The New Jigsaw

I love jigsaws made by a company named Pintoo. The pieces are plastic and fit together with barely an atom between them. The finished puzzles look great and you could easily frame and display them.

I’ve bought a lot by this company and given several as gifts. I think 500 to 800 pieces is an ideal puzzle size, but recently I got a 2000 piece puzzle:

This is a lot of pieces, and all spread out barely fit on our table:

Pintoo puzzles lack flat edge pieces so making the border is much more difficult than in other puzzles. In this case, sorting the pieces and making the border took me over 4 hours!

Finishing the entire puzzle took me 24.5 hours over ten days!! Here’s an animation of the puzzle after each work session:

Its a lovely puzzle and was a lot of fun to assemble. But I think it’ll be a while before I tackle one of this size again!

A New Backyard Camera

We installed a new camera in our backyard which operates on WiFi and automatically records when it detects motion. It works well and I think we’ll get at least one more (for the front) but this one is our new wildlife camera!

Here’s a quick edit of some of the videos it has recorded since I installed it just after Christmas:

Review: Nostalgia MyMini Sandwich Maker

It’s been life-threateningly cold outside recently, and naturally in such a hostile climate ones mind turns to thoughts of toasted sandwiches. So to facilitate such delights, I bought this:

This was a mere $12 from the worlds largest global superpower Amazon which is amazing value! I chose the smallest one because it was the smallest one and since there was no choice of colour we can be relieved it comes in a snappy and sophisticated green (or perhaps more correctly Pantone PMS 333?)

Here’s the device out of the box:

The instructions helpfully identify the relevant parts: ‘upper surface’, ‘lower surface’ and ‘operation light’. It’s not the most complicated contraption ever built, but luckily the manufacturers forestall user error via a handily included recipe sheet. I decided to attempt this one:

Alas I had no ham; turkey would have to suffice. With great care I preheated as instructed before arranging the ingredients:

And closing the lid:

And in less than a few minutes, I had a meal fit for an emperor:

But was it good? Well it was dry, and wheat bread tastes awful when toasted, and since I used provolone instead of swiss the cheese didn’t fully melt. But I ate it, and that’s what mattered.

I’m pleased to say that since the above I have secured ham and swiss and my second sandwich was a masterpiece!

KLS was braver than me, and decided to investigate two other listed uses of this nifty apparatus. Firstly she baked a cookie in it:

She had made the dough previously and it had been frozen in balls. She just threw a few in, closed the lid… and it did a good job!

Emboldened, it was time for something a bit more challenging: a pizza pocket!

This used crescent roll dough (which once again we had in the fridge), and as you can see she just tossed in random pizza toppings and crossed her fingers. She said it was great, and I believe her since she made another one for dinner!

$12 therefore, for gourmet dining in our own home. How can this not receive two – nay four! – thumbs up 🙂