Smithy

Those cat mugs are adorable! Too bad about the chipping.

Here it is, working on a very small can of jalapenos -- about the diameter of a can of tomato paste. It worked like a charm. @Maison Rustique. I think the angle of the cylinder is necessary so that the cutter is going halfway from top to bottom of the top seam. Note the angle of the body of the opener while it was in action. Even on this small can, when it was done I had a smooth edge on both the lid and the can.

The writeup says there's a small hole drilled in the base so that air can get in and out of the insulating layer as needed, to avoid fracturing. My guess is that it's possible to get water into that insulating layer, but I doubt that would cause any breakage. If you've been putting it in the dishwasher with no problems, then I'd say you don't need to worry!

They're lovely, but i must say that at home "practical, no-nonsense" would exclude "hand-wash only" dishes from our everyday use. 😉

I like your style, @blue_dolphin! I also like that mug. I have one or a few, packed away at home. It's nice to see it, vicariously.

Funny, I hadn't noticed it before! But yes, the cutting wheel has a slight angle. It's most noticeable when looking at the gizmo end-on. If it dies in the next few uses we'll know it isn't supposed to be like that. 🙂 But it's been working fine so far.

Over here, @Pete Fred showed a picture of his figgy pudding, and quoted the requisite lines from the Christmas carol "We wish you a Merry Christmas". It reminded me of a story a friend told a few days ago. She watches the TV game show "Password". The premise is that teams have to provide the missing word from a phrase. The theme on the night in question was "holiday" (or maybe specifically "Christmas"). The clue was "pudding". The teams were apparently clueless. Somebody guessed banana pudding, another guessed chocolate pudding, yet another guessed Jello pudding, and so on. Eventually the light dawned, and a team member shouted "Friggin!" She really thought the line was "Now bring us some friggin' pudding...." We had a lot of fun singing it that way during the subsequent caroling session. 😀

I had the chance to use the magic can opener twice for tonight's dinner; on a can of refried beans, and a can of red enchilada sauce. The can opener is ridiculously fun to use, just as a FoodSaver is ridiculously gratifying. The dinner was enchiladas. The ingredients: good local pork chorizo (none of that pale nonsense from Duluth), a red onion, refried beans, some tortillas left over from a visiting guest last fall, grated cheddar, and cherry tomatoes whose time had long since passed. I cooked the chorizo and onion outside on the camp stove, partly because the poor stove hasn't had much use yet and partly to keep the mess outside. I brought the cooked stuff in and went to work on the enchiladas. This is a dish I don't do often enough for efficiency, much less to make it all neat. Still, once everything was assembled it went into a 375F oven for an unattended hour. That left time to do other things. The served enchiladas looked, well, messy and not very impressive until we garnished them at the table. There was chopped lettuce, chopped parsley and cilantro, sour cream, more shredded cheddar (which neither of us used) and salsa. Each of us had only 1 enchilada. We'll have another dinner and probably another lunch from the leftplanned-overs. Someday, maybe I'll remember that I really must line the pan. I baked this in my enameled cast iron dish. I put enchilada sauce on the bottom before adding the enchiladas themselves, but the tortillas still stuck. The pan is soaking as I type.

Done. At 59MB I doubt I'll be uploading many videos this winter, but "I" now have a YouTube channel! 🙂

@FauxPas suggested elsewhere that I upload a video of my can opener in action to YouTube. Here it is.

...or stress from being rootbound? I was wondering the same thing.

That sounds delicious! Thanks for the suggestion. Come to think of it, walnuts would be good too. I bet I can make that chicken last twice as long and be 4 times as good!

Dessert time for my darling (and later for me): a bit of Christmas self-indulgence. The Yuma Optimists Club has its annual fundraiser selling See's Candies from a stand. For the last year or three I've bought a big box for the badly-overworked, underappreciated staff in our post office. They know us, even though we're only part-timers! This year I got particular thanks because they feel so overwhelmed and mostly hear complaints. While I'm at the stand, I buy a small box for us. Hey, the money goes to a good cause. 😉

Crisping the skin to make a salad topper would be excellent! This time, though, I just chopped it all together. Then I chopped celery and parsley and added that, bound it together with mayonnaise and a touch of dill pickle juice, and called it good. It IS good. The pieces perhaps could have been chopped more finely; this wouldn't spread nicely on bread for a sandwich. However, it's fine wrapped in lettuce or loaded onto a (large) celery stick. I may try adding kimchi later, at least to a small bit, to see what that does.

When I went to town yesterday, the clouds were lowering and it was clearly already raining in Yuma. I needed to go anyway, and decided not to let the storm get any worse. It's a good thing I did it that way: by the time all the errands were run and I was on my way home, roads were beginning to flood. After I got home and unpacked most of the groceries, flash flood warnings started up on our cell phones: don't travel unless absolutely necessary. We hoped to get a flood in the nearby stream bed -- it's a beautiful sight -- and that never happened. However, we did get a spectacular double rainbow just before sunset. It glowed almost neon-bright. Truly gorgeous. This morning, I checked on the artificial watering hole about a half mile away. The water level had been as low as I've ever seen it: at least 4' below grade. Now it's full. The folks who situated it did an excellent hydrologic study when deciding where to put it. So far today I've made whomp sweet rolls for my darling. Last night I did NOT make the enchiladas I'd been planning. I'd been so hungry at the second grocery stop (Albertsons) that I bought a bucket of fried chicken and ate 2 wings before leaving the parking lot. We ate more last night. Now what we have left is most of the breast meat. I swear these chickens must have been built like sumo wrestlers! i'm going to make chicken salad from it. Have you ever made chicken salad including the skin from fried chicken? I think I'm going to try it. And maybe I'll get to those enchiladas today.

