General Chat

Great thread - needed a laugh!

Isn't it odd the way we giggle at others' misfortunes, same as the progs on the tv where someone tries to swing on a rope over a river and it breaks or they fall off etc etc


I have made the mistake of using a Pyrosil casserole dish on the gas ring of the cooker! And I so hate wasting food but couldn't rescue what was inside the bowl and risk eating glass.

Take care folks

Lizx

and MM's also discovered that she can blame Canadian women for everything!


oh well


I've got a broad back


don't know about JC!


s
xx

??? Canadian for bodkin ...................... tapestry needle?


we do have quite a few pieces of Ikea furniture, including the 2 bar chairs we bought just about a month ago for the new kitchen ....... the breafast counter is bar height (another of the "don't ask"), and we found the idela seats at Ikea.


We've had some of it for quite a few years, say 20 or 30??


We also buy quite a bit from the "as-is" .......... or as they used to call it at our local Ikea store, the Scramramadam area



s
xx

A bradawl is just a spoke. Very useful to make a dint at the point where you need to insert a screw. A pointed-endy thing. If you have a good bodkin (oops, Lancashire English might not be universal) that will do. Oh, or a knitting needle - perfect. I have at least 15 sets of Ikea Allen Keys. Will they sell on Ebay? We laugh about home-pack furniture, but actually Ikea did me proud in my satellite flat for 10 years. Nothing broke.

Suzian, I haven't laughed so much in ages.

Ta, I needed it. I can now go to my tomorrow's meeting to explain why I haven't done half of what I should have done - some Canadian woman directed me to a new website full of my dead rellies (they'll be dead impressed) and some other Canadian woman directed me to this thread where I've laughed my socks off.

Is there summat funny about Canadian women?

Oh, and Janey. This must take the biscuit. Cos I've actually broken my nose TWICE. The second occasion was also caravan-related. There we were, relaxing nicely on a campsite, and I decided the sun brolly was not in the right position for me. I twisted it round. Nope. I raised it up. Nope. I angled it. Nope. I lowered it. It wouldn't lower. It just wouldn't do it. I wrenched at the thing, and Woosh, it lowered. Right on said nose. With everyone else reeling around laughing, and me with stars in my eyes.

I like caravanning. Wonder why?

and we now have a huge collection of Allen keys, all the same size



all obtained from Ikea





Our downfall ............................ or rather OH's downfall, as I play no part in the process except to sit and watch



is



putting together charcoal bbqs




they usually come with inside out instructions, originally written in Chinese or Korean, which have then been translated into English by a Korean or a Chinese



helps enormously if you have a couple of G&T's first



Canadian Tire is the prime supplier of such bbqs

Another way to boil eggs



Open can of tomato soup

Put soup in saucepan

Add egg (or eggs) to soup

Bring to boil, and simmer




That comes courtesy of OH's sister who, at one time in the dim and distant past, was a Home Ec teacher in Hull, England

She started a cooking class for boys, working on the principle that it was good for boys to know how to cook

However, as it was around 1968, she had to dress it up a little bit as "Cooking for Camping"


This was one of her ideas for easy cooking .... camping or in a flat!



s
xx

Ah, that's one thing you can say for IKEA -- it comes with its own bradawls! Or in their case, Allen keys.

Those ingenious IKEA self-locking devices, I love 'em. I've also found that if you buy a jigger-load of disassembled display items in the IKEA as-is room for $10 (I got the complete makings of about 4 tall cabinets and several bedframes, plus some odds and ends -- we're looking at, like, several $100 worth of stuff here), you can then, disguising yourself or going on a different day, go the parts/repair desk and tell a sad tale about how you moved and lost all the attachment parts from your disassembled IKEA things that you love so, and they will give you complete sets of them for free -- the fact that they were missing being a large part of why you got several major pieces of furniture for $10 in the first place.

Of course, eventually you realize that you still have four disassembled tall cabinets and six sets of bedframe parts in your garage that were just such a good deal you couldn't leave them, but you've never actually had any use for.

A project for a snowy day, perhaps. Are you in, suzian?

