last thing you purchased?

[emily]

the last thing I purchased was a ring.



I like it. it goes nice on my finger

[jenny]

I guess we're not talking about everyday food shopping, because I did that yesterday! However, I did go out later and buy a frame for a print I made, and also two new bras, one of which proves to be distinctly uncomfortable and I am unlikely to wear.

[RLDavies]

Let's see the ring!

The very last thing I bought was probably a coffee from the corner shop last Thursday.

But as for permanent possessions, I got a few things from AliExpress a week or two ago. It was like cheap Christmas around here!
(Apologies for background. I had a load of bank and credit card stuff on the table, and used coffee mugs and things, so I just chucked a blanket over everything.)

Die Hard advent calendar. Hans Gruber falls down the Nakatomi Tower a little bit each day.




Skibidi Toilet advent calendar, because why not.



Knockoff game thingy. I love cheap knockoff pirate emulated game systems! This one has something like 9000+ games on it, even discounting duplicates and non-functioning ones -- although a lot of them are Japanese-language only, so I won't be able to play those. It works considerably better than I was expecting, so I'm quite pleased.
It doesn't really have a name. The box just says "Video Games". The manual covers several similar models, of which this one is apparently "Street Street Street Enhanced Upgrade A3".



And the most practical purchase, a silicone painting mat. It just fits my lap board, look! Nice big working area, brush rests, mixing wells, and a grippy holder for a water pot. Just rinse it off when you're done. I'm inordinately excited about this one, and will be using it as soon as I can find that Christmas music box kit I put away somewhere.

[emily]

Aug 25, 2024 15:55:53 GMT jenny said:

I guess we're not talking about everyday food shopping, because I did that yesterday! However, I did go out later and buy a frame for a print I made, and also two new bras, one of which proves to be distinctly uncomfortable and I am unlikely to wear.

You can talk about food shopping if you like.



The thread is called last thing you purchased, so if that's food, then I guess..

[efros]

Side table for my wife's recliner. Should be here on Wednesday. Prior to that the weekly shop.

[crissdee]

Struggling to remember the last "thing" I bought that wasn't edible, burnable in the car, or necessary for a job I was doing. Ah! I know what it was! A cover for my phone.

[amanda]

The last non-food item I bought was a 'cookie jar' style owl ornament, about 10 cm high with removable head. Light blue colour and upon getting it home I realise I had a matching one in white so rearranged the owl ornaments atop the tv unit and this pair now 'guard' the back at each side.

[Bondee]

Aug 25, 2024 16:12:57 GMT RLDavies said:

And the most practical purchase, a silicone painting mat...

One of the last things I bought was also a silicone mat from AliExpress, but mine was for soldering so I don't burn a hole in the dining room table. It was purchased along with a few other bits of electronic equipment and tools.

At about the same time, I bought a set of buttons and a glass lens from ebay for one of the imminent GameBoy restorations/upgrades.

[barbados]

My scales have finally given up the ghost, so I’ve decided to dive in an purchase a new set.
These give the usual units of measurement, but also include percentages- which should make things a lot easier.

[efros]

In a rare generous moment I purchased these for my departmental colleagues. They seemed to like them.

[jenny]

Aug 26, 2024 14:52:14 GMT barbados said:

My scales have finally given up the ghost, so I’ve decided to dive in an purchase a new set.
These give the usual units of measurement, but also include percentages- which should make things a lot easier.

Are these person scales or kitchen scales? I find it quite distressing enough to know how much of me there is without identifying how much of it is fat.

[barbados]

Kitchen. Percentages are good for baking.

[jenny]

I'm struggling to think of how but I'm sure you can tell me!

[barbados]

Aug 26, 2024 19:35:28 GMT jenny said:

I'm struggling to think of how but I'm sure you can tell me!

I shall.
If you are baking a cake that requires 400 grams of flour, 275 grams of sugar, and 350 grams of liquid. How do you adjust if you only have 350 grams of flour?
As you will know, baking is science, and the science is not about amounts, it is about ratios so if your recipe is base flour - 68.7 % sugar, and 87.5% liquid. so you can easily scale up and down depending on what you want to do. 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_percentage describes it in a much more concise way

[suze]

That is actually a remarkably good idea, and I now want a set of kitchen scales which has that feature!  We don't do baking, but we do adapt recipes for various things quite a bit.  Notably, if we have a published recipe which is said to feed four, we usually make three quarters of the amount.  (Recipes which are said to feed four often seem to assume that two of the four are children, and we do like generous portions.  One of us in particular, she says looking across to the next chair.)

I know that this is very much a First World Problem, and the very basic calculator - probably a free gift with an insurance quote - which lives in the kitchen does the job perfectly well.  But at such time as we actually need new scales ...

