And The Winner Is....

The Dress!



With two blog comment votes, one vote on Deadwood and one email vote the dress wins! I'll be starting the project this weekend so keep an eye out for updates.



However,



There were two Facebook votes and one comment vote for the vintage jacket, so I'll do that one second. (It was also my fave idea so I'm kind of cheating.)

Makeover!

I make a lot of my own clothes. More frequently, I make new clothes out of old clothes. Recently I bought this:
It's a men suit jacket, size 41 (£3.50! Go charity shops!). Originally I was going to make a sort of A-line pinafore dress out of it, but then I started thinking of all the other things I could make and now I can't decide. I could make the dress, or I could simply alter the jacket to fit me and have a nice pinstripe jacket for work; or I could cut it a bit differently, to a vintage design and have a vintage style coat for work. I could turn it into a warm winter-type jacket, a shirt, or abandon clothes altogether and make it into a laptop bag or a shoulder bag. This is where you come in: I want you to vote on what I should make this jacket into.

Whatever I make I'll document the transformation here, with instructions. Call it the first in a series of tutorials in Makeover fashion. Some of the options listed above are pretty complicated so I'm going to give you three choices:

1.) A dress
2.) A vintage-style jacket for work
3.) A shoulder bag


Voting closes one week from today at noon GMT.

Flexicado Review

Hand me a ripe avocado and some balsamic vinegar and I’ll happily give the last piece of banoffee pie to Great-Aunt Mildew. So I think the Chef’n Flexicado is a great idea. With it I can slice those babies quickly and get them on my plate–without turning my succulent snack into guacamole. No need to peel, no need to worry about timing. Just slice it open, bin the pit and in two minutes you can be eating.

At least that’s the theory that the marketing people have used to brainwash me. In practice the flexicado is… well to be honest it’s crap not bad actually….on the third try.

Wrapables.com* has this to say:

Simply slide the slicer's flexible head through an avocado half, and in one smooth motion, you can easily create 8 perfect segments

Amazon.co.uk * says:

This flexible slicer is ideal for preparing avocado. Simply cut the fruit in half and one scoop removes the flesh and slices it at the same time. It is made from nylon, which is firm yet flexible and works on any size of avocado.

The first time I tried it, I think that the avocados were too hard. At least, I blame the fact that I couldn’t get the flexicado to make a dent in the advocado on being too eager to try it and not waiting for the avocado to ripen. Ok fair enough, rookie mistake.

The second time, I tried it on a very small Haas avocado and blamed the failure on the size difference.

So far, so Failcado! I'd tried it twice and both times it had let me down. Things were looking bad.

I probably should have suspected some difficulties from the promotional images (courtesy of the Chef’n blog - http://chefnblog.com/ ).

You have this:

Then this:

And then, magically:

Nothing to show the journey through the middle - and no tips on ripeness.

I decided to give it one more chance. This time I was ready.

The avocado was ripe: nearly a week on the kitchen window had prepared it.

It was the perfect size: I’d carefully measured it in the shop.

My tools were ready: I'd sufficiently flexed the flexicado to warm it up and be sure I could do this final trial justice - I even had an audience: the lovely S having been invited for dinner and then bullied into taking photos* - nothing but fun when you come to my house!

I sliced the fruit open, de-pitted it and lined up the flexicado.

Started smoothly:

Had a nice trip through the middle:

And though getting it out at the end was tricky, all in all not bad. Result:

Even better with balsamic.

Overall Score: 6/10

Food Presentation: 6.5 out of 10 Result was a bit mushy (-1 point), but not bad form-wise. Slight hiccup getting it to let go of the slices at the end though (-2 points) –could muck thing up if culinary perfection is your watchword. Quite a bit of flesh left in the skin too.*

Waiting a few extra days for the avocado to ripen resulted in a rather unfortunate texture change, and was not really all that enjoyable taste wise – even with loads of balsamic. Now, to be fair, I waited a LONG-ass time to slice this avocado. Normally I wait two, maybe three days max before eating them – not a week as I did here. I suppose in a tricolour salad or mixed with other things the taste and texture might not be as noticeable or as offensive so I’m only taking off half a point for this (-0.5 points).

Ease of use – 8.5 out of 10. Once I got it started it does slice through the avocado easily. You definitely need to give it a good flex beforehand though to make sure that it fits your particular avocado and that you are using it on a properly – perhaps almost over-ripe fruit (-1.5 for the extra warm up) I’ve already taken off 2 points for the problems I had getting the slices out of the flexicado so won’t take off any more here.

