Hot and floppy fail.
My dad, who has recently at last figured out how to set the time on a betamax video recorder, is not really up to speed on gadgets. I had seen the advert for JML halogen ovens on the TV and I thought they looked good, but never suggested one as I knew it would be like suggesting he buy a laser cannon to cook food with. He surprised me however, and one day I returned home to find a mass of packing materials with my dad sitting in the middle, admiring his new gadget.

I retired upstairs as he grappled with the instructions, returning after an hour to find him packing it away. "It's going back" he grumbled. "Bloody thing's useless."

He had tested the machine (an oven, remember) by attempting to "cook" something simple. He'd tried to bake himself some toast. Three slices of hot floppy bread had convinced him the oven was useless.

After a gentle reminder that making toast in an oven often turns out a failure, he now hails the halogen oven as the greatest invention in the history of cooking. It is quite nifty, actually.
( baw__bag contains traces of nuts on, Fri 16 Jul 2010, 18:29, Reply)