Leaving aside the consumable items that we seem to have decided to ignore, I'm not entirely sure what the last thing I bought was.  I do, however, know what the next thing will be.  Not a set of fancy new scales, but a set of door hinges.  At our cricket club, the area immediately outside the pavilion is surrounded by a white picket fence.  That fence has a gate through which players pass to enter and leave the field of play, but said gate has come off its hinges.  Re-hanging that gate is a 20 minute job, but it's one which has needed doing for three weeks and which everyone seems to think is for someone else.  It will have been done by the weekend.

[crissdee]

If the mileage was not an issue, I know of a self-employed mobile handyman who could do that! If he were not leaving tomorrow to play cowboys for a week......

[barbados]

Aug 26, 2024 22:08:39 GMT suze said:

That is actually a remarkably good idea, and I now want a set of kitchen scales which has that feature!  We don't do baking, but we do adapt recipes for various things quite a bit.  Notably, if we have a published recipe which is said to feed four, we usually make three quarters of the amount.  (Recipes which are said to feed four often seem to assume that two of the four are children, and we do like generous portions.  One of us in particular, she says looking across to the next chair.)

I know that this is very much a First World Problem, and the very basic calculator - probably a free gift with an insurance quote - which lives in the kitchen does the job perfectly well.  But at such time as we actually need new scales ...

It’s a very expensive way to get a calculator- which is pretty much all you will be using it for, because you will need to work out the percentages before you start. They are bakers scales and those percentages are taught. You will always have x volume of flour, and that will require y% liquid, raising agent, salt, spice etc - they are constant depending upon what you are baking. 
with regular cooking, the only science you need is taste - if you don’t like coriander for example, you can just leave it out, or substitute it for something else. You can’t do that with baking, if you don’t like milk, you cant just leave it out or substitute it because the other ingredients rely on it being there, in the correct proportion.

[amanda]

And that's the issue I face with baking, and my dairy intolerance. My low fat milk isn't the same as full cream milk, nor the non-dairy alternate spread for butter so things don't taste the same or even work out properly.

[suze]

Door hinges (black) complete with screws have now been purchased.

Every cricket club contains at least one young man who is keen to be useful whenever usefulness is needed.  Forty or so years ago, TGH was that man - and our club's current instance of him is called Charlie.

What with not being back at school until next week, Charlie can give us an hour of his time tomorrow afternoon.  If he can hold while TGH screws (as it were), I don't even need to go and the gate can be back on its hinges in good time before the weekend!

Memo to the two of them: it is conventional for gates which serve this particular purpose to open inwards.  A batter who has just been out doesn't want to faff about, he just wants to kick the gate open as he stomps back to the dressing room.  (Yes, that kicking probably is why the gate came off its hinges before.)  Don't do it the wrong way round!

[Bondee]

Aug 27, 2024 13:45:38 GMT suze said:

Door hinges...

Rhymes with "oranges".

I've just had to order a new memory card reader. The microSD slot on my laptop is sketchy at the best of times, and my old USB 3.0 thingumajig only works when there's an X in the month. The new one, which should arrive on Saturday, has USB 3.0 and USB-C connections and takes SD and microSD cards simultaneously.

[jenny]

Aug 26, 2024 19:51:51 GMT barbados said:

Aug 26, 2024 19:35:28 GMT jenny said:

I'm struggling to think of how but I'm sure you can tell me!

I shall.
If you are baking a cake that requires 400 grams of flour, 275 grams of sugar, and 350 grams of liquid. How do you adjust if you only have 350 grams of flour?
As you will know, baking is science, and the science is not about amounts, it is about ratios so if your recipe is base flour - 68.7 % sugar, and 87.5% liquid. so you can easily scale up and down depending on what you want to do. 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baker_percentage describes it in a much more concise way

I can see how that works in theory, but in practice if you're making a cake you do it according to the number of eggs it needs and scale to that, or it's usually no big deal if the proportions of other things than cakes aren't exactly right - e.g. if my recipe needed 400g of flour and I only had 350g, mostly I'd just knock about an eighth off the quantity of sugar and liquid and see if that felt right. Mostly it is. I won't be in a rush to replace my scales for that reason. Mine at least convert g to oz and lb, which is handy as American recipes tend to use oz and lb or cups (which there is no really accurate measurement for) and British recipes tend to use g these days. 

[tetsabb]

Among the items I bought on Monday at the local market was a pot of smoked mackerel pâté with horseradish in it.
Yum
Oh yum.

[jenny]

Oh that's delicious! We just can't get mackerel over here at the supermarket - it's generally regarded as a bait fish for lobster traps. Shame, because I love it!