Kasia November 3rd, 2008
Yes, these are the things that occupy my mind sometimes. Especially when I’ve skipped lunch.
“Hmm…I am so in the mood for meat loaf, but all the recipes I have involve an odd amount of meat. Aren’t there any meatloaf recipes that just call for one pound of ground beef?”
Remember, I’m still cooking for one until January…
Kasia September 22nd, 2008
Put away all the clean clothes.
If anything remains on the dresser once the laundry is put away, put that away too.
Should be manageable, right?
Kasia July 22nd, 2008
I’ve lived on my own for…let’s see…about six years now. In that time, I have owned two vacuum cleaners. The first, a bagless Bissell or some such, was bought for me as a Christmas gift for the Christmas following my move. It died about two years ago, so at about age three.
Then I went and read Consumer Reports, and bought a Eureka bagged vacuum. Let me tell you, either Consumer Reports seriously misjudged that one or I have the worst luck in the world. It’s given me problem after problem after problem. AND, because I was tired of paying ridiculous prices for the bags, I snatched up a great deal I found on bags on Amazon. I’ve got a stack of bags for this stupid thing, and the suction seems to be gone.
My beloved is going to try to check it for blockages this weekend, and if that doesn’t work I may appeal to my father to try to fix it (if he can’t fix something, it’s probably not worth being fixed). But my question to you all is: how long should a vacuum cleaner last? Am I being unreasonable to think a vacuum, even a cheap one, should last more than two or three years? And understanding that I can’t afford one of those thousand-dollar vacuums that people like my mother use, and that I do abuse my vacuums a fair bit, what sort of vacuum do you recommend? (By abuse I mean cat litter and cat fur are the biggest offenders, but I also use it to suck up spiders and insects that I’m afraid to kill any other way. I’m a coward…)
Suggestions would be welcome. I do have mostly hard floors right now, but I also have rugs that quite frankly cannot do without being vacuumed. Not with my cats. And I have furniture that needs vacuuming, and curtains…
Kasia July 20th, 2008
You may or may not know this, but I don’t really know how to cook.
I mean, I sort of do. I know how the stove and the oven work (though the microwave is a more commonly used appliance at Chez Kasia). I understand the rudiments of cooking. But if cooking is an art, then I am a philistine.
It’s not entirely my fault. My mother was an ardent feminist who thought cooking, cleaning and housework were drudgery. So teaching her daughters how to keep house was not high on her priority list. And sure – shared housework is a good thing, and most couples I know do share housework to some degree or another. But one still needs to know how to DO it!
My dad did most of the cooking and quite a lot of the cleaning, but he was also supporting us, and was consequently way too busy to teach me much about what he was doing. And I was too busy having tantrums and refusing to clean my room to care. 
(I was a difficult child. I really hope any children Canuck and I have take after him.)
My only memory of doing anything in the kitchen before age 10 or so, apart from loading or unloading the dishwasher, was fluting the edges of pierogi with a fork as my grandmother made them. I don’t doubt that she would have taught me more about cooking as I got older, but unfortunately, she died when I was 8.
When I was 10, my parents divorced. My poor dad was running himself ragged trying to support us and keep us halfway sane. TBS was helping him. But the house was a madhouse and we were all hanging on by the skin of our teeth. At that point, my level of expertise graduated to making my own lunch: a sandwich, a drink box/Capri Sun sort of thing, and some sort of Hostess dessert. (The Hostess was a HUGE deal – my mother NEVER let us have junk food. Come to think of it, the Capri Sun was a big deal too…)
I started doing my own laundry in sixth or seventh grade, because my dad’s rule was that it all had to be downstairs, turned, pockets checked, zipped and snapped, on Saturday morning so he could do all our laundry. A very reasonable rule. But I could never get it together enough to have it done at a reasonable time Saturday morning, so finally I asked someone to teach me to use the washer and dryer.
Around that time, I learned to make pancakes. And at some point in high school, my stepmother taught me to make “monkey bread” (YUM). Along the way, she taught me by way of correction, a fair bit more about housework than I had known before.
But really, I still hadn’t learned to cook. And when I was 23, I flew off to England for a semester. No dormitory cafeteria – a common kitchen. I was going to live off my own cooking for six months.
TBS, being possessed of great foresight, anticipated the problem and started teaching me to cook some basic things: hard-boiled eggs, rice, banana bread, Greek chicken. After my arrival in Britain, a couple of Czech housemates of mine taught me some additional lessons. Like Czech pancakes (which are basically crepes), and that outside of the U.S. and Canada, throwing away food is simply not done. (Quite a culture shock!)
