The best investment was a connection hose for the sodastream that lets me use industrial co2 tanks. That 13kg tank has lasted me 1.5 years already and is so much cheaper and hassle free-er than the tiny things that cost 20 euros a pop at the supermarket.

Mind sharing the parts involved and how to put this together? Wife drinks a lot of sodastream. Thanks

I’d be interested to know where you get the industrial tank too. I read it needs to be food grade.

I wonder why no one has made an open source Soda stream that connects to the big tanks right out of the box in a thoughtful way. Or better yet, a system for refilling the sodastream tanks from a large canister so that the sodastream can still sit easily in your counter.

Not OP, but in my experience you can pretty much always buy food-grade CO2 tanks from homebrewing shops. They usually do refills and exchanges too, as well as selling all the hosing and gaskets and clamps and whatnot you'd need.

Just make sure you're getting Co2 can from beverage suppliers (and not industrial places)

You can get Co2 tank and parts from beer supply company.

https://www.morebeer.com/category/co2-tanks-regulators-parts...

plenty YT videos on how to put them together.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Cb43p5dJBE

I'd never risk that. The pressure that builds up in such a tank, and what happens if you were to somehow dent the tank should scare the crap out of you.

Have you handled any of the industrial tanks?

They are absolutely massive. The tank that holds 13kg itself weighs about 30kg. So the amount of force to 'dent' that amount of steel would need to be ridiculous.

The weakest part is (by design) the valve. Technically I rent the bottle and buy the gas. Each refill is an exchange of the bottle after which the bottle gets pressure tested, etc.

I would love to see that setup! Can you share it please? I may want to do that as well

I got an adapter hose from co2 supermarket [0] that fits my local standards.

I also added a standard regulator to my setup because I trust it more than the sodastream, tho the pressure rating of the sodastream should be enough.

Then I got a tank of food-grade co2 from my local supplier. I guess welding grade co2 would be good enough as well, but as the price difference was non-existent it was a no-brainer.

When you get a regulator, make sure you get the highest flow-rate you can find as some of them will be problematic to get enough pressure for your beverage.

Mine does not go nowhere as high as the regular sodastream bottles directly, but the result is that it takes me an extra 10 seconds per bottle to get the same result.

[0] - https://www.co2supermarket.co.uk/adapters-for-co2-regulators...

Asking to a pro if Air fryer worh buing he said: "think about professional kitchen. If you found something in a restaurant then can be helpful even for no pro. But I never ever saw air fryer in a pro kitchen. It s Just a low quality Owen. Just marketing. If you have a good Owen you dont need air fryer"

An air fryer that does a good job can be had for under £100. Show me a pro-level oven in the same price range and I'd buy one of them. As it stands, I use the air fryer.

Because they're a lot smaller? Anyway your house/flat probably came with an oven, so it's 'free'; the 'under £100' for a countertop oven/air fryer is additional.

Assuming you only look at electric fan ovens (the vast vast vast majority these days) more money buys you better insulation mainly. A brand too of course (maybe better R&D/thought gone into the controls/ergonomics etc. hand in hand with that) - but not somehow better food.

'Pro-level' ones obviously cost more, buying reliability & service primarily. Still not somehow better food, don't buy a commercial oven for a home kitchen.

I've never rented a place that came with a convection oven. When I recently purchased a home, the oven that was here was also not a convection oven. An air fryer is just a small convection oven that sits on the countertop. But this has real benefits. You get better browning by being close to the element. It is more energy-efficient because it heats far less air. You get the benefits of convection. They also tend to be much easier to clean.

There are costs - you waste counterspace and you need to own another thing. But "just buy a convection oven" isn't an option for a lot of people.

Interesting, where (country) do you live that that's the case?

Honestly, if they didn't put separate fan temperature/time on the back of stuff (increasingly they don't actually, more and more I'm seeing fan only) I'd honestly never have known anything else existed. I've never lived anywhere with one, didn't see any for sale when I bought one (to replace broken one) a couple of years ago. (UK)

US.

I think that surprises me even more, because aren't 'toaster ovens' - essentially duplicating grills/'broilers' - already commonplace? So this trend is a second appliance to partially duplicate something a third, in many cases, already does.

Personally I think I'd rather just replace the oven for one with a fan and grill, reclaim all that countertop, but at this point there is probably just a large cultural factor at play.

I don't know why are you so against an air fryer. Not all apartments in some countries come with ovens. It's a great device and many people love it. I get this impression you are just minmaxing it without trying it.

It's the marketing of them that rubs me the wrong way. If they were 'mini ovens' or 'countertop ovens' or whatever, fine, and I have no problem with anybody having, wanting, or liking one while understanding that is all it is.

It's largely from disappointment - I assumed initially that they were designed to save oil vs. a deep fryer, that they blasted jets or misted oil over the food. That I think would be novel and interesting.

