Water matters

One of the things that My Prince does for me and Mama when he comes to town is help us stock up on water.  Mama has to drink steadily because of her kidney failure and constant UTIs.  We've been so successful with this "water therapy" that her kidney is (for now) stabilized at 29% function.  For my own part, I am very protective of my kidneys.  The diabetes is expected to wreak havoc on them at some point, and I take quite a few medications that challenge my kidneys already.  So far, blood tests and a recent sonogram say that they are in good shape, but I continue to want to do my part to keep 'em happy with lots of water.  After all, both my doctor and I agree that the knuckle of my big toe may well be harboring the intention of flaring up with gout if it hasn't given me a mild preview already.

We drink water.  Lots of it.  The water of choice is distilled. 

This costs $1-$2 per day.  We only buy gallon jugs, and, whenever possible, buy the house brand (Kroger's mostly).   We have been recycling the plastic water jugs, with My Prince hauling them back to Austin for recycling pickup and both of us cutting them down to create mini-tubs out of the base for sorting and storage needs. 

Recently I discovered an HEB store--Joe V Super Savers--in this area and liked their remarkably low price on gallon jugs of water.  Joe V's sells only small quantities of distilled water at a comparatively higher price.  Signage (and branding) seemed to indicate that it is intended for baby formula.  For the rest of us, it is "drinking water."   My Prince, a great reader of labels, pointed out to me that the water accompanying the labels was likely drawn from the Houston water supply.  I shrugged, assuming that it had been at least filtered and wanting to get this part of our pre-Christmas shopping done more quickly.  He picked up 20 gallons to help fill our supply shelves.

GAG!  It tastes like dirt!  

Now I could use these jugs to water plants, make flavored drinks (to cover the taste at least), or just pour them out.  No one would really know. 

Or I could get real:

• Even Mama 's nephrologist says that distilled water is unnecessary.  She could use the trace elements found in the city water supply.  
• I grew up on this water supply.  I've tasted much worse in both East Africa and Louisiana.  (Seattle's water was yummy, tho.)
• All sorts of state and federal regulations protect the water supply.  I've even sat on committees that assured that that was so.
• Chucking out all this water will only cost about $10 or $11, but it will add 20 more plastic containers to our recycling bin--for no useful reason.

Perhaps I just need to check the local water quality reports and be brave.  After all, eventually I will get used to the taste.

Christmas Toys (2)

I also helped Santa Claus out by picking up some new cutting boards.  The old ones were getting pretty chewed up.  Even though they went through the dishwasher after each use, the effect of much chopping made me worry that I would just be creating a haven for bacteria if I continued to use them.  The new ones are basic plastic cutting boards sold two in a pack at Walmart (Mainstays brand).  I chose the "letter" size as most convenient for storage and use on limited counter space. 

Last year I picked up some thin plastic sheets sold as cutting mats and found them to be quite handy.  They, too, had seen better days, so I got new ones at Walmart (also Mainstays brand).  These were sold three in a pack and were almost twice the size of the hard cutting boards. 

I am happy with the firm ones, less so with the mats.  The problem with the mats is that they now seem so large.  It doesn't help that my Yoshi knife made a brand new mat look very like one of the old ones after only one use.  Two chicken breasts, one onion, some green onions, and a couple of roasted red pepper sections--and the cutting mat is badly scored.  How long before the Yoshi blade slices completely through it?  This could be a problem. 

Still, I think I need to get more of the firm boards, since I can go through my entire supply of cutting boards before I ever get the dishwasher full enough to run.  If I do, I with try to check the label for dimensions and such before I toss the wrapping away. 

As for the old boards, I am still looking for potential new uses.  They don't seem to be labeled with recycling codes, so I expect they will go into a landfill if we don't figure out some other way to use them.  One, I have already mentioned, now serves as a "coaster" for the little tray that holds my vinegars and jar opener on the newly cleared counter.  This will prevent any rust from developing or staining the tile counter.  My prince may need one or two.  Repurposing will become a bigger issue as time goes on and we feel the need to replace more cutting boards. 

When the garbage disposer dies

We haven't always had a garbage disposer.  I can remember moving to this house when I was 9 years old and, not long after, Daddy installing a disposer.  I still remember being told not to put bones or paper in the disposer, the concept was that new to us.  Over the years, I've had to cope with a few hours, maybe even a whole 24 hours, of life without a disposer as we waited until one of our very handy men procured and installed a new one.

