The Good Old Days !

I have to confess that I'm at an age when I do think back to the good old days … well most were good! Lol!

I tend to start my sentences with 'do you remember when ...'

Well I can certainly remember going shopping with my mum, and even when I first started shopping as an adult buying fruit and vegetables from the green-grocer and putting them in brown paper bags.

Pleased to see they are making a come back!
Morrison's supermarkets say that 'Brown paper bags for greengrocer areas have been introduced into 493 stores, and will be rolled out to the rest by the end of the summer.
The company has said it hopes the move will stop the use of more than 150 million small plastic bags each year.

The new bags are made from 100% recyclable paper, and will have a thinner see-through strip so customers and staff can easily see what is inside.'


More on this story here
https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/morrisons-aims-to-save-150-million-plastic-bags-per-year-with-paper-bags-for-fruit-and-veg_uk_5b30a03de4b0040e2744b4dd

I think it sounds a good idea

All the best Jan

Our greengrocers have always used paper bags, One batch were totally crap though and disintegrated whenever you tried to put anything into them.

I am frankly horrified, although I try to avoid plastic as much as possible it makes up the majority of my non-recyclable rubbish.

Yes, there is so much plastic around isn't there.

Although one of my friends was complaining about glass today, and how there seems to be more broken bottles around as people are switching to glass bottles over plastic!!!

Thank goodness for bottle banks  but with any form of litter, it should all be discarded/thrown away responsibly.

All the best Jan

They collect paper, card, metal and hard plastics here, and we have bottle banks too. They also used to collect food waste but stopped that. They still collect garden waste but you have to pay extra. Mine goes into my compost bins and overflow pile, well the veggie waste does, now the meat bones etc. go into landfill.

"Packaging rage" is now officially a thing.

Goodness me - it seems they have a name for so many things I haven't come across!!!

Yes wrap rage, sometimes called packaging rage, see what Wikipedia says about it, the article starts

"Wrap rage, also called package rage, is the common name for heightened levels of anger and frustration resulting from the inability to open packaging, particularly some heat-sealed plastic blister packs and clamshells. People can potentially be injured from attempts at opening difficult packages: use of cutting tools can pose a risk of damage to the contents of the package. Easy-opening systems are available to improve package opening convenience."

More here
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wrap_rage

Seems to me you need so much patience with modern living, especially packaging!!!

All the best Jan

I lost my rag the other day when I needed to open a new bottle of olive oil. The convenient tear strip broke off and I ended up going round the bottle top with a knife. I had to take the frying pan off the cooker until I finally succeeded in breaking in, otherwise the bacon and mushrooms would have burned. Grrrrr!

chris c wrote:I lost my rag the other day when I needed to open a new bottle of olive oil. The convenient tear strip broke off and I ended up going round the bottle top with a knife. I had to take the frying pan off the cooker until I finally succeeded in breaking in, otherwise the bacon and mushrooms would have burned. Grrrrr!

Could have been dangerous using that knife you might have cut yourself    perhaps you be better using a 1 calorie oil spray 

Th A answer would have been a properly designed bottle. It Can Be Done.

I just bought some long life batteries. The long life comes because you can't get them out of the blister pack.

It seems the older I get the more I struggle with packaging …

However, it bought back memories of my dear mum trying to open a corned beef can with one of the roll keys they used to provide on the side of the tin!
Don't know if you remember these?
But the times they wouldn't work properly  

Do they still do these? I don't buy it - but maybe they do! But there again probably not!

All the best Jan

The tins of cod's roe still have that key and tear strip. It usually works but you have to be careful not to get it cross-threaded.

My vintage can opener finally died, I inherited it from my mother and it may have still been the one from my childhood. It outlasted about three modern ones. I ended up getting out the even older can opener that was inherited from my gran, one of those ones with a blade that you stab into the can and kind of rock carefully all round the edge.

Now I've bought a new one exactly the same as the old one. Sod the trendy crap that doesn't work for long. Who can I leave it to in my will?

I so often have problems with the so called modern tin openers …
The old fashioned ones i.e. my old one seems to work ok (touch wood )

All the best Jan

The ones that cut into the side of the can are the worst, half the time fluid leaks out and the edges of the can could be used for precision surgery. Strangely those are the ones that seem to wear out quickly. And as for corkscrews . . .

