Products I wholeheartedly endorse

[Carruthers]

I try to keep the use of canned foods to a minimum, but there are times when it's handy to have a tin of ham available for a quick salad lunch, as today.

My culinary skills are nowhere near those of Gordon Ramsay, but I have (silently) given him a run for his money when it came to the use of colloquial language when wielding the tin opener in the past.

Neither of the openers I had were much good, and if you didn't start the opening process near the vertical seam of the tin, you were doomed to haunt the kitchen for all eternity.

Never did I manage to open a can neatly or smoothly.

I have come within a hair's breadth, on more than one occasion, of performing an accidental amputation of a finger or two such was the jagged nature of the steel before me.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, so last week I bought a stainless steel can opener at Marks & Spencer.

It was a hefty £7.50 (a smidgin under $10) but worth every penny. Minimum effort required to produce an A1 result.

That's my 'can do' attitude at work. In a manner of speaking.