Imagine my delight when the garbage disposer here at Mama's house died a very sudden death recently, and there was not a man, handy or otherwise, in sight.   


I did what troubleshooting I could.  Cleared out the disposer, punched the resent button, looked for something strong enough to try to "stir" the turn-plate of blades.  No joy in any of it.


We then entered the stage of having no disposer while we considered whether (a) Next Door Cousin and I could replace the thing, (b) to call a plumber, or (c) to have My Prince make a mad dash to Houston.

• I seriously considered (a).  NDC is single, tough, and semi-handy.  Between the two of us, we might figure it out.  Our problem was upper body strength.  There are pipes and other screwish things involved in replacing the disposer, and neither one of us have a lot of muscles.  Indeed, I actually have a battery operated jar opener for when pickles get to be too touch. 
• The thought of (b) was both a matter of cost and skill.  Neither of the important men in my life were ever big on paying for labor when they could do the job themselves.  My late father was always DIY and the go-to guy in the extended family for help or advice.  Ditto for My Prince.  Not that MP always approved of how Daddy did some of his jobs.  (Painting the eaves with a broom for a brush was a late-in-life solution to getting the job done when it was too dangerous for him to be on a ladder.)  And that is the crux of the issue for (b):  can anyone do the job well enough to meet MP's standards?  Prolly not.
• That left (c), although I put my foot down and said there would be no mad-dashing.  We could survive without a disposer for a while, and MP was instructed to plan his trip to Houston with some consideration given to all the things he was already trying to do.  Eventually he agreed, and decided to come a few days later.

In the meantime, we had to survive without a disposer.

Doing so called to mind all the mishaps that can come from lack of a disposer.  I'm thinking of the fellow who decided to chop up watermelon rinds small enough to flush down the toilet.  (Not a good idea, said the plumber.)  Or the gals in the office above mine who washed coffee grounds down the sink.  (Not a good idea, said the plumber, who cleaned up my flooded office.)

Needless to say, we didn't need anything like those events, so nothing unusual was flushed down the toiler or washed down the sink.  We kept a mesh wire strainer over the disposer opening and dumped whatever landed there into the garbage.  All of this dumping, however, made the garbage a tad more aromatic, so more effort was given to making sure that things were covered.  We also had to worry about greater attraction for flies and, well, cockroaches.

The days without a disposer were less carefree than those Good Old Days of having a disposer.  There was much "food for thought" (no pun intended) regarding composting and all the labor that that might entail.  There was a reminder every day about vermin control and the spread of disease.

We live wasteful lives here in the US.  We consume and trash and deplete natural resources at a phenomenal rate compared to much of the rest of the globe and even to the potential for replenishing most of those resources (slim to none).  I thought, for a while, that perhaps we should make the effort to live without the garbage disposer permanently.  After all, it was an addition to this old house, and there are still some houses in the neighborhood that don't have them.  It is surely possible.  It is, however, not so healthy.  I'm going to emphasize that reason in my thinking about the disposer right now, but I will also give more thought to how we can cut down on the need for using the it. 

In the meantime, yea!  My Prince came to fix it!

Precious memories

Have you ever been to the kitchen department--or a kitchen store--and coveted just about everything you see? Or have you been to someone's house, wandered into their kitchen, and seen things that you wish you had in your own kitchen?

Sometimes we get some of those things by gift or inheritance. Long ago, when my late grandmother had to close her house and move in with an aunt, I was given her old cast iron skillet. I've treasured that thing for nearly 40 years now. (It's taken almost that long to get some of the crusts off of it. I come by my housekeeping skills honestly.) When my late mother-in-law passed away, I was thrilled at the Pyrex casserole dishes that I inherited. Every time I take one out to use it, I smile with satisfaction that I have the perfect dish for what I want to do and #1MIL's hands have used it too. The connection feels real and very comforting.

