Helloooooo buyer's remorse

[cimorene]

Wax and I just bought her a new iPod nano (yellow) and named it just now (following the theme of green Omena, may she RIP, and purple Viol) Gylling:



We also bought:

√ new red shearling slippers for me (I threw the last pair away in July. Shearling slippers, people: om nom nom. So delicious-feeling, it's like a chocolate truffle for your feet!)

√ the purple Tornado Alley hoodie

√ $£$€¥!!1!- worth of stylish Finnish housewares as wedding present for the wedding we're leaving for in 11 days

√ five cheese slicers, the Norwegian invention (in Swedish it's osthyvel, "cheese plane", which conveys its origin as a miniature version of a carpenter's tool) which no Nordic household could do without and which is for some reason unknown in the US: one for each of my aunts, one for the bride-to-be

√ two more turquoise Iittala Teema bowls for us (we only have two, even though we have six plates), because they happened to be on sale for €8 @ Anttila

√ a new tea mug for me (white with two skeletal trees in winter on one side, done in sketchy black ink-drawing style)

√ every magazine at Anttila that had Muse on the cover because Wax is cheating on MCR atm

√ lunch

We always feel queasy after spending large sums of money. But at least this way we only had to go through it once, instead of twice if we'd waited and bought the iPod later?

Comments

[sophiawestern]

Slippers? WANT.

Cheese slicer? WANT MORE.

[cimorene]

I hear that you can perhaps find those in kitchen gadget stores? Maybe like Williams Sonoma would have it.

[lazulisong]

cheese slicer: I've seen those ... well not lots of places, but they're fairly common in the high-end cooking ware shops, and IKEA, of course. ... Portland may be an absurdly foodie town, shh.

[cimorene]

As an American host of a Norwegian exchange student, I was party to quite a number of never-heard-of-it reactions, starting with ours when her parents sent one over. Living in Finland has given me access to many more. This is of course true of lots of kitchen gadgets that are well-known to gourmets, of course. I've even encountered people who are unfamiliar with a garlic press, while we once spent about a week hunting high and low for a tomato peeler that MIL wanted for Christmas.

[lazulisong]

D:

There's tomato peelers? Man, most of my childhood suffering suddenly became invalid. :( For like, cooked tomatoes? or raw ones?

[cimorene]

We actually never even saw one; she saw it on a tv show and insisted she wanted one, but we couldn't find one anywhere and it was too late to order it. I THINK it was for cooked tomatoes, but I could be totally wrong.

[lazulisong]

I dunno, that looks like a potato peeler to me. And IKEA has the cheese slicers for like, five bucks, although growing up we always had the guillotine type with the wire to cut slices off.

Dang it, I just ate and now I want cheese!

[cimorene]

Perhaps the difference is that the blade is serrated. Or that's what it looks like.

I never saw an Ikea until I came to Finland, and that is also true for millions of Americans since all of them are in big urban areas, and most of them actually in the Northeast and the west coast.

[anatsuno]

We bought cheese planes in 78 when we did our big Scandinavian-Dutch family trip (I think we got them in the Netherlands), and I couldn't live without it. I also use it to slice cucumbers and courgettes very thinly. I LOVE it.

The red shearling slippers look adroable and warm! *want*

(curious question: wouldn't it have been cheaper to buy the nano in the US? I looked at the prices for a shuffle yesterday and I concluded I should wait til I go there - if I ever manage - before I buy one, it was so much cheaper.)

[cimorene]

I guess with the exchange rate, it would. We didn't even talk about that. Wax's is already broken though, and the plane flight is definitely a place where it's important to have one.

[perhael]

You mean there are people who don't have cheese slicers? WAT.

[pineapplechild]

Man, I totally love cheese slicers. I was introduced to them by a Norwegian friend of mine, and have seriously contemplated stealing hers, as I can't find them around here. (Although I can't get the melted-goldenrod-crayon cheese she has around here either, and believe me I'm some serious levels of jealous about that.)

[cimorene]

Yeah, mesost is a bit difficult to get... most places. Actually you can't even buy it here; you have to go to Sweden. (People go to Sweden to shop rather a lot from the southwest part of Finland, though.)

[cesare]

I think those cheese planes are uncommon here partly because the common cheeses in the states aren't hard enough to slice well that way. I never have a lot of luck with them.

[cimorene]

I really don't think so. Extremely soft cheeses slice easily with the modern kind.

[cesare]

Huh. Maybe it's just me!