Maybe while you're here, I can get you to look at the bedframe I put together about 15 years ago, sort of fakey iron, slatted headboard and footboard, and I swear the rest of it was produced inside out, as that's the only way I could get it all to fit together. "Wonky" would be a decent description, although I think plain old "wobbly" would do.

Anyhow, now I have to go google "bradawl", just in case I find myself in need someday.

lol!



JC . where did you find that little ditty??



Bob

we have literally just got rid of 2 large Visions saucepans and a small Visions frypan, sent them to the local Thrift Store

You see, we've just had our kitchen re-done, we now have less storage space than before (don't ask!), and so we have to either get rid of or find other places to store about half of what I have (or had) in kitchen utensils.


We bought the Visions pans a number of years ago, but I haven't used them for at least 15 years....... I found the large ones were too heavy for me to handle when filled with water and veggies.


Plus, I always managed to burn potatoes when boiling them in the pan.


OH liked them, but we decided there was no point in keeping them



We did keep a little (?? 1 litre) Visions pan that OH uses for some things



Pity



I could have packaged them up and sent them to you


I'm sure they would have travelled safely from Canada to UK!





s
xx

Hi folks

I've also fallen victim to the self-assembly (or, in my case, self destruct) flat packs.

On the day that Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson married, I left work at lunch time, with every intention of assembling my daughter's new cabin bed (no point in starting with the easy stuff!) and then watching the wedding.

Wrong move.

I painstakingly unpacked the twenty zillion bits on her bedroom floor, and then realised that it would be a good idea to move her original bed out of the room.

Only place for it to go - into the bathroom. Which, unfortunately, meant that a trip to the loo would be a bit of a Boot Camp exercise in itself.

Not to worry ....... the cabin bed would be assembled in less than two hours. I knew this, cos it said so at the top of the instructions. Or, to be precise, it said something like "this item has been choosed for its easiness of assemblage".

Next, let's have a look at the "instuctions for assemblage".

They started with "take one bradawl". Not being familiar with a bradawl, I assumed that it was one of the godzilliion pieces I had painstakingly laid out on the bedroom floor. But no..... apparently every home has one.

Except that the tool box in this home consisted of an old screwdriver with a bent end (for opening paint tins), a teaspoon (not sure why) and half of a plastic 12 inch ruler.

Substitute old-screwdriver-with-bent-end for said bradawl.

Having inserted the plastic trim - provided in a fetching choice of pink or blue - into its appropriate parts without difficulty, I wiped the sweat from my brow and set off for a celebratory trip to the loo.

After battling with the mattress which was covering said facility, I felt - as they say - relieved.

Back to the bedroom, closing my ears to calls for food from downstairs. They won't starve. I'll have this thing together in less than an hour, then feed the troops and sit down to watch the wedding.

Oh, you self-deluded fool, you!

Finally, I got the back bit assembled. then came the task of "placing the bed basement onto the lippage of the side vent". Unfortunately, the "bed basement" couldn't be lifted by just me, so I called on one of the troops for reinforcement.

The senior member of the troop was half way down a six pack by then, and the junior member - apparently about to pass out from starvation - was only four feet two inches tall at the time. So "placing the bed basement onto the lippage of the side vent" was a bit of an unequal task.

I'll skip the next eight hours, during which time senior troop member had gone out for two more six packs - being a royalist, of course - and junior member was asleep, thumb in mouth.

On the mattress.

In the loo.

The cabin bed was finally assembled as the sun came up over the horizon, but it had quaint Salvador Dali quality which wasn't evident in the B and Q catalogue...

The upshot of this whole, sorry tale is that I called my brother, who immediately condemned the whole, sorry assemblage as "knackered" - a joinery term, apparently - and suggested that I'd be better advised to put it in a skip (that I hadn't got) and buy something ready made.

Which, I guess, calls into question the last line of the "Instuctions for Assemblage", which read "you can be sure to be exhilirated by your product"

Sue (now equipped with a collection of bradawls of various sizes, just in case!) xx

Sue

I figure if people post it in my thread, I can laugh my bum off at it. Madmeg and Bobtanian are at the front of the pack on that score.