Wash up: 10/10: This thing goes in the dishwasher. Mine came out nice and clean. This is an easy point gain. Basically, if you can put in in the machine and it comes out clean, it gets 10, if it can't - 5 at most. I hate dishes.

Penalty points: -2 for failed attempts. An object like this should be idiot proof. I'm frequently an idiot. Three tries to get it to work is two tries too many.

All this testing has me thinking though - the Flexicado is essentially a one trick pony. There must be some other uses for it. Stay tuned.

*They sell the flexicado. They have nothing to do with me.

*They also sell the flexicado and I only wish they had something to do with me.

*Not really - S isn't bully-able, she's just great.

*This may be down to user error – I’ve only successfully used this thing once but I would be disappointed if this was the standard result. I went back to the skin afterwards and could scrape out a decent portion with a spoon. Bit of a waste.

Things You Cannot Name a Dog

I was having a conversation with my father last night. They are thinking of getting a new dog. We discussed the where and the how and the when and even though nothing about the actual purchase of said dog has been decided, and the entire conversation was only theoretical, we then moved on to the most important question of all: what to name it.

Earlier we had been talking about the rules of the English language (my dad and I frequently have this kind of conversation. Some people take their kids fishing, my Dad talks to me about rules of syntax and diction. I like it this way.) We became fixated on the fact that there are some rules that we simply cannot explain. For example: I can say 'the long, thin, metal rod' but saying 'the metal, thin, long rod' sounds wrong and I automatically reject it as an option when deciding word order. Why? What is the rule that governs this? How does my brain know that 'long thin metal rod' works but the other options don't when no one has told me what the rule is? I can't sufficiently explain it and neither can he. But we both know that the words belong in a certain order and we will always follow that undefined rule.

Back to the dog discussion.

In the same way that there are word orders that are correct and word orders that we reject, there are some things that you simply cannot name a dog. Not without it being strange. Why is this? What rules govern the naming of dogs and why is it weird to name a dog Jason? Not that my Dad wants to name the dog Jason. He just wonders why he can't. The problem boiled down to three basic points:

There are some names that work for dogs that don't work for people, like Spot.

There are some names that work for both people and dogs, like Max.

And then there are people names that simply do not work for Dogs:

Gregory.

Ruth.

Michael.

Think about it. You have a dog, some kind of spaniel maybe. A nice dog, maybe a bit drool-y and he chews your shoes, but he's sweet. You introduce him to a friend and you say; 'This little guy is Robert. We got him from Animal Control.'

No.

Bob works - I know of a lovely Bob-the-Dog, but Bob isn't short for Robert. Max, Rex, Heather, Rosie, Holly, Abbie, Angus and Norman work. So it isn't a rule against giving animals people names. Some people names simply don't compute. Robert, as a dog name, doesn't work. Neither do Susan, Anita, Peter, Maria, Anthony, David or Tracy.

Seriously - can you picture yourself in a park shouting 'Peter! Peter come back here! Get away from that duck!'

I can't. It seems silly and I would never name my dog Peter.

Why?

We talked about it for awhile and could only come up with vague boundaries - things that are not part of the rule but which help narrow it down:

- It has nothing to do with being able to add an 'ie' to the end - Ruthie and Suzie don't work any better on a dog than Ruth or Susan, though they both work for people.

- More formal versions of names are not automatically out - both Michael and Gregory are out (as are Mike and Greg) but Max and Maximilian work (though we conceded that Maximilian might only work on some dogs - probably a sheepdog).

- Traditional names sometimes work and sometimes don't: you can't call a dog Edmund, Edward, Timothy or but you can get away with Arthur and Norman.


My father has decided that as he cannot explain the rule, he's going to flout it. The current front runners for the name of the new dog are Gary and Elizabeth. My mother, who has no choice but to take part in these conversations when they happen, is angling for Harriet or Susan. The decision on 'to dog or not to dog' seems to have been decided in favour of 'to dog'. All because you can't name a dog Gregory.

I'll let you know how poor Gary/Elizabeth/Harriet/Susan gets on.

Things That Baffle Me - UPDATE

I mentioned my parent's electric pepper grinder awhile back - the one that offends me by having a light on it.

I've been reliably informed that they had to get rid of it.

Not because the batteries died, not because the light went out. Nope.
They had to get rid of it because there is nowhere to add more pepper.