As it is, if you have an oven already, the RoI is too long to do it on a cost basis. Maybe there's an argument of time-saving as they pre-heat a smaller box quicker? Hardly takes long as it is, I think that's a stretch.

If you don't already have an oven, then yes, if the capacity is not a problem then it's a great option, they start cheaper than bigger ovens... Obviously I suppose.

(I suppose I shouldn't have generalised so much above - I was speaking from my experience in the UK. Other than perhaps a tiny studio flat (single room apartment, no separate bedroom) I would think it's pretty much unheard of to rent somewhere without one here; buying it would normally (almost always) be included, but if not there'd be an obvious gap where yours or your newly purchased one would go.)

Strong opinions from someone who hasn't tried it yet.

I'm sure there's plenty of things you've never owned that you nonetheless know you don't want to?

Anyway, in the very first line of my comment I said it's the marketing that I have a problem with; I have 'tried' the marketing.

My selfmade chips are way better from my air fryer than the oven.

> My selfmade chips are way better from my [tabletop oven] than the [integrated/under-counter/floorstanding] oven

Something is different - it's not that one was sold as 'air fryer'.

My air fryer has a spinning thing in the middle, wich turns my chips around, so i would say thats a plus! But yea, it is basicly a small oven. Maybe it uses less energie.

By virtue if being smaller it does yes - there's an argument for using as small an oven as possible for sure - but the return on investment of that for having multiple different sized ovens is bound to be longer than the product's lifetime.

(I broke my oven door, rather than pay £150 plus labour opted to pay £280 for a new oven. That was a Bosch, certainly not the cheapest possible.)

Personally the return on the air fryer for me is a direct result of it being smaller. For most things my larger kitchen oven needs time to preheat. That's an additional step that isn't required when I just want to roast some vegetables / meat or heat some frozen potato products quickly in the air fryer. This time / extra step is well worth cost for me ($20 of fb marketplace).

Home ovens are also just low quality ovens. Not a good analogy.

Air fryers should really be called individual ovens. They’re basically the same but more efficient

It's not possible to fry without oil or another type of grease, and that's by definition. Did you notice that to use your air fryer you need to use oil anyway? There's a fantastic debunking video on YouTube about that. Unfortunately it's in Italian only.

[https://youtu.be/kea9limMp7U]

Thus the term "air fryer." The idea is that you get results similar to frying but only via heated air. Does this marketing really merit "debunking?"

Yes, exactly. Problem being that it does not fry with air, but with the oil that you need to put in it anyway to fry your chips. That's the thing to be debunked, that air can not fry anything and to fry you need oil or grease. Seems that almost everybody is blindly believing to the marketing name instead of actually realising that the item is still frying with oil. The oil that they put in it. C'mon.

I don't understand. Is anybody actually confused by this? It is just a word.

Do you get bothered by recipes that have you drizzle oil on vegetables and then roast them?

It's about being correct.

Almost none of the terms we use are "correct" in some absolute sense.

No queen has ever slept in my queen sized bed, nor am I aware of any rectangularly shaped queens. My airpods aren't made of air. When we combine words or even parts of words we don't produce meaning by simply summing the meaning of the parts.

Absolutely zero harm is caused by calling something an "air fryer" rather than a "countertop convection oven", especially since "air fryer" more easily conveys the idea that you can cook things like french fries in one reasonably effectively without deep frying in oil.

Oh, I agree with you. People just love being technically correct (the best kind of correct) on the internet for some reason. Is an air fryer actually a convection oven, yes, but do I care, no.

Yea everyone knows how they work, you aren't lifting the veil here. But as other comments point out, air fryers are actually very similar to ovens. You seem to be confused that the word "fryer" means that they need oil. Oil is optional, just like in an oven. Would you call oven cooked chicken "fried" because it was basted in olive oil? The same chicken can be air-fried, basted or not. Even then, basted chicken, and basted potato chips, use far less oil than an oil fryer. This has some health benefit, it's also way more convenient.

Apart from being clever marketing, I believe they use the word "fryer" to describe the immersion in a very evenly and highly heated fluid, in this case air. While not very different from a fan-forced oven, the design of a small chamber with a vented basket and high air circulation does create a more uniform thermal environment over the entire surface area of the food, than the usual convection oven with a flat tray.

What is good about the massage gun?

Saved me from having to get massages. I use it for my neck from sitting at the computer all day. It's also been useful for super random things like punching cushions outside or some random thing. I've seen someone use it to help them sift flour easily.

I heard not to use them on your neck.

Usually it's actually trapezoideus pain that you feel in your neck, so you don't have to pound your neck, just the trap muscles.

Just another good way to help relieve chronic pain. Amazon holiday sales and market oversaturation are bringing them down to US $60-70 now. Gave the spouse one for Christmas, she used it on her shoulders (rotator cuff) and back and didn’t turn it off for at least 45 minutes.

I’d also recommend a TENS unit, can also be found for cheap ($20-40). Both can vastly improve pain management without relying as much on medications.

Why massage gun?