Oh! The pot was okay! Obviously not Pyrex. ;)

Here I see an opening for my environmental lecture.

Eggs do not need to be boiled for 10 minutes to be hard-boiled.

Put them in a pot of water to cover. Bring it to a boil, with lid on. (Use a pot that's deep enough that the boiling water isn't going to push the lid off, etc.)

Turn off the heat, leave the pot on the burner, with the lid on, for 10 to 15 minutes, and they'll be hard boiled.

Go low the first time, say 10 minutes, and check an egg -- after dunking in cold water!! -- and if the yolk isn't done yet, microwave it for like 3 seconds, and leave the others for another couple of minutes.

You've just saved yourself 10 minutes of needless energy use. Oh, and if it's winter, take the eggs out when they're done and put them in a dish of cold water, put the cover back on the pot and leave it on the stove until the water's cold. Why pour all that heat and energy down the sink?

I won't mention cooking your eggs in with your pasta or potatoes (which can also be chopped and boiled and then left to finish cooking themselves -- potatoes, but not pasta), or someone I won't name with some peculiar ideas will come along and start gagging. ;)


Of course, you *still* have to remember to *turn the pot off*.

I dont know what was worse...... being hit by the egg or the tirade from 'er indoors!!

yep I wos lucky none hit my eyes......
and yes.......,

the pot was ok!!
Bob

Gosh - you must shudder at the thought at what could have happened to your eyes. And those exploding eggs do go a long way, don't they? At least the pan didn't shatter with them.

A minor occurence compared to some featured here........
came in late ish and decided to boil a couple of eggs in a "Vision" saucepan,for tomorrows sandwich lunch.........meanwhile watching TV........after a while realised eggs should be done..dash into kitchen to find pan has boiled dry with one semi incinerated egg in pan and the other in pieces.......deciding to turn off the gas and let the pot cool naturally peering at sad looking egg in pot ...........suddenly egg explodes showering my face with eggshells at sun like temperatures and shards of egg shell and egg contents stuck to the ceiling..

spent days cleaning up kitchen eventually having to redecorate ceiling with new white emulsion!!

Bob

Ps.........Vision (Corning)cookware was discontinued several years ago,and is extremely expensive to buy (mostly second hand)
but "Visions" is available from "World Kitchen"

we HAVE to use glass cookware because of a metallic allergy in the family

Ah yes, those housework accidents.

Another BFF of mine managed a clever one. I'd introduced her to the man of her dreams, who was actually kinda the man of my dreams, but oh well, she went for it and I didn't (and now they're married with two teenagers, and I haven't seen her since they married, long weird story).

So she was moving in with him first. She lived in a highrise and fortunately didn't have a huge amount of stuff. But the day before the move, when halfway through packing it, she was vacuuming her rug and, yes, threw her back out. Guess who got to get up a 4 a.m., take a cab to the other end of the city and finish the packing in time for the movers at 7 a.m.? The thanks for that being .. oh, well, long weird story.

Then there was my first law practice partner. He was a big tall guy, who had in fact been drafted by a professional football (our kind) team when he was in law school, but declined the offer.

We were low-budget, public-minded types. We did our own typing, one of us better than another of us. His was a slow and tedious process, which he often did in the evening.

I came in one morning to find him wearing a neck brace. He, who in another life would have been a Hamilton Tigercats quarterback, had injured his neck ... typing.

I went to visit him and his new wife and kid out east about five years later, and behold, he was still wearing the neck brace, and unable to do anything like carry his baby.

I think my oafish stupidity pales, sometimes.



Hey Sylvia

In days of yore
from Britain's shore
Oaf the dauntless hero came
and planted firm
Britannia's flag
on Canada's fair domain ...

Yep Janey - that's it! Shortly before, I'd 'done my back in' while mopping the floor - always said H/W was bad for the health! - and didn't want to risk slipping.

Can't say I've had any microwave accidents with pyrex although they are too hot to remove without a cloth.

Lakeland do sets of square plastic boxes with lids suitable for freezer to microwave, and they stack for storage (without their lids) They can also be washed in a dishwasher, but go orangey.

