Things that go together

One of the various semantic tasks that I carry out with my patients at times is an exercise where you have to find the 'things that are related '.

This  could include things like 'apple and orange are both fruits', or 'skirt and trousers are both clothes'.  The trick is to find the shared category.

Another related task is 'opposites', where you find the pairs that are linked by being opposites to each other, such as 'hot and cold', 'tall and short' etc.

Over the last few weeks it has occurred to me that such pairings can often be found in the news, so I am going to keep my eyes open for these now, and any that other people notice would be appreciated for my list.  Ideally they will combine the two activities, for example:


Rescues: Chilean miners-  successful / Hostage- unsuccessful

Manchester money: Wayne Rooney- multimillionaire / public sector workers -skint

Please do let me know of any others you find out there.

Maybe they won't all highlight the awfulness of the negative one quite as much as these do, but I shall be interested to find out

Tis the season to be jolly

More apples today... and these ones made it into a crumble.

I like mine with cream.   I think Jamie probably would have preferred custard. 

Hooray for leftovers.

A new trolley named Doris has been integrated into my rounds this week.  She is very robust and holds lots of catalogues.  She leaks a little but that is a small problem that is easily overcome with baby wipes.

I hope to spend many happy hours with her.  The apples fitted very well into a very handy little pocket in her lid which was definitely a Brucey Bonus.

Beady eyes

 One of my customers makes gorgeous sea glass beads and has a new website which I will tell you more about soon.
However, via her website I have discovered Beads By Laura, which also has some beautiful beads available if you are crafty.
  I used to make jewellery but don't anymore. However I still take an interest and really enjoy feasting my eyes on the stunning beads that people are producing now. 
You can enter Laura's competition by following the link and may win some of these beauties.


http://www.beadsbylaurablog.com/2010/09/bead-giveaway.html

Dogs

seem to be featuring frequently in the 'unusual uses for Kleeneze products' category  at the moment.

Today one customer disclosed that she had bought the hose to tap connector purely so she could hose down her very large and  very hairy hound out in the garden as he had outgrown the bathroom.


Having had a large labrador in the past who loved water and baths I can understand this desire to remove him from the bathroom. 

My dog, Otto, used to love being bathed and tried to eat the shampoo once it had been put on, so I had to rinse him off very quickly before he could eat enough of it to be sick! 

More unusual uses....

for Kleeneze products.

One customer purchased  4 banana trees recently.  I thought this was a little unusual, but all was revealed when I went round to deliver them.

This lady is an artist and carves beautiful sculptures out of stone.  I have bought a couple of her pieces, one that reminds me of a whale fin and another that is like a whale tail, so you can see I am a bit of a fan.

On this occasion she showed me a gorgeous piece of white alabaster that was hanging from a large metal structure.  It was fairly flat and she had carved a relief of a bird onto it, and with the light shining through from behind it looked fabulous.  She wanted to do some more to sell, but it had cost her nearly £50 to get the hanger made.  Our banana trees, at only £3.75 made future sculptures much more affordable!

I already have my name down for one.......but don't tell Jamie.

Modesty

A friend is staying with me and had a flick through the catalogues yesterday.

She commented on the Modesty Panel, which is a lacy frontage that ladies can wear which covers the cleavage when wearing low cut tops.

This got us chatting about similarly useful products and we have decided to send a suggestion to Kleeneze to offer something like it for ladies who wear skirts that are far shorter than they really should be wearing...a kind of skirt extender.  I am sure we have all seen a few candidates for one of these!

Pee Power

 What will they think of next?

It seems that soon we will all be able to power our way through the world using only our own pee!  Fantastic.  Being an avid pee-er, I shall either be able to sell mine on to people who do not pee quite so much as me, or just be super-powered myself.

I can just imagine it.....your mobile battery is getting a bit low so you quickly need to drink something in order to be able to top it up!




http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20727741.400-pee-is-for-power-your-electrifying-excretions.html

Just for John

As requested, the recipe for slow cooked pork with apples, if you can call it a recipe. I am rather hoping that Kath might improve it for me and please do let me know of any changes you might make so  I can try them.

