a year clean the condenser coil with a brush or vacuum cleaner to remove dirt, lint or other accumulations to ensure top performance.

Give it space. Make sure your refrigerator isn't pushed up against a wall so air can circulate freely and better disperse heat from the condenser. Leave a few inches between the wall and the refrigerator.

Keep it airtight. Over time, gaskets and seals can become leaky. To test your door, hold a piece of paper or dollar bill on the door frame and close the door. If you can pull it out easily, the seal or gasket may need replacing.

Keep food covered. Cover liquids and wrap foods before storing them. Uncovered food and beverages release moisture into the unit making the compressor work harder.

Watch door storage. The temperature of the storage bins in the door fluctuate more than the temperature in the cabinet so don't store perishable foods in the door. Eggs should be stored in the carton on a shelf.

Don't overload it. Adding too many room-temperature items such as cans of soda or bottles of juice causes your refrigerator to work harder at cooling. Just add enough to cover your needs for a day or two.

Defrost often. If you're unlucky enough to have a refrigerator with manual defrost don't allow the frost to build up more than a quarter of an inch.

The best way to save energy is to replace an old refrigerator, especially one built before 1993. Newer Energy Star units cost half as much to operate as those made back then. When Consumer Reports tests refrigerators it rates their energy efficiency and also calculates how much each model costs to run a year, based on average utility rates. And if you don't need one, skip the ice-maker, which can increase energy use by up to 20 percent a year.

Grazing My Way Through The Lull

Cmon, lets go!

Though Ive been doing a vegetable garden for 20 years, I often rue my stupidity at this particular moment, when, if Im not vigilant, there is nothing in the garden to eat. This season, weve already had lots of nice spring meals of sugar snap peas and favas, garlic scapes, spinach, cilantro, and arugula.

But now the favas and sugar snaps are burning up in the heat, and the spinach and cilantro have gone to seed. Ditto the arugula, possibly the single most important vegetable to my health and happiness. And its gone so to seed, that there arent even any side leaves worth harvesting off the stems.

But the next wave of great meals hasnt yet started. No eggplants yet, no peppers, no tomatoes, no potatoes, no cucumbers, no summer squashes, no pole beans. Even the beets, a cool-weather crop, are not quite ready. The beet greens at least are nice, but I dont have an easy time of it when I try to feed my kids a load of oxalic acid at every single meal.I made my first pesto this week, but only by denuding the poor young little basil plants more than I really should have.

An intelligent gardener would have anticipated the mass going-to-seed that always accompanies the summer solstice and planted a second crop of arugula and cilantro, plus a bunch of other lettuces, in early June. The stupid gardener but intrepid cookmejust makes due with whats out there. Yesterday afternoon, there were exactly 5 okra pods waiting for me. Okay! I scissored off some of my cutting celery and bay leaves, yanked out a few young leeks and bought some Price Chopper peppers. Andouille sausage from the Putnam Market, one of my buddy Ricks chickens from the freezer, and there you gogumbo! It was delicious.

In two or three weeks, Ill have an insane bounty in my garden. Its frustrating that its so stingy now. But the upside is that I do all my best cooking in the lulls. The lack of any one thing in abundance inspires creativity and a light hand. Ive watched my sister-in-law Nawho is Thai and a professional cookmake a meal out of nothing from my garden in the lull, too. A couple of black garbanzo beans, a little chard, maybe some carrot tops. The result is a feast.

Making dousing a little of this and a little of thatI suspect its the method of all great home cooks from time immemorial.

Two new winners top Consumer Reports' refrigerator Ratings

Consumer Reports has a new top-rated refrigerator in the ever-popular French-door category, a 28-claimed-cubic-foot LG that comes loaded with features, though at $2,700 it's priced higher than a lot of the competition. Our latest Ratings also reveal a new number one among among built-ins, Thermador's 20-claimed-cubic-foot conventional bottom-freezer that sells for $7,400. If you're looking to spend less, our complete refrigerator Ratings of more than 240 models include about 30 CR Best Buys, which combine top performance with a competitive price tag.

LG's new French-door refrigerator scored an excellent for temperature performance in our tests, plus it has dual evaporators, which tend to maintain higher humidity levels in the fresh-food section and can help keep refrigerator odors from migrating to the freezer. In terms of features, the LG offers through-the-door ice and water dispensers that can accommodate pitchers and other tall containers, humidity-controlled crisper drawers, and a full-extension meat/deli drawer.

