meemalee

So you may remember that Morphy Richards asked me to be one of their Home of the Houseproud reviewers. The way it works is they ask me if I'm interested in the gadget of the month and I say yea or nay depending on caprice. Most recently, they offered to send me the One Cup . Now, I have the brain of a guttersnipe and clearly spend too much time on the internet, so of course I accepted this offer with glee. In fact, I was this close to getting my sister-in-law to pose with me and the machine, purely so I could post a photo with an appropriate caption, but then I thought that might be going too far for a family-friendly site. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, that's a good thing. In direct contrast to the beast they sent me last time , the Morphy Richards One Cup is relatively petite and rather curvaceous. Its concept is simple - it heats and dispenses one cup of water for you in about 30 seconds - so a bit like the long-lost Tefal Quick Cup which I nearly bought...

This is why I love Japan. Stuff like this. SWITL (which stands for Special World Idea Technology Revolution - the Japanese transpose Ls and Rs) is described by its makers Furukawa Kiko as: "a hand-held type of the SWITL for moving soft objects without collapsing their shape. It is a Robots hand for handling soft and jelly like objects which loose shape when gripped, cannot be gripped, or cannot be touched, etc. Objects like Mayonnaise and Ketchup can be picked up without changing their shape and moved to a different location while retaining the shape". There isn't much other information about how it works (though someone has had a stab at how on Quora here ), so right now let's go with MAGIC . The main application I can think of for this is in bakeries, and indeed a test video on Furukawa Kiko's site shows this in action. Each hand-held unit is priced at 70,000 yen , which is just under £600, and they're looking for distributors now. I am tempted. Boy, am...

You'll have seen from previous posts that I like a bit of kitchen whimsy. As well as bento bits and bobs, my house is rammed with culinary nonsense from Alessi (including that Phillipe Starck Juicy Salif lemon squeezer), Koziol , Guzzini and, last but not least, Fred and Friends , purely because the design tickled my fancy - functionality not necessarily a priority (see again Juicy Salif). It's an easy and not too expensive way of getting a little designer fun into your surroundings. Smallest M-Cup used for my Butterbean Dip My latest loves are the M-Cups and M-Spoons from Fred & Friends - a ridiculously adorable range of Russian doll kitchenware, which (obviously) stacks away for your convenience. The Matryoshka Measuring Cups aka M-Cups come in 1/4, 1/3, 1/2, 2/3, 3/4 and 1 full cup sizes, making them perfect for American recipes. The Matryoshka Measuring Spoons aka M-Spoons come in 1 tbsp, 1/2 tbsp, 1 tsp, 1/2 tsp, 1/4 tsp sizes. They're both available in P...

Growing up, the weekend for me meant the Sunday Times. I hung on every word of Craig Brown 's Table Talk, I longed to be Emma Forrest with my own column at the age of 14 (I long to be her less these days ). But my pride and joy was the Innovations Catalogue . Although not an official Sunday Times supplement, a fresh copy seemed to drop out of the pages every week, and made me laugh more than the Funday Times (also RIP), and fascinated me more than the Culture supplement. I wanted to own every single item on offer - from plasma globe to remote control can opener. Sadly the Innovations catalogue is now defunct, but Lakeland keeps me ticking over (I desperately want a Remoska and I kinda want a Toast 'N' Egg). Anyway, my endless lust for gadgets meant that a few years ago I asked my in-laws to get us the Tefal ActiFry for Christmas. Basically a big culinary hairdryer, the ActiFry promises to fry enough chips for a family of four with just a small scoopful of oil (and 3% fat)...