I made it through that experience with a little bit of TBS-taught cookery, a little bit of Czech help, and probably more prepared foods than I ought to have eaten (I was especially fond of a garlic-butter baguette that Tesco sold). Oh – and with some care packages from home, including my dearly-beloved grape jelly (which I couldn’t find anywhere over there) and some boxes of Velveeta shells and cheese. You should’ve seen the one Czech girl’s face when she saw me making it…but I convinced her to try it and she marveled at how good it was…
All this to say: my domestic skills were, and to a great extent still are sorely lacking. (I scrubbed my first floor, with the help and instruction of TBS, at age 25.) I’ve improved, it must be said, thanks to FlyLady, Saving Dinner, TBS, the Canuck, my parents (even my mother, who for my 30th birthday gave me a copy of Cooking Basics for Dummies with the phrase “Girls Whose Mothers Neglected Them” P-Touched over the word “dummies”), and countless friends. But I’ve got a looong way to go before I’m up to my age standard.
So you can see why I’m excited that I had a little domestic breakthrough today.
Inspired by Jennie C., I decided that I was not going to make my this-week’s grocery run be another hot-dog-and-frozen-dinner-fest. No – I picked out three recipes and made a list based on them. The first recipe was from Saving Dinner. The second recipe was from a cookbook TBS gave me as an early wedding gift, called Quick, Thrifty Cooking. The third recipe was Jennie’s sausage & pepper sandwich recipe. And I figured out a few other things I needed, like milk and bread.
Well. I went to Kroger. And do you know, not only did I follow my list (though I did pick up a couple of things that weren’t on it because they were on sale and I wanted to stock up), and watch sales, but I mentally shifted gears several times, initially scratching off one recipe because I thought it wasn’t going to be affordable, but then going back, recalculating, and deciding to do it after all.
It was possibly the most enjoyable grocery shopping trip I’ve ever done. And not a hot dog or frozen dinner in the cart. (Not even a frozen lasagna!)
THEN, after I got home and unloaded everything, I debated whether I ought to heat up my last remaining frozen dinner – after all, it was 80 degrees out, my air conditioning doesn’t work, and I live on the second floor – or whether I should suck it up and COOK.
I cooked.
I used the stove. I used the oven. I used three pans and a casserole dish, baby! AND IT TASTED GOOOOOOOOD!!!
(I even washed a load of dishes after. I had to take a shower when all was said and done because it was so stinkin’ hot, BUT I DID IT!!!)
And now, the challenge becomes doing it again tomorrow. Or the next day, if my leftovers carry me through… 
Kasia July 9th, 2008
Mmm, where to begin…
I never told you how the sangria turned out. It was actually pretty good, and for a first effort I think it was outstanding – we used a recipe we found on the ‘net and modified it slightly to suit our tastes and what was on sale.
We used white wine – I didn’t even know you could use white wine for sangria, but there you have it – a big bottle, with a shot or two of Bombay Sapphire (Canuck’s gin of choice), some sugar, and a whole mess of fruit: strawberries, raspberries, lemons and limes. We’d bought oranges, but there wasn’t room in the pitcher for anything more. We let that marinate overnight, and by the next day, it was a yummy fruity treat!
One note – I strongly do NOT recommend adding club soda or tonic to the sangria for fizz. It was revolting. By the way, what IS the difference between the two? If I want fizzy sangria, I’ll add ginger ale or Seven-Up, thanks.
We went to see Wall-E, and it lived up admirably to all the positive reviews I’d heard about it. I highly recommend it.
The parishes in Chatham just had a massive personnel turnover – the Diocese of London is clustering, merging and closing parishes just like Detroit has had to do, and this July was the big change-over. The small Czech/Slovak parish we’d visited so many times, St. Anthony, is finally being closed; and of the five remaining parishes in town, there are now two clusters of two plus an ethnic (Polish) not-quite-a-parish.
Much as I’m sad to see restructuring, because of what it means more broadly, so far I’m pretty happy with the changes. We’ve only visited one parish so far since the changeover (obviously), but the priest seemed OK – didn’t set off any warning flags – which is especially nice because he’s the pastor of the closer cluster to Chez Mère de Canuque. I was dismayed to see that the parish was using GLASSWARE (ok, maybe it was crystal, but it’s still NOT acceptable as far as I know!) to distribute the Precious Blood, so I only received the Host and walked past the Blood. However, it was this pastor’s first week, so I can understand even if he sees the issue he probably hasn’t had a chance to take care of it yet; I am hoping that he will address it on his own. If it’s still going on by the end of the summer, I will write him a letter asking about it. The other cluster is now being pastored by a priest who worked with Mother Teresa at some point, so I do want to check them out…
In other news, my car turned over 260,000 miles today. Forty thousand more before my pride will allow me to replace the car. Hopefully both the car and my budget cooperate.
Kasia June 25th, 2008
My beloved reminded me in the combox about Dogdini and DJ of a particular DJ story that just screams for its own post. What can I do – I aim to please…
Several years ago, when my mother still lived in Detroit, TBS had a brilliant idea for Mother’s Day. And I mean it: it was really a great idea.
We had been in the habit of ordering Pizza Papalis (mmm…) for Mother’s Day. It was quite popular, but also quite expensive. TBS said, “Why don’t we cook her a nice meal for Mother’s Day instead? It can be less expensive AND more thoughtful.”
