Category Archives: Equipment

The Komp

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For a really long time, I’ve been looking for something for a family member which could enable me to send them messages, video chat with them, send them photos. The sort of things that smart-phone, tablet and computer users take for granted. But this family member, unfortunately, had none of those things and furthermore, was very tech-using-averse.

Every now and again, when I was at my desk and avoiding work, which is actually every day, I would look to see if something had come up. I had got them a clock which told them the day, time, weather, in their mother tongue. But that’s all it did, and I couldn’t communicate with them through it and anyway, after a year, it stopped working.

Then one evening, I don’t know what magical combination of words I put in to Google, but I read about something called the Komp. The Komp is a flat screen unit. It needs electricity to work (ie a power source) and a working internet connection. Here is a picture of it I’ve stolen from the Komp – website with permission:

The Komp, made by Norwegian company – I say geniuses – No Isolation.

It looks a bit like an old fashioned TV doesn’t it? And for the end user all there is to operate is the knob which switches off to the left with a lovely kinda thud, and on to the right with volume raising by going further right.

That is it.

All the tech part is done by the other users and this is how it works:

You get the unit, above, and it has its own unique number. You down load the Komp app and register the unit (so for my family member I got it sent to me, first) and everything you do is via the Komp app from here-on-in. You can, if you have the end users router details (for the sake of brevity we’re going to call the end user Grandma okay?) input the name of the router and the wi fi key so that when it goes to Grandma’s house it just needs to be plugged in and then it will find the router.

(Please see update below on the new model which has wi-fi built in.)

You can have more than one admin, but let’s image you are the admin, you can add family members – and they can only call/message/photobomb grandma if you send them an invite so it’s ultra secure. So they too will need to download the app (so everything is done via the app so yes you need a smartphone with a working number and anyone else who wants to contact grandma needs a smartphone with a working number). You as admin can also see what everyone else is doing in terms of sending photos and messages (but not if they’ve video called).

Once you are all set up you can:

Message grandma saying things like “I’ll call you this evening” or “Don’t forget you have an appointment with Giovanni at 10am.”

You can send photos to grandma with or without text on them, so you can send a photo of your lunch, or your holiday.

But best of all, you can video call grandma.

Now here is where it gets a tiny bit complicated but only the tiniest bit. Grandma can’t choose to answer the Komp, at her end, because it’s kept purposely simple. If the Komp is on, then both at her end and your end, it counts down from 10 to 1 and then there you both are! So you may prefer to ring first on the landline to say “I’m going to call you on the Komp”, because otherwise it’s a bit invasive.

Although the Komp (short for, and a play on, computer) is mobile in that it’s not particularly heavy you do, I think, need to find a place to put it and keep it there. My family member has it on her dining table so she can sit and chat.

The quality is amazing. Amazing. I sometimes can’t see her so clearly – which is a feature of the internet my end – but she can see me like “I’m in the room” (the screen is nice and big on the Komp) which isn’t always good cos I also get comments like “what’s happened to your face” and “you look tired” and “your hair is so white now”.

Yes the family member is my mother.

But she loves it even though she grumbled so much when I first got it for her. Now she can actually understand that far from having abandoned her as she tells everyone, I not only think of her several times a day but also now she knows it cos I send her messages, pictures and call her and she can see me and I her and this makes her feel less like, well, she’s been abandoned (I would also like to point out that I have always rung my mum at least once a day). The only problemo is that, like a lot of old people, I find, she does sometimes switch it off at the plug/router (you can switch it off on the unit, via the knob) because she thinks it’s going to eat electricity. But, this is her perogative. It has a sleep function – which you as admin control via your smartphone – so it can go to sleep between whatever hours you choose which means the screen goes black, otherwise the screen shows any messages you’ve sent or photos. But it will still let you video call in an emergency in sleep function.

You can control how long the messages/photos are up there for too.

It’s brilliant. I don’t know why more people don’t know about it. I have nothing to do with the company, they didn’t pay me, I paid them, just like everyone else: it’s £39 a month and you trial if for a minimum of three months. My children both have it so they can – and do – send my mum pictures. My mum loves it. I can honestly say it’s probably the only thing I’ve ever got her which she really, truly, loves (other than of course grandchildren..).

