Tefal Avanti Toaster

I knew I shouldn't have taken my 4 year old nephew, Kane, toaster shopping with me. I knew he'd spot one with knobs and buttons and shiny bits and pester and pester until I gave in and bought it. I knew that, but I took him anyway. He and my sister were about to come and share my house and I wanted to make them feel welcome and put their own personal stamp on the place. With hindsight, I should have just bought him a quarter of cherry lips and kept him locked up at home. With hindsight, I should have .... Actually, with hindsight, I probably would have ended up buying the very same toaster I did buy, for the very same reasons he insisted we'd got to have it. ...

As I may have mentioned once or twice recently, I have just moved house - a new flat for my and BF to (finally) live together in. For our first week in said abode, we were happy apart from the distinct lack of toast that we had - and BF does love his toast, bless him. The reason for this was due to the rather strange mixture of provisions that the landlord had equipped the flat with; you see, we had a wok and a wine rack but no kettle or toaster! :-) So, when asked by my parents what we would like for a house warming pressie, this is what we told them. And my parents, being the lovely people that they are, bought us a rather funky matching toaster and kettle ...

Admittedly, this is an odd-looking beast, fairly dominating whichever corner it ends up in, but nevertheless, this is a fine toaster. It does all the sizes and shapes your incompetent knifing can produce, plus bagels and muffins. And to avoid all of those fun jamming-a-fork-in moments, there's actually a special lever which will raise smaller items out further so that you can get at your munchies. There's also a handy little flap to empty out the crumbs, and a special setting which allows you to toast bread from frozen at a special temperature. This special setting actually works, and in general, it took far less experimentation to work out a setting ...