One positive aspect of Bed Bath & Beyond is that when you come in to register for gifts as a soon-to-be-wed couple, the staff treats you like royalty. When they hand you that item zapper you feel awesome. The kind of awesome that can only be satisfied by good old fashioned American consumerism. You yearn to zap everything you ever saw on TV, every slap-chop, blender, food processor, fluffy blanket, and towel you can find. And zap you will, because Bed Bath and Beyond has a rather large selection of items.

Despite the wide selection, however, I think the high prices, poor discounts, and overall uselessness of the store make BB&B a poor registry choice. If you're going to over-pay for kitchen accessories I think you should go all out and pick a high end registry store such as Sur La Table or Williams Sonoma instead of Bed Bath and Beyond. If you're going to make your guests buy you expensive stuff, make it expensive stuff that will last forever.

Why I like Kohl's.

Kohl's already has good prices when things are not on sale. The bonus is that Kohl's almost always has a sale going on. I get Kohl's advertisements even more frequently than Bed Bath & Beyond. Case in point: Kohl's regularly has specials to discount 15% your entire purchase. They have early bird sales, night owl sales, weekday sales, secret sales, you name it. After discounts you would probably bay about half of what you would pay at BB&B. The selection of kitchen items may be limited but Kohl's has enough decent Calphalon and KitchenAid and OXO stuff to competently fill a kitchen at a price that won't leave your guests hating you. And, when everybody ends up giving you gift cards you will still be able to use the money to buy some Levi's jeans, shoes, and perhaps some cheap jewelry and/or perfume -- stuff you can't get at Bed Bath and Beyond.

Visit Deals.Waitingfor.me for an up-to-date list of discounts and promotions at Kohl's as well as the Kohl's online catalog.

The Oxo Good Grips Salad Spinner that we put on the registry has become literally an every day item. The salad spinner has become indispensable in our kitchen and if it breaks we will undoubtedly replace it. If you've been eating wet salad like we were,  decently dry leaves after a spin will be like night and day.

We don't use it to just spin salad. It's good for getting the excess moisture off all of our miscellaneous produce items like grapes, herbs, all sorts of stuff. We generally chose Oxo products and the salad spinner in particular has been great and easy to use.

Of the many items that we received from our wedding registry, I have to say the pressure cooker has been one of the most beloved new additions to our kitchen. We got a medium-sized Fagor Stainless Steel Pressure Cooker that has been awesome for making some great weekend meals in less than half the time. Because it's so quick I use it pretty regularly. It is a good quick alternative to a crock pot although the crock pot's "set it and forget it" method is handy. Pressure cooking requires vigilance on the part of the cook.

Whereas making oxtail soup -- one of my favorites to make at home -- used to take 3-4 hours to get nice tender tails the pressure cooker achieves equal fork-tender meat in about 45 minutes. The only difference is that pressure-cooked vegetables seem to have a different texture. The design of the Fagor cooker can be precarious because when you release the pressure valve it blasts steam which certainly is a burn risk. Definitely not something you want kids to be handling.

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