Letter carrier dropped off the new Tilia FoodSaver about 1130 today. It
is so much more versatile than my old FoodSaver Compact II, now about
ten or twelve years old and has a broken latch. This one is the model
V2440 and has the following attributes including about half again wider
than the Compact II: Has a place to store the accessory hose, pen
storage, roll storage (internal), built in bag cutter and cutter bar,
easy clean drip tray (took a dish cloth wrapped on a pencil on the old
one), and an extra-wide sealing strip. This thing has a complete control
panel too with adjustable food settings, accessory port, two speed
settings, an instant seal button that will reseal mylar chip bags to
keep the bag sealed air-tight, separate buttons to seal bags or
canisters, neat stuff.

With it came a 3/4 quart canister, a 2 quart canister with a cheese
grater, a roll each of 11 inch and 6 inch wide bag material and 5 each 2
quart and one gallon ready-made bags. I've already got the mason jar
sealer and the universal lid so won't need to buy those.

With shipping, ordered from FoodSaver.com it came to 145.94 which is
$5.00 less than the Compact II cost at Sam's Club so long ago.

Haven't used it yet but I'm already happy. Will probably put up several
bags of fresh blanched broccoli tomorrow and maybe I'll put up some bags
of Tatume squash (Thanks Bob Baron) at the same time. I say Thanks to
Bob because this squash grows like a weed, summer or winter. I made a
"pumpkin" pie out of a big Tatume last week and it was delicious and
just the right texture. Rather than use Eagle brand sweetened canned
cream I used canned evaporated skim milk and added Splenda to sweeten it
up, worked fine. It's also time to put up some more moussaka as the
eggplants are outdoing themselves producing those long, slender Ichiban
fruit.

Life is good.

George