The best $89 + tax I ever spent at Costco was for a Cuisinart Griddler last month.  I have been waiting for Costco to get this guy in for a few years now, holding off buying it on sale at Macy’s.  I always knew this would not be like some of the other gadgets we had to have, like that Buttoneer or Kitchen Magician, which were used once and then tossed in the back of some cabinet.  For grilled cheese alone the Griddler is worth the price of admission.  I have to admit that the controls are cheap and feel spongy, and I wondered if this was true only of the Costco version, but I saw the same problem on Griddlers elsewhere.  Since I will use this exclusively for panini, I will be turning only one knob on a regular basis, so I figure this should be OK.  This thing easy to use, and the grill and griddle plates snap on and off in a flash, and are dishwasher-safe.  The only problem I have is that all my counter space is below cabinets, and you need quite a bit of head room to open and close a Griddler, and to adjust the jaws to the thickness of your food while in mid-grill.  This is a small price to pay, however, for the excellent grilled sammies you can make.  This has been a huge help in turning bad bread into something edible.  My mother, being a senior, manages to bring home all kinds of bread and rolls that are donated by local bakeries to the senior centers she goes to.  Needless to say, these are items that were not purchased, so they’re usually odd, day-old or both.  The rolls that entered the house yesterday were some sort of round honey-wheat belly bombs with terrible texture, being that they had been suffocated by a plastic bag.  I split them, loaded them up with some Safeway-brand aged sharp New York cheddar, rubbed a little oil on the grill plates, and let ’em rip until they were oozing.  So good!  I mention the cheese here because I never saw this at Safeway before.  It was on sale, looked like a black-wax knock-off, so I gave it a go.  Very good!