What vaulted the LG to the top of our Ratings, however, is its exceptional energy efficiency, which the manufacturer attributes to the enhanced design of its linear compressor motor. The model's listed annual energy consumption of 451 kilowatt hours qualifies it for the Energy Star program's Most Efficient distinction, designed to single out the true overachievers for energy efficiency. We estimate the refrigerator will cost about $54 per year to operate, $20 to $30 less than some other models, which will help make up for its relatively steep purchase price.

Moving to the built-in Thermador, excellent temperature performance and quiet operation helped catapult it to the top of its category. Like the LG, it features dual evaporators for added freshness, and it adds LED theater lighting for maximum visibility. The bottom-freezer's full-height door (without the exposed venting grille) and its pre-assembled panel kit allow for seamless integration with the surrounding cabinetry. The Energy Star-qualified model is also fairly efficient and should cost around $59 per year to operate, based on our tests.

One other model of note from our latest round of refrigerator tests is the Kenmore Elite 7206, which features a unique compartment in the top right door, dubbed the Grab-N-Go. Accessed with the push of a button, it's designed for frequently used items, for example beverages, snacks, and condiments. While the $3,400 French-door fridge narrowly missed our recommended list, it was still judged very good overall, with solid temperature performance and efficiency and excellent noise control.

For more information on refrigerators, including data on the most and least reliable brands, go to Consumer Reports' refrigerator buying guide.

Five ways to live large in a small kitchen

A small kitchen can quickly become cluttered and feel cramped. To maximize the space you have, rethink where you store things, especially if counter space is at a premium. A few small upgrades can make a big improvement. Here are five ways to make every available inch count.

1. The placement of the dishwasher is key. Choose a location near the sink but where the dishwasher won't stop traffic when the door is open. Remember to think about access to other appliances too. You don't want the dishwasher door to block the refrigerator door, for example.
2. Incorporate a landing spot for food by the refrigerator and for pots and pans on at least one side of the stove. These small details can easily improve your kitchen's efficiency.
3. Install roll-out cabinets where possible. A roll-out spice rack near the range is a great use of space and eliminates clutter on the countertop or in a cabinet.
4. Drawers and pull-out shelves are very handy. They're a perfect way to store pots, pans, kitchen tools and even dishware. Most commercial cabinets can be outfitted with pull-out shelves and other organizers.
5. Before making any updates, take an inventory of everything you need and use in your kitchen and where it's kept. Remember to plan storage for small, easily overlooked items such as pot holders and plastic bags.

For our new Kitchen Remodeling Guide, Consumer Reports talked to designers, manufacturers and our own experts to help you design a kitchen that fits your lifestyle and your budget. Included in the report are our top-rated appliances and the best places to buy them.

Adapted from Consumer Reports Kitchen Planning & Buying Guide, on newsstands now.

Find a contractor who won't rip you off or ruin your project

The right contractor can ensure your remodel runs smoothly—saving you headaches and money in the process. But hiring the right pro isn't always easy. Start by asking friends and neighbors for referrals or visit the website of the National Association of Home Builders, for a list of local builders' associations, which will offer referrals. Then, follow these steps.

Do a background check
Once you have a list of possible candidates, call the Better Business Bureau to ask about complaint histories. One or two gripes shouldn't necessarily induce you to look elsewhere. But be wary of a contractor with more problems than that.

Check licenses and insurance
Ask to see each contractor's license and proof of insurance. If you arrange to have work done by an unlicensed or uninsured contractor, you may be liable for injuries or damages that occur.

Check references
Request a list of recent clients. Call each one and ask penetrating questions like these:

• Would you hire this pro again?
  
• How would you rate his/her work?
  
• How did the contractor handle cleanup each day?
  
• Was the contractor easy to talk to?
  
• How did the contractor handle differences and work changes?
  
• Was the job completed on time and at the bid? If not, why not?
  

It can also be a smart move to ask the contractor for a list of his or her building-material suppliers. Call them to find out whether the contractor has an account or pays for items upon delivery. Most suppliers are willing to extend credit to financially reliable contractors—an indicator the pro runs his or her business well.

For more information from the experts at Consumer Reports as well as kitchen and bath designers see our guides to updating your kitchen and remodeling your bathroom. Both reports include the top-performers from our tests of appliances and home improvement products.

