alexist

As you might know, I am the first person to complain when I get bad service. But I'm also the first person to tell you when I've had really GOOD service. So in that vein, my applause goes to www.magimix-spares.co.uk. My initial experience was somewhat off-putting: it said the order went through but I got a database error and no confirmation e-mail. I waited a day, still no e-mail, so I sent in an enquiry and got a very prompt reply saying "no order recorded" (in politer form, of course). That actually reassured me--prompt replies do that. :) So I re-ordered Tuesday afternoon, and got the discs this morning! They're a small company in Surrey, so that's really good work.

And they were selling for £13.95 each--the other spares site was selling them for £22.95 (!) That 2nd site is also the official Kenwood spares site so now I'm suspicious about their prices. Spare bowls (and I need one for my Kenwood, for all those "whip whites at end" recipes) are never cheap, but £52 is a lot. I think I paid under $60 for my KA spare. So now I'm going to double check the price.

While we're on the topic of Magimix, an irritation: It comes with a storage box, which holds the blades, whip, and the 3 discs you get with it. They also sell a 6 disc wall holder (there's 8 available in total). Anyone else see a problem? Either you have too many discs, or you have empty space in this big box taking up room on your counter (which you still need, because who the hell wants razor sharp double edged Sabatier blades just hanging around?). I have stuck my extra discs in the box, but it isn't very tidy. (Magimix discs take up a decent amount of space because of the thing to hold them on the spindle.)

Also, why is the French fry disc part of the default set? It's useless, because the feed tube isn't anywhere near big enough to hold a potato or anything else you'd want to cut into pieces that size. (This isn't true of the new XL models, but I have a 5100.) The 4mm slicer or the julienne disc would be far more useful. Instead, I had to buy them. (Default discs are French fry, 2mm reversible slicer/grater, and 4mm grater.)

As those of you who have known me for a few years know, I have some domestic quirks. One of them is ironed sheets. I am fully aware that normal, sane people do not iron their sheets. A few send them out (my grandmother always did this, as her store was on the same block as a laundry); in London, this is prohibitively expensive.

I went off ironing my sheets for a while, because there was no comfortable way to do it in the old flat, and we didn't use a top sheet, and the sheets weren't too badly wrinkled. Now we've moved, and bigger sheets mean more wrinkling (even though I washed and dried the duvet cover on its own, it was still bad). So I'm back to ironing them (a few weeks in our new, crisp from the package sheet sets reminded me of just how nice they are).

So tonight I've been ironing sheets. I haven't been doing it 2 hours straight, but the top sheet took me well over half an hour. Super king sheets are BIG. And our ironing board has a stupid amount of room taken up by the iron rest, so it doesn't have as much usable space as it should :/ That's a real problem when you've got a piece of fabric that's over 2m a side. You need a LOT of turning and shifting to get to all of it. I've also had to top up the water already, and have gone through a worrying amount of starch. (They don't sell big cans of it here though... and only regular, no heavy.)

Ah well, enough of a break, time to pop a different DVD in and iron the duvet cover. Don't I do the most exciting things on my nights in?!