The Clam Rampant

Kasia April 22nd, 2009

As some of you know, Canuck and I reside in a lovely, though not overlarge, apartment-style condo. Particularly not overlarge: the kitchen. What’s more, the existing cabinetry doesn’t really make the most of the possible storage space. (TBS has a nearly identical condo in the same complex, but her kitchen is laid out much better.)

We’re not in a position to remodel the kitchen at present, nor are we likely to be in the next few years. There are other priorities: heating/cooling, car, etc. And we’re not likely to be able to move any time soon, given that selling a home in metro Detroit right now is pretty much a pipe dream. So I had been thinking about ways we could maximize our current space.

Well, it occurred to me that we have an exceptionally large hall closet that was just not being used to its full capacity. So my beloved and I went to Home Depot and priced out, then bought, some shelving – nothing fancy, just the stuff where you screw some metal strips to the wall, attach brackets to the strips, and pop the pre-made shelves onto the brackets. Not ideal, and certainly not the prettiest option (though also not the ugliest!), but it’ll do in a pinch.

Let me just pause for a moment and admire the fact that my beloved managed this home improvement project with just one trip to Home Depot. (A fellow parishioner – male, of course – was very impressed by this.) Oooooo… 

So now we have a makeshift pantry. I think we’ll be getting another shelf or two eventually, but it’s a start. I am a very happy little Clam about this.

We also decided, after some considerable deliberation, to use the Christmas gift money that Mère de Canuque had allocated for me to purchase a Costco membership. So far, I think it was worth it; even if we just bought gas there, based on current prices and our current consumption, we could pay for the membership in gas savings alone. (It’d take a bit of planning to not have to go out of the way to do so, but it is theoretically very feasible – Costco is not much out of the way of our route to and from church each week, for starters, and that’s not the only reason we go by 696 and Gratiot.)

Obviously, we’re not going to be buying a lot of fresh food in bulk with just the two of us; but we were pretty pleased with our options for nonperishables and non-food household items. We’re being very careful – it’s easy to spend a lot of money there! – and watching our budget, but so far, so good.

Anyway. One of the things I was thinking we might try purchasing in bulk is flour. (Canuck and I both really enjoy making bread; he makes a mean pizza; etc.) We haven’t done so yet, primarily because we don’t have a good storage option for a large quantity of flour as of yet. But I found myself wondering whether an airtight Rubbermaid bin (like we use for our cat food) mightn’t be the solution.

Well, I went online on my lunch today, and I have to admit that I’m confused. Perhaps one of my blog friends could help?

I found some beautiful, professional-grade ingredient bins that were designed for just such a purpose. However, those run over $200 each. I don’t think we’re going to realize much savings on buying bulk flour, if we’re weighing the savings against the cost of investing in a $225 flour bin. At the least, it’ll be many years before we break even; and who knows what may change between now and then? (Yes, I saw the $105 economy bin, but I’ve dealt with those kinds of lids before, and I’d be shocked if it’s airtight. I don’t think they even claim it as airtight on the site. And I was really thinking more in the $25 – 50 range…)

I also found smaller containers, more in the 12 – 22 quart range, which would work in a pinch. But really, I have a cracker jar that holds (I’d guess) around five pounds of flour, that I would probably continue to keep in the kitchen for convenient day-to-day use. (I have another one for sugar.) I’m really looking for a big bin that I can dump the bag into and tuck into a corner. The smaller containers would, I think, be a bit of a nuisance.

I did find this, but I noticed that the way they advertise it is for holding, say, a bunch of bags and boxes of snacks. I’m wondering if there’s a food-safety issue associated with dumping foodstuffs into it? If so, is that something a lining (whether a plastic bag or the original flour sack) could neutralize? Or is this just the way they’re advertising this, and it could really be used in the way I’m envisioning?

Finally, I also found containers that advertise as airtight pet-food containers, rather like this one. Canuck and I currently use a similar bin to this, though smaller and without casters, for our dry cat food. (The boys are on the pricy prescription fatcat kibble from the vet, so you’d better believe I buy in bulk and make it last as long as I can). I’ve always just emptied the bag into the bin, but now I’m wondering if there’s a safety issue involved there. (It does get washed periodically.) I’m thinking specifically of the melamine-in-pet-food scare, and then the BPAs in plastic baby bottles, and wondering if this kind of bin is (a) designed to be food-safe, and (b) actually food-safe.

