meemalee

Magnum Chocolates and Cornetto Chocolates from Wall's Much as I hate to admit it, I'm a sucker for a gimmick, especially the type sitting at the checkout at your local supermarket (yes, I know they're aimed at children, but I'm a creature of childish impulse).  I saw these new chocolates from Wall's Ice Cream, and obviously I couldn't resist chucking a couple in my basket. The Magnum ones first - you get three in a packet and they really do look like tiny Magnum bars. Each one is a couple of centimetres long - about the size of a large lozenge. It's a Magnum, but tiny When you bite into the chocolate, there's fluffy vanilla cream inside (bit like creme patissiere). The taste and texture is about as close to ice cream as not -ice cream can get, though a little artificial. Pretty The Cornetto next. I like how there's a big warning at the top saying "No ice cream included".  When you unwrap the silv...

[This follows on from Specs ] Just before Christmas, my dad, the ophthalmologist, says to me, " I think it's time you had laser surgery ". I do a double-take (actually, it feels like a blood vessel explodes in my head), but I get over my shock quickly and I bounce to a phone to book a consultation. He's recommended a particular surgeon, and a fortnight later, I find myself waiting to speak to the man in question. A cheerful girl takes me to a room and she does a full eye test to check if my vision is stable. I don't have much of a bridge on my nose, so the clunky trial frames keep sliding down, and I end up having to prop them up with a finger. I hand her a list of all my prescriptions since time began, and she looks scared (" Oh god, a looney ") till I explain that my dad compiled them out of professional interest. She then scans me with a machine to measure the thickness of my corneas - the laser will be slicing into them, so the thic...

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...

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)...

Claire, David, John FACT – I watched about 4 episodes of MasterChef the Professionals this year (including the one with " 39 Year Old Lee " and the one where cocky Kevin threw a wobbly). FACT – That means I’m probably not qualified to review it. FACT – That’s not going to stop me. Our three finalists are Claire Lara, a tutor at Liverpool Community College; John Calton, chef at the Duke of Wellington pub, in Newton, Northumberland and Dave Coulson, chef at the Eden Castle Inn in Hartlepool. They’re all Northern. One of them will win. Backstory time! Some kind of MOR dross (Keane?) plays as we find ourselves in Liverpool to discover that Clare grew up on a beach with a postman who fed her on oven chips. Suddenly Air plays, filling me with intense deja vu , but it all makes sense, as next she did a YTS which sent her to Paris for five years (long freaking youth training scheme), and fell for a French chef called Marc who thought her an oddball, but married her anyway. She now t...