And if that isn’t worth £39 a month, I seriously don’t know what is.

It took me a while to get my head round it so any questions please post in the comments so others can also benefit.

Oh and the after help is also extraordinary. I seem to have my very own ‘success’ agent in Oslo who I’ve formed quite a friendship with. Here’s a video which explains a bit more about how it works:

https://www.noisolation.com/uk/komp/

Update: the new model has wi-fi built in!

Little sous vide cheesecakes

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I am no stranger to gadgets. My dad used to say “un’altro gadget” (another gadget) but, although I made mistakes early on, everything I buy I pretty much use and enjoy: it earns its place and keep in our kitchen.

For instance, some years ago, I looked at sous vide cooking but, back then, the domestic sous vide machines were pretty big and I just knew that the space they took up, I’d rather  put an ice cream maker in, given my heritage.

But a few weeks ago, we had friends Natalie and Micah round for lunch and Micah mentioned they had a sous vide and how things had changed; that they were now little bigger than stick blenders and you stuck them in a pan that you already had. And how they cooked the most amazing meat [and fish and other things].

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The Joule sous vide, with plug for size comparison

So I looked and I bought.

Although the Anova is pretty popular (Martha Stewart’s chef uses one), it didn’t work that well for me – I couldn’t get it to work with the app and I am such a technophile that this mattered to me. (It doesn’t have to work with an app, you can just use the machine.) So I returned it bought a Joule instead which ONLY works via an app, which may annoy you but I love it. The app has all sorts of pre-set timings and temperatures and it’s soo easy. The Joule is also more powerful than the Anova (all but the Anova Pro which is much more expensive).

If you are thinking, WTF is she on about, then you can read  all about sous vide here. But it is, essentially, cooking food at a very precise temperature in a water bath.

I cooked a chicken breast in it and it was amazing, so moist and let’s not even get started on the steaks it cooks. It doesn’t brown but you can finish meat off in a frying pan for a final sear. The beauty of sous vide, other than it cooks to perfection, is that you can prep food and leave it, which really suits the way I cook.

But, cheesecakes.

You can also use sous vide to cook little cheese cakes and chocolate puddings. You can adapt this one below by adding fruit compote at the end or a biscuit base. We made them with Oreo cookies (use the double filled ones, one per portion – so if using the recipe below you would use six – blitzed in a blender and distributed amongst the jars and pressed down, then you put the cheesecake batter on top – you can use any extra crumbs to put on top of the cheesecakes just before you eat them) but you could use digestive biscuits with a bit of melted butter to bring them all together if you fancy a more traditional cheesecake base.

You need six 135ml mason-style jars. I use these ones.  They are perfect for these mini desserts and many others you can make sous vide. You can also use Weck jars (use the seal and the clips and I guess, regular jam jars but I haven’t yet.

Sorry about the Amazon link for the jars but Lakeland will start selling them come the autumn.

Ingredients for six people

(Six double fill Oreos if using)

225g cream cheese

110g of caster sugar (note to self: you can use less sugar than this as you find it a tad sweet now, go for 80g)

110g creme fraiche

Three eggs

Grated zest of a lemon (I always use organic when I use the zest of citrus fruits)

Method

You can do this in a food processor but it’s not difficult to mix it up by hand. Mix together the cream cheese and the caster sugar, then add the creme fraiche, the lemon zest and the three eggs one at a time. Make sure everything is really well combined.

If you are using a biscuit base you will already have pressed it in the jars.

Distribute evenly amongst the six jars up to the ‘thread’, seal until they are finger tip tight (ie you can unscrew using just your finger tips), set your sous vide to 80C and 90 mins, and when up to temperature, submerge the jars (I use a jar tong, be careful of your fingers).

When done take out, cool then refrigerate for a couple of hours.

I know this recipe isn’t relevant to those of you without a sous vide but you know…if you like kit I’ve given you lots of reasons to buy some.

Possibly the best phone ever for older people. Plus how to really crack down on spam/phishing callers.

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I don’t really get spam/phishing calls. At least, not yet. This is possibly because I’ve never been in the phone directory, I have a landline that is, primarily there for my internet, and I am very tech savvy at blocking such calls on my mobile if I get them.