I thought that was a lovely idea, but there were two big drawbacks. One, we both lived in small apartments and didn’t really have room for guests. Two, I was even less proficient a cook then than I am now.
“No problem,” said my intrepid seester. “I’ll handle most of it. I’ll do the prep work at home, and the grocery shopping; and then you cut me a check for your share and help with what needs to be done at Mom’s.”
So she spent her weekend chopping and dicing and slicing and otherwise slaving over a hot countertop, and on Mother’s Day she came over with the lamb chops and the side dishes and whatnot, all ready for last steps. I came over with myself and my checkbook.
First TBS discovered we had to scrub out the broiler, because my mother (and you can bet this is where I get my propensity to do things like this) had apparently forgotten to do that the last time she used it.
Then TBS instructed me on how to start the broiler and put the lamb chops in. In all things, I am her sous chef. The most complicated thing I think I’ve ever done on a project with her is knead dough (which I think I’m actually pretty good at – I learned from my beloved) when we made stollen. Meanwhile, she’s bopping around the kitchen doing all sorts of kitchen-madonna type of things, and instructing me on something else to do after.
After a short time we notice an odd smell.
We wonder what it is, but dismiss it.
It grows stronger.
For some inexplicable reason, it occurs to one of us to have me check the oven.
There is a giant blue blob in the oven. I have no idea what it is. I shout, perplexed and frustrated, “Who left a candle in the oven?!?”
My mother comes running and looks.
It’s not a candle. It is the dishpan they keep their recycling in. The plastic dishpan they keep their recycling in.
Now, you may be wondering why my mother would keep her recycling in a plastic dishpan, much less put that plastic dishpan into the oven. That’s a fair question.
She kept her recycling in the dishpan because it was easily stored and moved to places where DJ the incorrigible Brittany spaniel couldn’t get to it and chew up all the recycling.
But she didn’t usually keep the plastic dishpan in the oven. (Of course not. That would be silly.)
She usually kept it in the microwave.
It was not in the microwave that fateful Mother’s Day. She had moved it out of the microwave to use the microwave for something, and we, her unsuspecting daughters, did not think to ask “Mom, is there, perhaps, some chance that you might have put it into the oven for safekeeping?”
In fairness and in hindsight, I should have checked the oven before turning the broiler on. I usually check the oven before preheating it; it just didn’t occur to me to do so when using the broiler.
In equal fairness and hindsight, it was probably not one of my mother’s more intelligent decisions to put a plastic dishpan into the oven for safekeeping, especially when she knew other people were coming over to use her kitchen.
The lamb chops had melted plastic drizzled onto them, but we scraped it off and finished cooking them on the grill. They were salvageable. The oven, on the other hand, was not salvageable.
We had to air out the house and put DJ outside (where he tried desperately to get at the grill with the lamb chops). The cats hid in the basement, so we had to hope and pray that they didn’t asphyxiate from the fumes before the house was fully aired.
Poor TBS. She worked like a maniac trying to make a nice Mother’s Day, and that’s what happened. She was…shall we say , less than happy? I felt awful for her.
By the time dinner was ready the house was not yet fully aired, so we ate al fresco at a card table in my mother’s back yard, to the sounds of neighbor kids playing basketball and neighbor parents good-naturedly asking why we were having an outdoor dinner.
The oven was ruined. My mother had to buy herself a new stove for Mother’s Day.
And all because she had a Brittany spaniel.
Kasia June 25th, 2008
Well, not as badly as in, say, Iowa. In fact, all things considered, we’re doing quite well here in southeastern Michigan. You know, apart from the near-collapse of the domestic automotive sector and the resultant economic chaos that’s wreaked.
No, natural-disaster-wise we do pretty doggone well. We get tornadoes from time to time, but nothing like they get on the prairies. We get an occasional tiny tremor, but if you even notice it, you usually think that a big truck just went by. We did have some flooding out in Clinton Township what, last year? But all in all, pretty good.
I’m really just taking a bit of a dig at myself. I live quite close to Lake St. Clair (hel-LO, fish flies!), and for some reason, presumably having to do with the waste-water treatment infrastructure, my condo association asks us not to do laundry when it’s raining.
Except that I am about out of work-appropriate clothes that I can bring myself to wear. And I stayed home from our parish novena tonight to do laundry, so that I can dress appropriately when I go tomorrow (and read the Scripture reflection, eek!).
Speaking of reading the Scripture reflection, the verses I’ve been asked to read are from one of the Gospels (specifically Luke 11:9-13). I know that within the context of the Mass only a priest or deacon with faculties should proclaim the Gospel. Does anyone have any particular knowledge of whether it’s appropriate for me, as a laywoman, to read from the Gospel from the ambo at a parish devotion like that? (Friendly neighborhood canon lawyer, I would surely appreciate it if you were to pipe up on this…)