Hope no one had unpleasant after effects from glass seasoned chicken.

Well, sorry, Sylvia, you're too late, the prize has been awarded. Besides, you seem to have come out of that unscathed. But I think you should have sued. Corningware came with detachable handles -- yes, the two of them, I still have, they don't break, nooo -- so plainly it was meant to be used on stovetop.

The one I have left is a sad specimen. I decided to make fudge in it once. I have my dad's fudge-making genes. Can't do it. Make rock-hard sugar substance instead. In that case, it bonded molecularly to the Corningware. No amount of heating, soaking, scouring would oust it. So whoever the man about the house was at the time, I forget, took a screwdriver to it. Looks like the surface of the moon inside now.

oh yes

1969

Cooking special dinner for guests, chicken legs to be browned before putting in casserole and into oven

I decided to save washing up ..... put Corningware casserole on electric ring to brown the chicken


Huge bang

shards of Corningware all over everywhere ................ it was an apartment, and the dining table was right next door to the door way into the kitchen and thus almost next to the oven



Pick up pieces of chicken from floor, wash carefully, put in fry pan to brown, find another casserole and put in oven


THEN clean up before visitors arrived.



and swear OH to silence. He was NOT to tell the visitors about the "fun"

Okay, I have never actually broken my own nose, and I am about ready to proclaim Madmeg the winner of today's contest.

DET, I am having a bit of difficulty picturing yours. With one hand, you hold onto the door frame. With the other hand, you close the door on the first hand?

Were it not for Madmeg's quick topping of that, you might be taking home the ...... errrr ....... cup.

Re caravaning, here is what the horse's mouth says, stlil open on my other monitor.


I need to buy some dishes to use on regular caravan holidays. We have a small oven and a microwave but limited storage space. What would you recommend?

The Pronto range would probably be fine, unless you are planning to cook many family meals in which case incorporate several items from the Classic range.


Ask me anything.

Janey, you directed me here!

Used Pyrex in oven, freezer, microwave for years, no problem. Arcopal is a French version of the same. PyroSIL can be used on the hob too, costs and arm and a leg (no, I don't mean you LOSE an arm and a leg) but my one and only dish got broke some years ago. I think your problem was putting in a solidly frozen meal, perhaps on too high, and it was searching for moisture, microwaves like moisture.

Some plastics are forbidden cos, as somebody said, they leech nasties into the food, AND they disintegrate, so you end up with a burnt ball of plastic within which is your inaccessible chicken tikka massala.

Worst accident. I have a list. I clearly take after my late mother in many senses. Always slicing my finger on my ultra-sharp knives (can't be doing with knives that aren't razor sharp), but the worst was when I was on my health-conscious kick. Having suffered a minor stroke (a proper one, not a TIA), decided to cut down on fat. Old grill used to do my steak a treat. New grill not hot enough. So back to frying. Hubby heated the oil in the pan and called me to cook my steak (knowing he wasn't trusted to do it right). Too much oil. Excess hot oil tipped into a mug, except my hand got in the way. Not recommended. Within seconds, hand has doubled in size and looks about to self-ignite. Cold water tap. One hour later, no change. A & E. Something degree burn, strong anaesthetic, huge bandage. That whole thing took six months to resolve. Moral of the story - forget healthy eating or tip excess oil into a large container.

Other laugh. Touring caravan, stuff in bottom of wardrobe. I wanted the thing at the very bottom - I could see it, but couldn't be bothered moving the stuff on top of it. I grabbed the corner and pulled. And pulled. And pulled. No luck. A plonked my feet in the fighting position and pulled again. Success! The item was immediately released with such force that I whacked myself on the nose. Broken nose. Another six months to heal.

Anyway, back to the touring caravan, we have ordered a new one. The old one was like a tent on wheels, no mod cons, the new one is like a new house. Oven, microwave, central heating. So I want some containers I can use in the microwave that are not glass, lightweight, will cook veg, frozen casseroles (ho, ho, new fridge has a decent freezer compartment) . Anybody any ideas?