What do you know? Anyone out there have insights? I have to say that the cats don’t seem any the worse for wear, and I’ve been using the bin for a couple of years now…but is this something that Protective Services would take away our hypothetical kids for?

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Kasia April 1st, 2009

…or is there a certain irony to a bankruptcy lawyer accepting Visa and Mastercard?

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Kasia March 24th, 2009

In an astounding display of bureaucratic efficiency, Canuck has already received his appointment date to have his biometric information recorded. AND, it’s two weeks from tomorrow yesterday. Hot diggety!

May the Feds be this efficient throughout his adjustment of status…please…we’d love to have him job-hunting sometime in April…

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Kasia March 24th, 2009

My sweet husband has been doing a commendable job of keeping up with our laundry, cooking our meals, etc., pending his being given permission to work (and then finding a job, which we know isn’t that easy right now). He has, however, been lobbying for us to replace the laundry baskets I had been using for the last six or seven years; the ones I have are a very flexible plastic, and he prefers a rigid plastic. What’s more, he was hoping we could find one that was curved in on one side (to conform to the hip) for one-handed carrying.

I said that as soon as we had a little extra cash in the budget, we could do that. (Yes, for the first month or so we really didn’t have the extra $10 to do it…we could’ve scrapped our little “dining out” budget, but we both preferred the luxury of being able to eat out a couple of times a month to having new laundry baskets.)

Well, this month we had some money set aside for “household” (which in my budgetary parlance can mean anything from shampoo to a new iron). So we stopped at Target on Sunday afternoon to pick up a few things and to look for a laundry basket that fit his specs.

They didn’t have one with the hip contouring.

My beloved got a little discouraged and ventured that perhaps they aren’t manufactured anymore.

I thought it more likely that Target just didn’t carry them.

Ahem.

I’m guessing that this is one of the differences between shopping in Canada and shopping in the U.S. – that if, say, Canadian Tire doesn’t carry something particular, that it’s unlikely that Zeller’s or Wal-Mart will carry it.

Sweetie, remember what you said when I decided to see if I could rush-order a different wedding dress? This is America…you can get almost anything as long as you’re willing to pay for it. 

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Kasia March 19th, 2009

Kit put up a post copping to a secret dish fetish. At the behest of my beloved husband, I am posting our family’s secret dish sickness. Ora pro nobis…

Once upon a time…a very long time ago…specifically, probably in the first or second decade of the twentieth century…my maternal great-grandparents (both sets) got married. Different days, different years…both probably somewhere in Illinois, perhaps even the same city, but apart from the fact that they’d one day be in-laws, that was the extent of the resemblance.

Except that, in those days, when you got married, you almost certainly had not been living together beforehand (scandal!), and in fact, especially for the woman, were probably just leaving your parents’ home. So it was common practice to register for, among other things, a set of dishes (usually nice china) for your wedding gifts.

Great-grandmother E. found a lovely Spode pattern that suited her to a tee. Great-grandmother C. favored this Haviland pattern:

Lovely, isn’t it?

However, one doesn’t use fine china every day. Especially not when one has three children and a farm. So she also (I don’t know if it was for wedding or if they bought themselves) got a set of Metlox stoneware for common use. It looked a lot like this…

…except without the trim around the edge, and with a sort of dark cream/light brown color for the actual dish that forms the background. And deep green scalloping as a border. Wish I could find a picture, but maybe later. (If you look at the logo at the top, those rooster dishes at the front of the logo were interspersed with them, and are a good representation of the color and the green border: http://www.replacements.com/registration/form.htm?=freeemail 0 )

** UPDATE ** It looks like THIS!!!!

OK.

So my grandmother, great-uncle, and great-aunt all grew up, in one way or another, with the dishes pictured above.

My great-uncle, being a man, does not care about dishes (or at least I’m assuming that).  I do not know the details, but one way or another, when Great-grandmother C. died, my grandmother got both sets of dishes.

In the meantime, however, my grandmother had married my grandfather. They registered for a lovely, classic Wedgwood pattern. I don’t know the name of the pattern offhand, but it’s a just-off-white, with sort of fluted edges. Very nice.

So the Wedgwood became her “dinner” dishes, the Metlox became her “breakfast” dishes, and the Haviland was for very special occasions.

