It's The Pits

I opened what I thought would be a dishwasher full of sparkling clean dishes to find a steamy swamp smelling of burned cherry pits - they were resting on the heating element, the thingie that does the drying and were black and smoking - and enough water in the bottom to almost cover the heating element.  

I tried my usual remedies:  check the trap, clean the filter screens (I know, I know -  I should do this before the symptoms become so drastic) try turning on the pump again: nope.

Called Dunn Wright.  It's not our first rodeo with these guys. Usually appliance repair stories are horror stories.  Not with Dunn Wright.  They came to fix our washer a few years ago and actually had the replacement part - a pump (!) in the car.  They thought that might be the problem, they brought the part just in case.

The dishwasher guy called that day, was there the very next day, gave me a real appointment time not an 8 hour window, and had things all fixed in a trice.  

Apparently I'm not the first person to block things up with cherry pits (and stems) and pumpkin seeds.  So I've learned some things:

Clean the filter before it's a crisis. 

I really use our two dishwashers a lot, and each for different things.

I love my Asko dishwasher.  Beats the pants off my Miele.   

And most important:  there is a limit to what even these modern dishwashers can digest.