1. I have a small one. . . .it's good enough but sometimes I wish for a bigger one.

2. Chop garlic then slice onions and toss the in a pan to sautee.
Make pesto.
Make pizza dough.
Slice cukes, carrots, bell peppers, etc. for salads.

I think those are both pretty large, but I would go for the bigger one.

I have a small Cuisinart - the "mini prep" style that I think holds 4 cups. I use it a lot - mainly for making pesto, hummus, white bean dip, and pie crust. I've definitely run up against the limits of a small one and wish I had a bigger one, but there's nothing really wrong with this one (besides having to make multiple small batches of things) so I'm going to wait until it dies, if it ever does, before upgrading...or maybe someone'll give me one when they upgrade. :)

I was never satisfied with food processors. I found I could do better and faster with a good cleaver for chopping/mincing/(s)mashing or a mixer for mixing. Plus, cleanup is easier. I had a blender when I was into smoothies, but now I prefer eating the fruit as is and topped with yogurt.

Yeah, I know, I always gotta be the contrarian.

There's a buyers guide up on Serious Eats with some stuff to consider (admittedly, from a food nerd perspective).

as for your questions:
1. I use the parental 11-cup and it's pretty alright.
2. I don't use it a whole lot; I think the last thing I did with it was a gigantic batch of pesto (of which there is still some in the freezer.)

I love handchopping too - the processor is good for making stuff really creamy and smooth, though. More than you can do with hand tools. OK, except maybe a molcajete, but still.

There have always been things I wanted to try that I needed a food processor for, and I never had one. Now that I have wedding gift cards to my name, I am going to make the food processor a reality and try all those things (like pie crust, yaaay).

TPS, here's a great recipe from Gourmet which is what got me to try pie crust in the processor. It's MUCH faster than handmixing pie crust!

When I was still eating meat, deviled ham was my favorite. The variations are limitless.

Oh, I love my food processor. I think mine have all been 11- or 12-cup sizes. I've never wished it was bigger; for me, the only advantage to a larger one would be if it also had a stronger motor to handle a full batch of bread dough.

Favorite things would be hard to list, but for a start:

- Hummus. Homemade hummus so steeply outranks bought hummus that they are hardly the same thing.
- Tapenade, if I'm making a lot. (It's pretty fast to chop by hand if I'm just making a few spoonfuls for a garnish or a dip.)
- When my back is especially bad, I make bread dough or pizza dough in it. (If yours will handle this, be sure you read the guidelines; too much dough at once can burn out the motor.)
- Last week, I made chicken liver paté, one of the few dishes I really can't make without a processor.

Hey, Miko, if someone doesn't speak up for our spare f.p., you can absolutely have it if you're willing to come get it.

I have a big one and a wee 4-cup one. The little one I use all the time to chop nuts and chocolate chips and small amounts of things like pesto. The big one has gotten the most use by pureeing soups (I don't have an immersion blender), and also making pie crust. Mmm, easy pie crust.

As for 11-cup versus 14, do you plan on using this to prepare foods for church functions?

I have an 11-cup food processor. The times I've wished for a larger one is when I'm making a big batch of pureed soup or when I'm making sherried pumpkin cheesecake filling (the 11 cup is just a teensy bit too small for that.) For hummus and pesto the 11 cup is plenty of room.

This week, I've used it to make a black bean hummus, chop up bread crumbs, and make homemade vegetable bouillon.

I also really like using the slicing disc to get thinly sliced onions or carrots. I don't have terrific knife skills so the processor does a quicker and thinner slice than I would be able to.

I have an Oster combo food-processor, stick blender, and electric knife. Got it as a requested wedding gift two years ago.

We've used the first two of those and it's been great. It only holds a couple of cups at a time, so you have to batch it out, but it's powerful. If we needed more, we'd probably just use the stick blender option.

Pesto, soups, hummus, etc... it's been the go-to thing. Gave my old food processor to a friend.

Shredding cheese for macaroni & cheese
Making this pound cake
Gazpacho
Shredding zucchini for zucchini bread
Shredding carrots for many purposes
Homemade vegetable bouillon

As for 11-cup versus 14, do you plan on using this to prepare foods for church functions?

Never thought about it! But it's not a bad idea. I try to opt out of preparing food for extra-large functions, though, lol.

You know what I'm really excited for? Homemade Pop Tarts!

If you have more gift card than you need for your food processor (and I use mine regularly for tart dough and pie crust but I also like it for this miso tahini topping among other things, like muhamara), consider adding an immersion blender the kitchen. I never use my food processor for blended soups cause it's too much trouble for me to transfer hot soup back and forth, but the immersion blender is great!

Seconding the fabulousness of the immersion blender. I typically try to think about my kitchen like I'm on a boat - don't want to waste space, need multiuse practical items and not a lot of unecessary tools - but there are certain things that the immersion blender is indispensable for...pureeing soups while they're right in the cooking pot, mainly. Way better than pouring quarts of hot liquid into the food processor and back.

Ooh, immersion blender! I've always wanted one of those!

Alas, I don't have enough gift card for both!

Bigger is totally better. I have a tiny one (because it was $10!) and it's irritating to have to make things in multiple batches. I don't really use mine regularly enough to make it worthwhile and I regret even buying it.