Last week, Next Door Cousin was packing up some things for Good Will. By great good fortune (and the sad occasion of a leak near our front faucet), I happened to wander into her garage and just asked: "Anything I might want?" Sweet child. She opened up a gym bag and it was as if I had wandered into one of those wonderful kitchen stores. A vegetable steamer. Four short-handled spatulas. Assorted wooden spoons and other odd items that I had ask about. A working can opener. And--happy day--a full set of those aluminum nail things that you stick in the middle of a potato to speed baking.

These were clearly some old things that her late mother, our long time next door neighbor and very dear friend, had had. I happily took the whole bag home and cleaned everything up. The only reject in the bunch was a "church key" that got tangled up in the lid when I tried to open a can of tomato sauce with it. Everything else was a keeper (well, except for that red spatula that matched Big Kid Cousin's kitchen).

I'm using it all and thinking of NDC and her mother every time I do. "Cooking with love" takes on a whole new meaning when you have a good tool that not only does what you need it to but surrounds you with precious memories of the good cooks and sweet women who used it before you.

Save the package!

I've been drinking sugar-free drink mixes for the past year or so. Crystal Light is a tad expensive (like twice the cost!), so I've been looking at various house brands. HEB, Kroger, and Target all have different flavors, some of which are quite tasty, and other of which are more forgettable. Aside from the taste, what I like about these mixes is the packaging.

The only pictures I could find (after a lot of googling) are from the Crystal Light web site, so I've borrowed this one to show the canister that I am now so fond of (sorry, Kraft people). The drink mixes come in a plastic cylinder that is 6.5 inches tall and 2.75 inches in diameter and capped with a plastic lid. Crystal Light tends to invest in colors for the lids; the house brands tend to be white, although I have seen some light pink cylinders now and then. Inside the canisters are 6 little plastic "tubs" filled with the powdered drink mix.

I recycle the little tubs, since I don't have a use for them currently. The canister, however, is a whole other thing. Peel the label off and you have the perfect storage container for odd bits and pieces and handy tools.

My first thought when I saw these containers was that they would be useful for storing beads. They have been quite handy for dumping in some (larger) beads that I normally store in little drawers so that I can take them with me when traveling. I can just pick out the beads I want for a project, put them in the canisters, take them with me, and then return the leftover beads to the drawers when I return.

I then discovered that the canisters were the perfect way to store the very unhandy shape of a marinade injector. I just put the pieces of the injector in one of the canisters and used a marker pen to label the outside to identify the contents. Now I have the injector in an easy-to-find location on the shelf and don't have to worry about pricking myself when hunting for it in a drawer.

My latest use is to store tubes of beads. I always worry about hanging them from a rack. Just one bit of carelessness will have beads strewn everywhere when that top comes off. The tubes don't stand up very well either. I can, however, slip several of them into one of these canisters and have no fear that the lids will pop off in transit. The canisters are not transparent, so I still have to dig through them to see where the bead that I am wanting might be, but it's a whole lot easier to store the tubes these days, thanks to the canisters.

While I've managed to come up with a few canisters on my own, Big Kid Cousin and her mom are particularly heavy drinkers of Market Pantry Raspberry Tea (one of my own favorites). BKS provides me with a steady stream of her leftover canisters, and I seem to be finding endless uses for them.

Recycling is good, yes, but repurposing is also a good use of resources since it saves the added cost of sending the item back through the manufacturing process. Could the best repurposing be to find recycled items that can be repurposed? Whatever. If you can, repurpose; if not, recycle.

A good old-fashioned potlatch

I'm reading various articles about "how to green your Christmas," "living green," and coping with the declining economy this holiday season. Part of what I have been thinking about is the whole over-commercialization of Christmas that we have all been decrying, lo, these many years and the sense that now is the time to begin to dial back on some of the crazy consumerism that has been going on.

As it is, we over decorate, over eat, over spend at the end of every year and spend the next year trying to recover from it. Much of this excess is really that--unnecessary consumption of goods in order to impress others or feed our own need to feel "wealthy," "important," "with it."

After all, just how much do we need to decorate our homes--inside or out--to convey the spirit of the season?

Sometimes, when I think of Christmas in the USA, I think of potlatch. This a tradition among Native American tribes of the Northwest Coast. It varies among the various tribes and is nowadays depicted (and probably practiced) as a means of redistributing wealth while accumulating prestige. I first encountered the concept some years ago in a description of potlatch as practiced by the Kwakiutl. The Kwakiutl potlatch, thanks to the rich environment in which they lived, was a massive display of wealth which was then destroyed as a demonstration of, well, wealth.