I had to go to town yesterday for prescription drugs, and nothing would do but that I had to visit the grocery store. Two of them, in fact, to get everything I wanted. Sheesh. What a zoo! Our plan is not to go anywhere by car until after Christmas. Maybe I'll be able to do something more satisfying than the last few days have provided.

Too bad I didn't know that last night! I found a bunch of leaf shards, frozen in a bag in the freezer, and decided they had to be bay leaves instead of the curry leaves I sought. They would have been at least 10 years old, harvested from a state park in Texas. There were too broken and I didn't want to mess with all those bitty sharp pieces. They're gone now. But I'll remember that substitution the future, against the time I once again have fresh bay but not curry leaves. BTW I need to know how you pronounce "curry" and "bay". 😉 It was another long, long day. Before we left for town I'd taken the trouble to rinse the green beans I'd bought nearly 2 weeks ago. Would I trim and cut them when we got home, or ignore them again? With great fortitude I rinsed, trimmed and cut them after we got home. The Cookie & Kate recipe for Green Bean Salad with Toasted Almonds and Feta (in this case, pecans rather than almonds) is one I can do in my sleep. (This is what I aspire to with Indian cookery, but I've a long way to go.) I even have live basil for garnish! It was dinner. It was enough. There's more for tomorrow. Now, I'm off to bed.

I hope you like it. So far we love ours for its utitlity and compactness. As a bonus, there is the giggle / startle factor when it's accidentally activated in the gadget drawer. "What's that?" exclaims my darling. It deactivates quickly when it doesn't sense the proper pressure.

So far I'm still at the stage of trying to get ONE dish together! The planned-over idea is a good one. I think @sartoric may have reported the same process when she was posting about Indian food. Her schemes often looked quite elaborate and literally marvelous.

Thanks, @blue_dolphin! Incidentally, the book is Recipes from an Indian Kitchen, by Sunil Vijayakar (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). Here's the overleaf from the dust cover. Note the instructions to "prepare your ingredients, set out your equipment..." and Bob's your uncle, you'll have tasty Indian food. This is of course what one always does: mise en place. I don't know why the mise always fuddles me with Indian food. Maybe this will be the year I get over that? (Nah, probably not. 🙄 ) Happy Solstice, everybody!

*I* certainly wouldn't complain. 🙂

Tonight I used my electric safety can opener and videotaped the whole thing in action on a can of coconut milk. Unfortunately, I've discovered that I can't convert a video to a .gif as I'd hoped so I could post it here. Thoughts and observations: 1. By now, @JAZ has probably already made her choice. Nonetheless I stand by my recommendation (eG-friendly Amazon.com link). This little gizmo is almost as entertaining and gratifying as a FoodSaver while being considerably less expensive. It is a little startling when I accidentally bump it in the gadget drawer and it buzzes to life. 🙂 2. I haven't tried it on something as narrow as a can of tomato paste, so can't comment on its size limits. 3. I tried it specifically on a can of coconut milk, after having looked at many cans of coconut milk before making my purchase. I really can't see why coconut milk cans would be any more challenging than any other produce cans. I have not tried this on a can of condensed milk, which doesn't have a neat rim. Maybe that would be problematic. 4. The lid AND the can edge were both smooth. I'd be able to use the can as a biscuit cutter, but I wouldn't be afraid of cutting myself on either the lid or the can rim. Sorry that I couldn't come up with good photos of the process!

So. I finally managed to cook the chicken in a curry-style sauce. Here's the book and recipe, with their photo of the finished dish: It's a pity that I can't convert a video to a .gif so I can show my electric can opener in action. That was actually one reason for wanting to do a recipe like this, rather than buying a simmering sauce. Can't do it. Oh, well. I had to do some minor substitutions, but nothing major. I accidentally made twice as much sauce as the recipe called for: it only wanted 1 cup of coconut milk, and I dumped the whole can in! No matter, I added the same amount of water. Leaves more for later. I used a microwaveable bag of Uncle Ben's Jasmine Rice and it was quite acceptable. I'll get more, to use with the leftovers, when we next go to town. (That will be tomorrow. ) In case you're wondering: it was delicious, and I'm glad there's more.

Couldn't decide whether to respond "thanks" or laugh on this one. 🙂

Well, this is embarrassing: I just remembered that I keep the ground cumin in the freezer. We weren't out after all, although we were out of the whole seeds. The bottle's getting pretty low, so it's good that I got ground as well as seeds. Still...how many times have I looked past that bottle, right there in the freezer door? Goes to state of mind, Your Honor.