Adapted from Consumer Reports Kitchen Planning & Buying Guide, on newsstands now.

GE swings for the fences with its new French-door fridge

GE's latest line of French-door bottom-freezer refrigerators won't be available for weeks in most markets, but the Louisville-based manufacturer is already looking like Babe Ruth calling his home run shot in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series. First came Freshpedition, the slick reality-TV-inspired ad campaign that GE ran online earlier in the month. Then yesterday, GE announced its plan to add 380 second shift production employees to its Appliance Park plant in Louisville, Kentucky later in the summer "in anticipation of exceptional sales."

Give GE credit for believing in its product, not to mention creating new jobs in the USA. "Our customers are extremely excited about our industry-leading ice and water dispenser technology with features like Hands-free Autofill, which automatically fills almost any container with filtered water and a hot water dispenser, capable of serving up tea and oatmeal in minutes," said Paul Surowiec, refrigeration product general manager at GE Appliances, in the news release. "We are adding additional production capacity to ensure we can meet the demand."

Consumer Reports' product specialists have seen the new GE French-door refrigerator at press events, where they were impressed by the ice and water dispenser. But we won't be able say if GE really knocked it out of the park until we purchase a new unit and get it into our test labs.

GE doesn't make our current recommended list for bottom-freezer or top-freezer refrigerators because past models with icemakers have been repair-prone. GE says its latest icemakers benefit from an enhanced design. Besides testing the performance of the new French-door fridge, we will keep track of its repair rate.

Irregular Black Box-Shaped Residence in Tokyo: Hansha Reflection House

Hansha Reflection House is a diverse architecture project in Tokyo, envisioned and implemented by Studio SKLIM. The residence is situated at the entrance of a picturesque park and built with the purpose of taking in its healthy environment. With an exterior that reflects the surrounding landscape, the name of the house comes as no surprise. The outer form also reflects the inner structure: “The programmatic zones of Public, Service and Private spatially organized the house into 3 distinct zones with further punctuation of the main massing with the Landscape element; providing spaces for the courtyard and roof deck. This base form was further chiseled with structure, daylight/ventilation and viewpoint concerns”. The interiors are minimalist, airy and spacious, paying tribute to functionality. Overlooking the park, the living room, kitchen and dining room are combined into a single space which also acts as the core of the project.

Fresh Timisoara Lounge Design Hiding Trombones In the Bathroom

Jazzissimo Lounge in Timisoara’s recently renovated Theresia Bastion captures the essence of relaxation in a carefully designed space. In this new urban environment that encompasses the original Vauban style bastion built three centuries ago, a contemporary, sophisticated lounge welcomes guests with an impressive interior design hosted in the shell of an inspiring historical building. Imagined by Stefan Lazar and Adrian Hanas of Romanian studio Ezzo Design, this intimate collection of spaces shape another successful project, after the Fresh, Work-Empowering X3 Offices Design. The two zones – the jazz area and the lounge club – merge colors and materials to offer two distinct entertaining spaces: “The authenticity of each area has been transposed through the designer's feelings and covered in two different, unique shapes: the colors and the masculinity of the jazz area and the young environment given by the lounge club“.

Prepared to construct an elegant, fresh atmosphere around 100 people, Jazzissimo Lounge also has a few other hard to ignore features, photographed by Andi Popescu: “If we take into consideration the jazz area, well the entire atmosphere is drowned in cultured colors and shapes, through natural materials such as wood and leather: in other words Earth Green color and the subtle character of round shaped wood which invest nothing but refinement. In the jazz area there is hidden a VIP smoking lounge, all covered in whiskey steam and fine cigars, sophisticated talks, catchy ganders and meticulous smiles which all lead to British style. Above this small, intimate universe, we see the stage, a friendly welcoming area for the artists, which is also providing one of the most professionals systems L-Acoustics. In this land of jazz, the toilet is hiding the presence of trombones, handed over to the gentlemen, all drowned in warm lights and colors, wearing the same air of refinement. The women's toilet is all natural, with delicate notes, discrete lines and a touch of vintage.” In an interview for Freshome, Stefan Lazar shared his plans for the future: “A thriving development both personally and professionally. I yearn at creating and maintaining a high standard of values so that our hopes and our clients' outspoken and hidden necessities meet harmoniously“. After seeing this project, we think he’s on the right track, are we right?