However, whenever I was round at my mum and dad’s their phone would regularly ring with phishing/spam calls. They would be annoying, and of course I registered them for the Telephone Preference Service but it didn’t seem to make much difference. Some of the calls were simply annoying “do you want double glazing” etc. Some so obviously scam calls as to be not a threat. But all meant my mum had to stop what she was doing and go and answer the phone.

The obvious thing is to to get an answerphone and screen calls. But here’s the thing. Getting a separate, mechanical answering machine that works with an existing phone and is not hugely expensive, is virtually impossible – I’ve tried. You can get integrated answering machines, with cordless phones, but this would mean a change of phone for my mum, which is okay, but the phones that come with integrated answer-machines tend to have small fiddly numbers; and my mum likes a corded phone so it can’t get lost/run out of charge.

BT’s Call Minder, which you access via your handset and is ‘remote’ is an option, but she didn’t like that as it’s too confusing for her. So an answer machine or an answering service wasn’t really an option. And anyway, a very sophisticated caller, such as she eventually came across, would have not been put off by such a device and they would have left a message, lending credibility to their call.

(Anyway I think even a fairly simple answering machine would have been frustrating for my mum to master and why make her feel crap about not being able to do something when she is so good at so many other things?)

Because, one day, my mum got a call of a very different kind. Very sophisticated, believable and distressing; I won’t go into the details here but, thankfully, at the last minute my mum pulled a blinder (you can take the girl out of Naples but…) and a very serious crisis was averted. (We reported it to Action Fraud.) But it got me thinking just how vulnerable some people are and I realised that something needed to be done. When I started telling people what had happened to my mum, the stories that came out were terrifying. I learned that someone I knew, with graduate parents (English their first language, quite unlike my mum), had been scammed of £5K.  Then another similar story, and so it went on.

My mum is not tech savvy. If you need to feed fifteen people with one stick of celery and a tomato, she’s your woman. Her vigour, energy, hospitality and inventiveness is gob-smacking, but she is a technophobe. So whatever I did had to be low-tech at her end and the tech burden had to be mine alone.  I also needed something I could monitor and tweak remotely. It was no use asking her to press button 1 to stop the last caller calling her again. She needed a phone, pretty much like her old phone, with buttons to press to dial someone.

This is what I did. It’s in two parts – the remote part and the actual phone.

First, BT launched something called BT Call Protect earlier this year. I knew about this but again though it would not work for my mum, but, with her permission I took over control of her account. It’s free, but you have to be a  BT customer (your phone service may offer something similar) and how it works is that, once activated, it has a pre-set list of known spam numbers, these are automatically blocked. But there’s more.

You can see who’s calling via the website or a phone app, and you can VIP these numbers – and name them so you recognise them again when you next log on – or block them. So now my mum only has to make a rough note of the time someone called if it was a bad call and I can, via my computer or the BT app, forever more block that number.

You can also set it so that it blocks all, eg. with-held or international calls. And of course if you fall out with someone, you can put them from the VIP list to the Blocked list. Imagine the power.

With VIP numbers you can control which times someone can call you, so that, eg, you don’t get disturbed at night, or so that they can ring you 24/7 – you decide. Useful if you have a relative who keeps different hours to you or you don’t want to be disturbed at night.

All of this I can do remotely for her and with her knowledge.

If you block a number, it goes to junk voicemail (which you access via pressing 1572 on the handset although, see below, I eventually got my mum Call Minder so I access this for her now) so there’s s safety net there in case it does turn out to be genuine (there was one casualty which was a long-lost friend from Rome, but, thanks to this I was able to get her message and let her know and what’s more, VIP her number for future calls).

Since I did this my mum’s spam calls have dropped to: zero. So far.

Then there’s the phone. It was long overdue that she be able to see who is ringing her. I also wanted her to be able to access important numbers really easily.

I’ve mentioned before that I got a mobile phone for my aunt from Action on Hearing Loss (formerly RNID) so I turned to them for a phone for my mum and found this one.