I've used my stick blender once to make some lasagna but then again, it just seemed really gimmicky to me.

Of course, I suspect I'm doing this whole womanly kitchen thing wrong. I use wooden spoons for everything.

Food Processors make turning leftovers into soup insanely easy.

I have this giant Cusinart from the 70's that my mom gave me when they moved to a smaller place. Still has the 70's manual and all the bizarre attachments.

I mostly use it for hummus, which, as mentioned above, totally rocks and is really easy. Also for grinding cashews into powder for an awesome chicken curry with cashews. My wife uses it to make dough/crusts.
But ya, using it for chopping vegetables is kind of ridiculous. Like having a microwave for heating up your coffee.

We've got an 11 cup machine, and it doesn't really pull its' own weight w/r/t countertop space in our small galley kitchen. OTOH, our stick blender has a small processor-bowl type attachment, and we use that sucker all the time.

I got a food processor for christmas a couple years ago and I HATE HATE HATE it. I think it's Hamilton Beach. It's probably not one you would buy -- my mom is a Walmart shopper and goes for the best deal -- but I will tell you the things I HATE HATE HATE about it so that you can watch out for them in other brands.

1. It has suction cup feet. While this is a great idea in principal, it sucks in practice. Those things stick with no encouragement at all. If you set the thing down in the wrong place, it's a pain to move it two inches to the right. Get one that's heavy enough on its own not to walk across the counter when you turn it on.

2. The clearance between the top of the grating blade and the bottom of the feeder tube is too tall, and the 'pusher' thing doesn't reach all the way down. So whatever you're grating, you'll have a 2" chunk of it left mangled and ungrated and stuck between the blade and the cover and useless for anything else.

3. The cover is very difficult to attach to the bowl. For whatever reason, they've made it unnecessarily complicated and wonky.

4. The donut hole in the center of the bowl -- the part where it fits on to the base -- is really short. You can only fill the bowl with liquids up to the top of that hole. This means that even though the bowl is large and will hold lots of sliced vegetables, it doesn't hold very much liquid at all.

5. It doesn't have a good pulse feature. With my blender (a Cuisinart, which I love), the blade stops turning immediately after you let up on the pulse button. With this stupid food processor, the motor stops, but you have to wait for the blade to come to a natural rest. This means that instead of pulse chopping, you end up liquifying your food unintentionally.

Have I mentioned that I HATE HATE HATE this food processor?

My ex had a Cuisinart food processor that was awesome. Sadly, I couldn't hide it from her when she moved out.

Wow, good points all, mudpuppie, especially about the short center tube and its limitations.

Alton Brown gave a pretty nice rundown of what you want in a food processor in the "Crust Never Sleeps" episode [transcript:

More Power is Better
Bottom Mount Motors
On, Off and Pulse Switch
9-11 Cup Capacity
Thick, Heavy Plastic [he's talking about the vessel here, and I can vouch for that: in my experience a thin vessel usually correlates with a weak motor, or poor motor-power transfer
Wide Feed Tube
Flat Top When Not Using Feed Tube

About the motor, he says:

You know, you know total wattage isn't as important as how the power is transferred to the work bowl and bottom mounted motors do this better than side mounted.

I have a big-ish one, with a blender attachment. I use the blender for soups and smoothies and the processor mostly for prep - making soup is a breeze when I can blitz the onions and garlic, and then slice celery and carrots in seconds.

It's also great, as others have said, for things like hummous, baba ghanoujh, tapenade, etc.

You can also make the quickest crumble/crisp topping by blitzing flour, butter and sugar into crumbs, adding oatmeal (for a crisp) and then freezing it in bags. When you want to make a crumble, just take a bag out of the freezer and shake it over the prepared fruit.

This is what I make most frequently in my food processor.

A good FP also significantly reduces prep time for things like fixings for stew / soup.

I do also have an immersion blender. The two are not used for the same things. Immersion blenders are great for very fine-textured smooth creamy soups, FPs are better for chunkier salsas and tapenades and stuff like prepping veggies. They don't "puree" stuff so much as sort of "rice" it using the bottom blade, or you can use the slicer attachments for carrot circles, etc.

I also make huge batches of staples like homemade spaghetti sauce, stew, soup and chili (that I freeze most of for later use) where I use a food processor for all the heavy lifting on the prepwork.

My FP is amazingly sturdy; it's some heavy-duty "wolfgang puck" 4-quart branded thing I got relatively inexpensively at Costco some years back, but it still cost around sixty bucks. Listen to the above advice and if you're going to bother, don't buy a cheap or tiny one, especially if you already have a standard blender.

Ok, it's come down to this 11 cup vs. this 14 cup. Any thoughts?

I think the 11-cup is prettier.

I'd go 14 cup, if you ever have a dinner party and want to cook a ton of stuff, that is the one you will want. Plus it is just such a solid workhorse. Can't be the classic! (It is the one I have too, I rarely use it but when I do I am glad it just works and isn't fussy.)

I like the size of the 14-cup bowl, but would prefer the controls on the 11-cup model. Drat!

But you know what? 11 cups is a lot of food. So I think I'd be okay with it in the end.

In the end, I picked up the beautiful 14-cup (and an ice cream scoop). Hurray! Man, that thing was a PAIN to carry- so heavy!

Fresh steakburger for Twinkie!