You will need: cooking apples / pork (I had loin steaks) / stock (I used chicken)

Method:

1.  Put apple slices in bottom of slow cooker
2.  Put pork on top of apples
3.  Put stock on top of the lot

I added a bit of ground pepper and some sage and slow cooked it on high for about 4 hours then on medium for a couple more.  At one stage it did look as if it might be fermenting but I just let it carry on and it turned out alright.
Jamie suggested not serving up too many of the apples on the plate as it could be  a bit overpowering, but the flavour of them had permeated the pork very nicely.

I am sure that variations with other/more veggies and herbs and different cuts of pork would all go down equally well.

Enjoy with mash and veg and a glass or two of cider!

Fruity

I have two fruit-related stories for today.

The first one is related to my wonderful new purchase - a slow cooker.  Maybe I am actually the slow one (many would agree with this) for taking so long to catch on to these gadgets, and I only  got mine about 2 months ago.  I love the fact that I can go out for the day while my dinner cooks and the food is deliciously tender and full of flavour.

Today's recipe was pork loins slow cooked in apples. Very simple and took only a few minutes to prepare. The best bit was that I used cooking apples that I found in a box marked 'fallen cookers, help yourself', while I was putting out my catalogues this morning. Initially I thought 'apple crumble' as many of us probably would, but then remembered as I was walking around that I had actually got some pork in the fridge and I would try slow cooking them.  It was absolutely scrummy and I will hopefully be able to get some more next week when I collect my catalogues and make the crumble then.
I am sure other distributors think of much more enlightening topics whilst out with catalogues, but my thoughts are mostly food related.

My second tale is about the amazing Pineapple corer and slicer.  This product sold really well, then went out of stock quite quickly.  As I was explaining to  customers they would have to wait a few weeks for their item, they all said it didn't matter, they just wanted to get their hands on one as they had heard about them lately, but no-one could remember where from.

I decided I had to get one of these for myself, but obviously had to wait like everyone else.  The delivery came in on Thursday, so on Friday I bought two pineapples and set to in the kitchen.  Here are some tips I would like to pass on to anyone using this item.

Look at the diagram in the instructions rather then reading them.  The diagram shows that you cut the  top and bottom from the fruit first, but the written instructions only say to cut off the top.  Well, I discovered if you don't cut off the bottom, you cannot get the corer out of the pineapple.  Also, make sure you stand the fruit in a bowl whilst twisting the corer, or all the scrummy runny juice will flow out onto your counter or chopping board and from there all over your kitchen floor and fridge and oven, and then you will have to buy lots of kleeneze cleaning products to clear up the mess.  But then again, I am sure nobody would be so stupid that they would not think of these things anyway.

More unusual uses....

for our products -  tonight's offering: the Handy Grabber - is a tool most commonly used by people with reduced mobility who need to pick up things they have dropped, or reach for items a bit of a way away.
Alternatively you could use it to 'get things off the dog when it goes under the table'....the mind boggles!

Interesting facts from customers

I am often on the receiving end of interesting snippets of information from customers, who are as you would imagine, a varied group of people with lots of different backgrounds. Tonight I discovered that the main ingredient for deer repellent is actually tiger pee.
How on earth an english born deer knows that a tiger is a lethal predator to be avoided at all costs beats me. But there you go. Maybe they are all born at Longleat and send round the country from there.

Unusual uses for Kleeneze products

One of my customers suggested I use a blog to share stories about the weird and wonderful things that people do with the products they buy from me.
I am going to kick start this with the Set of 4 Mini Brushes. They are advertised as being very handy for cleaning teapot spouts and getting into those little areas that haven't been scrubbed for a while, such as plug holes. However, one gentleman revealed that he was really looking forward to taking a bath with his brushes.  This hooked me in, and when I asked him more, he explained that since his hip had been in a bad way,  he had been unable to reach between his toes to clean them, and that was why he had bought the brushes!
I will leave you with that thought, and add more as I come across them. Do feel free to add any of your own too.

Scarey start

This is a whole new adventure for me, as one of the least computer-able people out there. Not sure yet what  will go in it and it may indeed remain gloriously empty as I will have forgotten by the end of the day how to get back to the blog itself.  If anything else appears in here, it will only be down to the persistence of my partner Jamie, who is desperately trying to drag me into the last century (although he often forgets that for the majority of the last century the internet and computers did not even exist)