It is really excellent and here’s why:

It has a caller display which lots of phones do (although they tend to be cordless) but with this one, you can tilt it up for maximum visibility and also change the contrast* – it displays the number and, if you’ve input the person into the phone’s phone book, their name will also show. (You need a subscription to a Caller Display service for this to work.)

*Someone visually impaired would still struggle to see this however, so look at the RNIB’s shop for phones for them.

The call buttons are large and illuminate when you pick up the phone.

There are four photo-buttons so you can either put people’s photos or write their name in LARGE TYPE. You programme these so that you can simply press them to dial someone but not only that: THEY ILLUMINATE WHEN THAT PERSON RINGS. Which is really like Thunderbirds!

I programmed as many numbers in as I could for my mum, no mean feat when you consider the size of our family. This you have to do with the phone in front of you but once done no further teccy-input necessary.

The phone plugs in and also needs 4 AAA batteries as back up. This it needs for the illumination/phone box storage features. It is otherwise a corded phone.

Although you can use the phone book to ring people – i.e. without having to manually press the number-keys, my mum doesn’t do this as she likes to use the number keys to ring people. There’s a volume control and also a boost in case someone is hard of hearing. So it’s packed with really useful features, but otherwise it’s a normal low-tech phone.

So now, as an added safe-guard, if my mum doesn’t recognise a number, she doesn’t have to pick it up. I’ve also put Call Minder on her line so that if she doesn’t pick up a call and it’s genuine, the people calling have the option of leaving her a message.  I control this remotely for her by ringing into it once a day (you have to set a PIN on the actual phone, but once you’ve done this you can ring in remotely). I can also hear if any spam callers who have called and left a message or not left a message.

There are other options available for protecting vulnerable relatives, such as True Call Blocker, which has rave reviews and Fuss Free Phones, which sound like a great idea but would have involved too many changes for my mum.

Some other option may work for you. This is so far what’s worked for us. I did a lot of research to come to these conclusions and what is the point of it if it doesn’t also benefit others?

 

Pressure/Slow cooker

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Earlier this year, just as we were emerging from the shuck of winter and blinking in the spring sunshine, with thoughts turning to light, easy lunches involving salads and grilled things, I decided to I needed to buy a slow cooker to cook stews in.

A slow cooker is actually a very good idea for someone like me, because I am a natural early riser and I am at my best, my most industrious, early in the morning. It’s all down hill from there. I am often too tired of an evening to cook, or think about cooking. In Italy, at least in my family, it is customary to largely prepare the main meal of the day (whether that be taken at mezzogiorno or a cena) in the morning. This is when people visit and the cook can chat, catch up with the latest gossip and prep a substantial meal. I would watch many such occasions as a child and marvel at how organised and easy it seemed.

(I would also marvel at just how much bitching would go on.)

But, I never managed this level of organisation and I thought the slow cooker would help. As these things go, I started looking at entry level slow cookers and before I knew what I was doing, I had ordered a top of the range slow cooker and pressure cooker combined – a huge hulk of a stainless steel beast, the Fast Slow Pro by Heston for Sage (before anyone thinks I am on a salary from them, I am not, this is literally only one of two Sage appliances I own, the other one being an insanely priced waffle maker which is brilliant but I don’t recommend anyone buy because no-one can like waffles that much.)

It is an electric model, so you can use it anywhere there is a plug (no need for a stove top).

Of course, the purchase of lots of books on slow cooking and pressure cooking followed and I realised that most people were either evangelical about one type of cooking, or another. But you can be a fan of both and this lets you be.

Slow cooking, in case you don’t know, is just like cooking something on a stove top or in an oven at a very low temperature for a very long time. The difference is, because the slow cooker is sealed, no moisture gets out so things stay very moist. I have done the best ‘roast’ chicken in this ever, you then reduce down the gravy, in the same slow cooker pot, using the reduce function which is the equivalent of a pan on the hob simmering away.

Moist is not a bad word.

Pressure cooking cooks things under, er, very high pressure so it cooks things very very fast. It is particularly good for cooking dried pulses etc.

The beauty with either is that you just put it in the pot, turn the lid and leave it. I can’t comment on other appliances but mine is all digital and you set a timer and it does it all for you.