The Peabody Museum has this to say about potlatch (among the Kwakiutl and others in the area):

It is commonly portrayed as extremely competitive, with hosts bankrupting themselves to outdo their rivals and aggressively destroying property.

That sounds about right for the situation in which many find themselves after any given Christmas in post-World War II America. Here's a bit more from one of the oldest (non-Native American) authorities on the Kwakiutl, Franz Boaz (from The Social Organization and the Secret Societies of the Kwakiutl Indians ):

The rivalry between chiefs and clans finds its strongest expression in the destruction of property. A chief will burn blankets, a canoe, or break a copper, thus indicating his disregard of the amount of property destroyed and showing that his mind is stronger, his power greater, than that of his rival. If the latter is not able to destroy an equal amount of property without much delay his name is broken. He is vanquished by his rival and his influence with his tribe is lost, while the name of the other chief gains correspondingly in renown.

This, too, resonates in our contemporary practice of Christmas, if not, indeed, in our whole way of life in which we draw endlessly on the resources of our country and our planet to consume (almost literally) conspicuously and wastefully. If we are not competing directly with our neighbor or some other rival, we are competing against a goal set for us through advertising, movies, and other media that says we must (lavishly) decorate a tree, host (extravagant) parties, give (expensive) gifts, and otherwise display--and consume--our wealth--even if we have little wealth.

I'm still trying to come up with some better ideas for edible gifts this year, but, the more I think about it, the more I see a need to come up with those ideas--and act on them.

Pantry Project, Part 2

There's never enough time on these trips home to get all of my organizing done. Some trips, I don't even get everything unpacked before I have to turn around and head back to Mama's. I haven't done any more to organize my pantry, except to add more canned tomatoes and try to whittle down the bean and soup supply.

If, however, you looked closely at those pictures of my stacks, some of them look crooked. The tall boxes were specifically intended to help me stack cans three high, but some of those stacks lean--or wobble--or worse: fall over when anything gets bumped. This is because of how the cans are made, not because I can't stack one item on top of another.

The problem is with the bottom of the cans. The cans that are flat don't stack so well. It takes more time to try to position them so that they are exactly aligned, the top of one holding up the bottom of another. If any alignment is off, the "tower" of three will lean or fall over or misalign the adjacent tower. Cans with rounded bottoms nest so that the bottom of one can fits handily into the top of another. I haven't tried to stack any of these four high, but a tower of three is quite stable. Stacking also goes quickly because there is less effort given to alignment.

Here's a tower of flat-bottomed cans:

I deliberately stacked this tower so that the top can was out of line. (I couldn't stack the middle can out of line without toppling the whole thing.) This shows, in exaggerated mode, the pantry problem that flat-bottomed cans can cause.

Here's another view of the misalignment. What this shows, among other things, is that I need a new camera. (Note to self: Time to stop procrastinating.)

Here's a tower of round-bottomed cans:

There seems to be a slight lean here, but the same angle shows up in the flat-bottom stack. I think it's the camera angle. This tower was stable enough to be moved aside with one hand holding the bottom can, whereas the flat-bottomed tower needed two hands to cover the points where two cans meet.

Looking at my pantry, I found two kinds of what I am calling round-bottomed cans. As it turns out, one of the cans that fit into the top of the lower can isn't rounded at all. The can on the left has a distinct rim on its bottom, in the same manner as flat-bottomed cans, but this rim is slightly smaller than its top rim. The can's bottom rim will fit nicely into the top rim of another can when it is stacked. The can in the middle is the typical flat-bottomed can. The one on the right is a round-bottom can with no rim.

I tried to find out more about how these cans are made so that I could be (a) more precise in my terminology and (b) get ready to advocate for the process that led to better stacking in my pantry. So far, I haven't found the information I need. No doubt this is because I still don't know the terminology for what I am looking for.

In the meantime, the history of cans is semi-interesting. Check out Wikipedia's discussions of tin cans and aluminum cans. And ponder this:

• In the US, we recycle more food cans than beverage cans (by percent).
• In the US, we could save the equivalent of one day's worth of oil consumption by increasing our recycling of beverage cans to 100%.