Then my mother married my father, and they in turn registered for dishes. Dansk, to be exact:

Ah, I remember those dishes…

Anyway. My mother’s sister (Aunt A.) gets married and registers for these:

and my mother’s other sister (Aunt P.) gets married and registers for a lovely set of Mikasa, the pattern name of which I do not know (and thus cannot look up).

Meanwhile, Great-grandmother E. also goes to her eternal reward. (I hope it involved Manhattans, as I understand she loved them.) So the Spode has come back into play.

Aunt A.’s marriage, sadly, does not last as long as the dishes do. After the divorce, she trades her wedding dishes to my grandmother for the “breakfast” dishes. So – I grow up knowing those as “the breakfast dishes” and the other dishes as “Aunt A.’s dishes.”

Aunt A. loves the Haviland pattern that was her grandmother’s. Aunt P. loves the Spode pattern that was her other grandmother’s. Grandma gives each one to the one who loves it.

My parents get divorced. Mom keeps the Dansk.

Aunt P., unfortunately, also gets divorced. So she packs away her wedding dishes, and the Spode, for another day. Starts using Corelle.

Grandma goes to her eternal reward a little over 10 years ago. My mother arranges for TBS to inherit the Wedgwood and for me to inherit the blue “breakfast” dishes, which I quite like.

Sadly, Aunt A. died only a year after Grandma – she’d had cancer – and her dishes needed to be dealt with.

No one in my mother’s generation wanted Great-aunt M. – who started dropping hints about how much she liked the Metlox dishes that had been her mother’s – to have the dishes. Old family arguments over who had gotten what in the past, come home to roost. Shame, because I think at this point we could’ve given the Metlox to someone who would’ve really liked them, and then been done with the matter.

My mother starts pushing for me to take the Metlox. I have just moved out on my own and am using the dishes I always thought of as Grandma’s (the blue breakfast dishes). I don’t have much use for the Metlox (which is a fuller set), nor do I really have a soft spot for the Metlox the way I do the others. I resist; but she sweetens the deal by offering to fill out the set, get rid of the ones Aunt A. had interspersed that have big roosters on them (very French Country), etc…and she promises that they can stay in her attic until I’m ready to take them.

I agree.

She goes onto EBay, buys and sells like crazy, and comes out with an incredibly complete set. I mean, I even have a milk pitcher.

Then, being hooked on the EBay thing, she sells off her Dansk dishes and buys some Pfaltzgraff she’s been eyeing for some time.

I shake my head but figure, hey – it’s her attic she’s cluttering up. Meanwhile, I move from a small apartment to a slightly larger (but still small) condo. The blue dishes clash magnificently with my kitchen, which has a sort of Tuscan feel (complete with olive-plant tile backsplash), so my stepmother buys me a cheap set of Meijer dishes with grapes on them as a housewarming gift. I pack the blue breakfast dishes carefully and put them in my none-too-large storage locker in the basement.

Then Mom decides – pretty much on the spur of the moment – to move to New Mexico. I have to clear out the Metlox almost immediately. It is, to this day, sitting packed away in my basement. Something like a dozen boxes of varying sizes…

Then Canuck proposes.

Anyone here remember that the Canuck is legally blind?

Yeah. He doesn’t like dishes with patterns on them, because it’s hard for him to tell when they’re clean.

So we…registered for these:

…and we are dreading when Mom and Aunt P. will shuffle off this mortal coil; both because we love them both dearly, and because there will be

SO

MANY

DISHES!!!!

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Kasia March 17th, 2009

One: the mother of an acquaintance of mine is dying and will probably not live to see him ordained. Prayers for her would be appreciated; unfortunately, the Internet being what it is, I can’t provide a name. Good thing the Lord knows, eh?

Two: can’t go into details just now, but prayers for God’s will to be done (and for my acceptance of it either way) on something particular. More information as it’s available.

Many thanks.

** UPDATES **

My acquaintance’s mother has died. Prayers for her soul, and for her surviving family, would still be appreciated.

On my personal request, your prayers seem to have been efficacious. It wasn’t the result that Canuck and I were hoping for, but as per the prayers requested, so far we’re accepting God’s will as it seems to be for the present.

(In other words: no Clamuck yet.)

Many thanks for the prayers.

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Kasia March 2nd, 2009

Yes, you’ve been banned.

I gave you far more chances than anyone – my husband included – thought you deserved.

I gave you a comment policy so you would know what was out of bounds. You repeatedly violated it. Either you chose not to read it (your own fault) or you read it and knowingly violated it (also your own fault). You spit on my e-floor one time too many. Man up and accept the consequences (which were also laid out in the policy).