I mostly use mine for making stock and bolognese, which is brilliant cos I chuck everything in and do it on a slow cooker 12 hour timer overnight. I use the pressure cooker for things like ribs (does them in an hour * they are literally falling off the bone when they come out which may not be to everyone’s liking) and pulses.  But you can cook loads and loads of things in it, I am only just starting.

*The pressure cooker takes time to come up to pressure and also to release the pressure so if it says it does it in an hour remember to factor in these things.

It’s also brilliant at reducing (you leave the lid up) as you can reduce, say, a stock on a timer and leave it whilst you do other stuff. Obvs you can do this with an ordinary sauce pan, on the hob, but you don’t have to worry about going back and switching it off.

It has a ‘keep warm’ function so once it has finished its main cooking, it will keep things warm for two hours. Great if you are a bit nebulous about a coming home time.

In short this is a brilliant bit of kit – huge so think about where you’re going to put it – and I’ve had it for several months now and I really rate it.

Post script, summer 2017. I have had this for about 18 months now and it is easily one of the best bits of kitchen kit I’ve ever bought. I use it loads and it is a marvel. Buy it.

Microplane foot grater

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I think it’s about this time of year that people pull the sandals out and realise that they have neglected their feet all winter.

I have always looked after my feet. This is a legacy of a) never being allowed out of the house until I was 18, hence having lots of time on my hands to spend on my feet and b) I never wore high or restrictive shoes as a teenager so my feet were pretty nice and I wanted to look after them.

This ‘foot grater‘ however, takes things to a whole different level. I bought one about a year ago and the reviews warned “take care as it’s so addictive, you can end up with really sore feet”.

“What idiot would do that?” thought I, as I watched foot shavings fall off my feet. The next day I went to Orfordness on a massive walk and realised my feet hurt and that I was that idiot.

So be careful. What you do is basically grate the hard skin off your feet – it’s that hardcore but leaves your feet really soft – if you don’t overdo it. Nothing works as well as this – forget all other foot buffers/pumice stones etc. It is addictive and the little shavings do look like parmesan (sorry if you’re eating whilst reading this).

Whatever you do, don’t store this grater in the kitchen with your other Microplane graters. I think that’s why Microplane helpfully make it in pink.

This cream is really nice to rub in afterwards.

One of the best things I’ve ever bought – a headset with fixed mic for my mobile phone

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In the 90s, I used to work at the Independent on Sunday (RIP). This was back in the day when computers were largely for writing on, and phones were for making and receiving calls. My deputy editor had an office next to mine and he would spend a lot of time swiveling his office chair side to side and talking on his headset, which was plugged into to his desk phone. This headset had a fixed band which went over his head and a mic which stuck out in front of his mouth. I’m sure you know the ones.

I spent an inordinate amount of time on the phone, as I researched my pieces and my column (Dear Annie, which was a fashion column and answered readers’ problems), so I asked if I could have a headset and lo, I was able to order one from the stationery department. So I looked like someone from a call centre with this head-set on and a microphone pointed at my mouth. But it was brilliant, as I had both hands free to type or eat a banana or communicate with my colleagues in sign language.

Then mobiles came along and everything changed. We all, largely, started talking on those. Even if you want to, they are impossible to jam betwixt cheek and collar bone, such as you could with a traditional corded phone, and I find the ‘headsets’ that come with that are fine for a brief chat but you have to hold the mic near your mouth and people often say “are you on hands free, I can’t hear you very well?”

And, for long calls, I really hate having my mobile next to my ear for extended periods, as it makes my ear hot.

I still spend a lot of time on the phone interviewing people for my job, so a few months ago I wondered if such a thing as I once had, existed for my mobile (I have an iPhone) and lo, it did. It took a bit of searching but I bought this one which cost me just under £20, and it really is one of the best things I’ve ever bought. I make all my calls using it now (unless I’m out, because I feel like too much of an idiot, but I hardly make calls when I’m out anyway, because I feel like too much of an idiot..) and no-one has ever asked if I’m on hands-free, or underwater, or anything like that. It frees you up to type, essential when interviewing people or when on the phone to friends, you can do your nails, hang out washing or do the ironing, all of which I’ve done.

It plugs directly into your phone, it has a headband which fits over your head, one ear piece, one mic, and a volume button with (I think but have never used it) an on off button for ending calls.

