Holy crap, the head just dropped mid-knead?! That's terrifying. I thought mine was bad when the speed control lever snapped off but at least the damn thing stayed shut. Did the dough hook punch a hole through your bowl or just scratch it up? I'd be sending angry emails to KitchenAid with pictures, that sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen.

foil turns your bark into soggy mess here, paper's the only way to go for that heavy humidity.

My buddy Frank from down the street actually uses a clean paint tray from Home Depot as his water pan in his offset. He drilled a couple holes in the lip and hung it from the grate hooks. Works perfect and costs like 4 bucks instead of 30 for a stainless one. I tried it once and the only issue was the plastic started warping a little after a long cook, so I switched to the metal version.

@davis.mia is right... I used to skip blankets till I saw a slab spiderweb on me.

That little $12 pinless meter from Harbor Freight caught a leak for me in a bathroom I would have never found otherwise... I was checking a shower pan and it kept giving weird readings near the corner, so I poked around more and sure enough, there was a slow drip behind the tile that had just started softening the drywall on the other side. The guy who owned the house had installed it himself and thought it was bulletproof, but that cheap little thing saved me from missing a huge insurance claim down the road. I still use it all the time now, even though I bought a nicer one later... sometimes the simple stuff just works better for spot checks. It made me stop being such a snob about tools honestly, because a $30 meter that finds a real problem is worth more than a $300 one that sits in the truck.