Comparing my banning you from commenting on this blog to Nazism is inflated rhetoric that minimizes the atrocities of the Holocaust.  The fact that  you stooped to insinuate it is spitting on the graves of the millions of people who died as a direct result of Nazism. Shame on you.

You are in no danger of being hauled off by some new Gestapo and jailed without trial. You’re not even in danger of having your computer taken away. You just don’t get to comment here anymore.

There are millions of fora on the Internet that you can use, but even if there weren’t, I don’t owe you a forum. See the earlier post (and comments) on “An Imposition on Digi and/or Kit” for further details.

I won’t stop you from reading the blog (which I could do by making it invitation-only), but you have indefinitely lost your commenting privileges.

Deal with it.

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Kasia February 27th, 2009

Canuck and I have two cats. Dodge is the brown tabby pictured above. Miko is a tuxedo. I may have posted a picture of him at some point.

Anyway, Miko has a knack for getting into trouble. At first he liked to chew things. Then he started chewing on me (attacking my arms and legs). He hardly ever does that now, which is probably a big part of why he still gets to live with me.

Miko is a cat of many interests. He loves to beat up his brother, even though Dodge has at least five pounds on him. (Miko is definitely the alpha cat.) He loves to beg potato chips, tortilla chips, and pretty much any other food that the people have. He loves a good nap, or to sit in the window and watch for me to come home (and I know that’s what he’s doing because when I come up the walk and wave to him, he jumps down and runs to the door), or to be the first to use the freshly-cleaned litter box.

But most of all, he loves, loves, LOVES to go places he isn’t supposed to. That’s his very favorite thing. Yes, Miko is an explorer.

A few weeks after I got him, lo these…seven? years ago, the person I was sharing quarters with saw fit to let Miko sit out on the ledge of the first-floor apartment windows. “He won’t jump down.” Ri-i-ight. It took him a week or so, but he did eventually “take the plunge.” Which prompted a call to me at work asking if I knew where he was…which in turn prompted me to leave work early and spend a couple of hours canvassing the immediate neighborhood, getting laughed at as I called frantically for my cat. (He turned up at the end of the search…RIGHT OUTSIDE the window, but hiding up in a car engine. He was very, very glad to see me!)

In my first apartment, I had a low bookshelf right next to the door. Miko used to sit on it and paw at the doorknob. He totally got that that was how the door opened; he just couldn’t make it work himself. If that cat ever got thumbs, the world would be a very scary place…

Lately Miko has taken to bolting out the front door as I walk in from work. Which is pretty innocuous, all things considered, because Canuck and I live in a condominium four-plex. So even if he gets out the door, he’s only made it to the common hallway. Now, with the back door, he could get access to the basement, which has the potential to be dangerous, either to him or to the belongings of my neighbors (it’s a common basement), but the front door, all he might do is drop some dander into the carpet. And I know for a fact that my former neighbor used to let his cats hang out in the front hallway from time to time, so it’s not like it’s the first cat dander that carpet has seen. I don’t encourage it – in fact, he gets hauled back inside and spritzed with a water bottle every time he does it – but I’m not overly concerned.

But yesterday…yesterday Miko burned through easily two or three of those nine lives he’s supposed to have: the first because of what he did, and the second and third because both Canuck and I refrained from killing him.

Last night we go grocery shopping. Poor Canuck has been fighting a cold for two weeks or so, and as we arrive at the interior front door, he’s holding on to his load of groceries and just counting down ’til he can get inside and take another Sudafed.

I, however, hear a loud “click-click-click-click” sound coming from inside the apartment. I look at Canuck, confused and a little panicked, because whatever it is, it can’t be good. He looks back at me, totally confused.

I push inside and drop the groceries. Sure enough, one of our burners is going full blast…and there is a pot on it!

I race into the kitchen to turn it off and to start ventilating. There’s really no question as to who did it; Dodge never jumps that high without an intermediate point, and there’s not an appropriate one available there.

I do not know how that cat managed to kick on the burner without singeing himself.

I do not know what possessed him to jump on the stove. In all the time I have had him, a few rules have changed, but he has NEVER been allowed on the stove, the kitchen counter, or the dining table. Yet he is fascinated by all three.

If you so much as walk toward the kitchen, he is hot on your heels. Even if you’re just going to check the thermostat (which is on the dining room wall).