It’s brilliant.

Thermos travel mug

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When my eldest started primary, there was one particular woman who used to drop her children off and always have one of those insulated coffee mugs in hand. For some reason, one of the other mothers really took against her, starting her moan with a familiar gossip-page refrain:

“Who does she think she is with that in her hand?”

“What, the insulated coffee cup thing?” I ventured. “I think it’s to keep her coffee warm.”

“She’s just trying to show everyone how busy and important she is that she can’t drink her coffee at home like the rest of us..”

I didn’t think that. I thought that, as she came some considerable way (we live in the countryside where people can travel some distance to school), she probably didn’t feel like coffee the moment she left home and, to save some money, she brought it with her to drink on the way home.

But, I guess you see what you want in other people, what resonates with your own life.

I don’t, always, want to eat anything at all when I first wake up. I feel for my children who have to eat breakfast in the narrow window between waking up and going to school, without hope of snack nor sandwich before break or lunch time if they don’t (I am starving by 9am).

When my eldest started high school, she often didn’t feel like drinking her tea or caffe latte before school, so she’d take it on the bus with her. And this is where the search for good insulated mugs came in. They were either horrible cheap plastic, the taste of which permeated anything you put in it and/or they leaked. I’ve always been of the buy well, buy once mindset so I set out looking for a good one that was stainless steel, didn’t leak and had a handle.

Eventually I found one by Thermos: the King Travel Mug (full kennel name below). It’s not cheap. It’s guaranteed for 50 years, it’s absolutely leak proof (unlike so many insulated mugs the top actually screws on) – although I’m not brave enough to just sling it into my bag. It’s stainless steel inside and easy to clean (by hand) and there is no taste of anything else, despite the lid being plastic – it conveniently says when it’s open or closed so there is no confusion.

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It keeps drinks hot or cold for some considerable time – be careful if you give it to children. I tend to put my drinks in at the temperature I want to drink them at and they stay that way for a couple of hours, which is the longest I’ve tried. I’ve even put my delicious hot chocolate in it, which strictly speaking you shouldn’t; milk products don’t really fare well in insulated products in case they turn to yoghurt.

Do not, on any account, be tempted to buy this from Amazon – it’s only marginally cheaper but I waited weeks for mine and then they sent the wrong one (the much cheaper Thermo Cafe mug). I got ours direct from Thermos, where the service was spot on. I paid just under £28. Make sure you get the Thermos Stainless King Leak Proof Travel Mug – there are various other similar sounding ones that aren’t leak proof: if it’s too cheap, it ain’t it.

 

Window vacuum, a brilliant thing.

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231575442A while ago, as I fell asleep half delirious, I caught an ad talking about a wondrous looking thing called a window cleaning vac by Karcher. It was a vacuum, with a small cylinder attached to it that sucked the water up after you’d cleaned the windows, via a squeegee attachment.

Because I thought I’d dreamt it, I looked it up the next day and lo it really did exist. The reviews were fab. It was a gadget. We’ve long been looking for something that makes window cleaning a bit more efficient – it wasn’t the cleaning per se we found difficult, but how to achieve a smear free finish (even as I write those words, I am mocking myself). So of course I bought it.

It’s brilliant. You use it after you’ve cleaned the windows with soapy water. It takes a bit of technique but not much. My partner immediately seized it as his and started cleaning the windows in quite a frenzy. He even used it on the stainless steel cabinet fronts in the kitchen (brilliant, but I still think baby oil does a better job, he agreeth not). You can use it to mop up condensation if, like us, you have single glazed windows.

Buy the most basic model, the WV50. You don’t need the spray bottle (but buy it if you want), you don’t need anything else save for a cloth and a bucket. If you have teeny tiny windows you may want to buy the smaller squeegee attachment but that’s it. Save for replacements blades when you need them. It’s rechargeable. It’s fab.

Mud loving mats

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This is another boring but kinda useful post. And it may not apply to you at all if you live in a city and you don’t get muddy.

But, if you have children or dogs and/or live in the country, you may find this of help.