"And as for corkscrews . . ."

Sometimes I think thank goodness for screw top wine bottles

All the best Jan

Sometimes modern is good . . . I actually have a half decent corkscrew at the moment, one with levers which usually works but some of the corks are an appallingly tight fit. I still have the vintage corkscrew for when the modern one dies, so far so good unlike several others I owned in between.

Even screw tops can be so tight that they can't be unscrewed without pliers. On the other hand the opposite can be bad also, I once had a pallet of cooking oil where the lids were loose on the drums which turned the back of my wagon into a skid pan.

B&Ms jars of cold pressed coconut fat are also hard to get tops off.

I've got my mums old electric can opener works a treat   and her bottle and jar opener similar to the picture 

My mother's bottle and jar opener was my father. And after he died, me.

Another thing I inherited but haven't yet needed to use was a kind of long-handled tongs for picking things up off the floor or down from high shelves. Oh and an illuminated magnifying glass. That would come in handy if I could remember where I put it. Do you ever fail to find something and end up buying a replacement, then come home and find the original?

graham64 wrote:I've got my mums old electric can opener works a treat   and her bottle and jar opener similar to the picture 

Thanks Graham I must get one.

Long birder wrote:

graham64 wrote:I've got my mums old electric can opener works a treat   and her bottle and jar opener similar to the picture 

Thanks Graham I must get one.

They are not expensive Derek, don't know which shops sell them but they are available at https://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/jar-opener

chris c wrote:My mother's bottle and jar opener was my father. And after he died, me.

Another thing I inherited but haven't yet needed to use was a kind of long-handled tongs for picking things up off the floor or down from high shelves. Oh and an illuminated magnifying glass. That would come in handy if I could remember where I put it. Do you ever fail to find something and end up buying a replacement, then come home and find the original?

Polyfiller!

I recently built a new shed so sorted out my tool shed, i have a full shelf of polyfiller i used once, it looks like im a artisan polyfillerer

Anyone need any polyfiller with one careful owner, let me know

Andy12345 wrote:

chris c wrote:My mother's bottle and jar opener was my father. And after he died, me.

Another thing I inherited but haven't yet needed to use was a kind of long-handled tongs for picking things up off the floor or down from high shelves. Oh and an illuminated magnifying glass. That would come in handy if I could remember where I put it. Do you ever fail to find something and end up buying a replacement, then come home and find the original?

Polyfiller!

I recently built a new shed so sorted out my tool shed, i have a full shelf of polyfiller i used once, it looks like im a artisan polyfillerer

Anyone need any polyfiller with one careful owner, let me know

Thanks for your offer Andy but having checked I'm well stocked with polyfiller not that I have much use for it these days 

Buy some empty parrots. You'll soon use it up.

Anyone looking in my kitchen cupboard would think I have gone OCD for coffee. Actually there's method in my madness - the Kenko (thanks Graham, currently my favourite) was on special offer so I bought extra. Then the L'Or was £3 a jar so I bought a few of them so I wouldn't get bored. They seem to have stopped stocking the big jars and the refill packs which makes it extra expensive.

Then there was an offer on Nescafe Azera so I bought one of them but won't be buying any more even if they give it away.

This week there was Lavazza at £3, and yes I probably will buy some more but not at the full price, it's an expensive one. And also refill bags of the Millicano so I bought a couple of them too.

I'm wondering why they are suddenly doing so many discounts on coffee, has there been a scare story in the Daily Mail or something?

I know who to ask if we run short of coffee! LOL!

Have to say Eddie still prefers the M&S own brand ... and the few times I drink it - it tastes fine.

I don't think there is a coffee shortage looming yet! Unless anyone knows anything different?

All the best Jan

We don't have an M&S here so can't comment, I wonder who actually manufactures it though. There's a Co-Op lookalike of the Millicano which I might try some time. Now excuse me, I need to hydrate . . .

chris c wrote:We don't have an M&S here so can't comment, I wonder who actually manufactures it though. There's a Co-Op lookalike of the Millicano which I might try some time. Now excuse me, I need to hydrate . . .

Not sure who makes it for them - but the Morrison's brand looks very similar, haven't bought or tasted any though!

All the best Jan