Last autumn when it was really wet and therefore muddy, our wooden floors got unfeasibly dirty. The entrance hall comprised of dirt, wet foot prints, mud, bits of grass. No doormat could deal with the amount of detritus that was coming in.

When I was out and about in London one wet day, I noticed some rather fine establishments would put out these particular mats inside their doors, when it rained. I looked into it and they were by UK Mats.

Now, UK Mats has great customer service. I know, I used it a lot last year as I tried to work out what to get; the great thing is that it makes mats to order so in almost any size you want.

But in the end, I didn’t get my mat from there because I realised that I really needed a mat that could be machine washed. After some research one name kept coming up: Turtle Mats. These are not cheap (neither are UK Mats) and there are lots of ones out there that look the same but aren’t. People who have a Turtle Mat do rather go on about how good they are. Which both annoyed and heartened me. Annoyed because I really didn’t want to be spending nearly £90 on a doormat. Heartened because it seemed that if you did, it was worth it.

We went for the largest size (hence the price, you can get them from £23) and ours is from the Classic collection. There are lots of others in the range and I’m sure they work brilliantly, but I don’t do patterned doormats.

Anyway. We’ve had ours for a year now and it is, indeed, brilliant. It seems to suck water and mud from your feet, it doesn’t slip and when it gets too dirty you can put it in the washing machine.

I was so impressed I didn’t buy the company, but I did buy a Mud Hog to go outside, too.

(I’ve tried, but can I take a decent photo of this? Course not.)

Vacuum sealing

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One of the single most useful things I have in my kitchen is completely unattractive to look at and completely unattractive to talk about, and yet it’s really valid (I’m looking for another word for useful and I cant’ think of one). Especially at this time of year if you have lots of produce to freeze. It’s my vacuum packer. I got it last year when I briefly considered getting into sous vide cooking (to cook sous vide – or under vacuum – the food needs to be vacuum sealed). Of course to begin with, I was looking at vacuum packers that were all gorgeous and stainless steel. Until I discovered that the reviews on them were not good.

So I got this one. Which I’ve been using for nearly a year now and can report is excellent. But it has, from what I can see, two features that this one doesn’t and I don’t think you need these two extra features (the extras being that the more expensive one holds the bag in the machine – you don’t really need this, and it has an extended vacuum button which I’ve never used).

So I would do yourself a favour and buy the cheaper one. They are ugly, ugly machines. But that doesn’t matter. What they do is useful and I promise you that if you get one, you will be vacuum sealing everything in your path.

Why do you need a vacuum sealer? Why let me tell you.

By taking the air out of food, it keeps longer. But I don’t really vacuum pack food for the fridge, because no food in my fridge really stays there for that long (although I did once vacuum pack a doorstep of parmesan cheese which I kept in the fridge). No, where vacuum packing comes into its own is for food you store in the freezer. By sucking the air out of a bag of food it takes up less space, you end up with a freezer of what looks like industrial space food which I think is COOL and it doesn’t suffer from freezer burn. Seriously you will be vacuum packing every single item in your freezer.

Here are a few tips. You can’t vacuum pack liquids unless you have a chamber vacuum sealer. These are expensive. So you do need to have a bit of technique if you seal something with liquid in it or that’s soft. You can either just seal it, vacuum part of it but stop before it’s squashed your bread rolls into pancakes (this takes practise), or freeze the item in a normal container first, and then vacuum pack it (I did this with the blackberries you see above, I froze them on a tray first and then vacuum packed them). You can’t seal anything if there is any liquid breaching the seal.

You can, if you are so inclined, also vacuum pack stuff like shampoo bottles before you go on holiday so they won’t leak. But that’s a step too far even for me. I have, in the past, vacuum packed some nuts that my partner couldn’t stop eating with the words STOP written on the packet. And I have vacuum packed jumpers to stop moths getting at them. It works brilliantly.

You do need special bags for vacuum sealing – and the most economical are on a roll, so you can cut them to size. Just make sure they will fit into the width of sealer you have (most do). But you can also ‘seal only’ so you could seal a packet of peas, for example, in their shop bought bag rather than clipping it shut.

Those of you with whom I’ve shared my sourdough starter in the last year, have also had it sent to them vacuum packed. You lucky, lucky bastards.