My next house, the kitchen will have a door. In the meantime, we have taken the knobs off of the stove and put them on the shelf, ready to be popped on whenever we want to use the stove. The jury is still out on whether the pot is salvageable (there was water in it – soapy water, but water – but there seems to be some residue on the inner sides of the pot from the lid…and it’s a nice Le Creuset dutch oven…).

Preparation for kids…right?

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Kasia February 24th, 2009

Why, oh why, did I walk into the sacristy?

Never mind. I know why I walked into the sacristy. But why did there have to be three boxes of paczki there?

Brief explanation: my office is housed at a Catholic church. The downstairs fridge, where we usually keep our lunches and surplus food (i.e. leftovers from a funeral luncheon that didn’t get taken home), is broken. Needs a new part. As I found out yesterday when I went down to retrieve and heat my lunch, only to find it room-temperature…anyway.

So today I am making the transition to eating less food more frequently. It was recommended to help with my acid reflux, which has been bothering me of late, but given that we are not trying to predict when and if a little Clamuck might appear, I am trying not to take my prescription and to correct it through diet and calcium-based antacids. Pop is the most obvious culprit, so I’m trying to keep that to a glass or so a day, and nothing after work (quitting cold turkey has been a mistake in the past), but my diet overall isn’t very conducive to minimizing reflux either.

So today at breakfast I had an instant oatmeal (hey, it may not be as wholesome as regular oatmeal, but it sticks with me better than Fruity Pebbles do), and then Canuck and I browsed the fridge and cupboards to find what might be a not-too-awful, multi-meal-conducive combination of foods. We settled on: some muffins (home-baked but from a mix), a few slices of American ‘cheese’ (that’s ‘processed cheese food’ on the package, thank you very much – I’d have preferred real cheese, but we only had a little and it was bought for a particular recipe, so we’ll go shopping later. That plastic-y Kraft singles stuff is really only good for grilled cheese sandwiches), a can of pears, opened and dumped along with their juice (yes, juice, not syrup) into a Pyrex dish, and the last helping of a spinach-noodle casserole that tends to be our Friday staple.

Since the fridge is broken, I left the insulated lunch bag in the car. Love Michigan in February – God’s refrigerator!

Well, around 9:45 I started to get a little peckish, so I retrieved the bag had a muffin and a slice of ‘cheese’. Since it was an insulated bag and I was feeling lazy, I kept the bag inside, figuring (correctly) that it wasn’t going to be terribly long before I was ready for some more food.

Around 11 or 11:30 I was getting outright hungry, so I took my casserole downstairs to heat up. Yum! And I decided it would be nicely offset by some canned pears. There was an odd number of pear halves in the can (seven, I believe), so I had three and decided to save the rest for later.

But did I really want to traipse back out to the car? (I know I’m lazy…but in fairness, I did take the stairs when I went to heat the casserole…yeah, I know that’s not a big deal…hush…)

So I thought to myself, “Self – Monsignor often puts extra cans of pop and whatnot into the little fridge in the sacristy. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind if I put my pears and cheese in there too.” So I did. It felt more than a little strange to be putting my pears and cheese into the fridge that holds the unconsecrated Hosts (once the package has been opened, they’re apparently supposed to be refrigerated for freshness – makes sense once you consider that they’re basically just flour and water, no preservatives), but I did it.

And I turned around to leave.

And I realized my folly.

The sacristy, for some inexplicable reason, is the place where everyone puts food they might have brought in to share. Doughnuts, or quickbreads, or cookies…or paczki.

Eeek! And all because I didn’t want to pig out on my pears!!!

So I had one. Mmm. Either cherry or strawberry. I congratulated myself on my restraint.

Fifteen minutes later, one of my bosses walks into my office with a different box of paczki to offer me one.

What could I say?… (innocent look)

It’s custard.

And here, dear friends, is the trap: in order to eat anything other than paczki (my poor little pears and cheese), I have to brave the room with three boxes of paczki.

I could try a blueberry one…blueberries are good for you…

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Kasia February 23rd, 2009

Or Dale Price, if you happen to swing by, but I think it more likely that Digi or Kit will see this…

Would one of our resident lawyers please be so kind as to provide a brief (as in short, not as in a legal brief) response in the combox of why I, as an individual actor, am within my rights to ban commenters if I see fit? And why doing so would not, in fact, be an infringement of the hypothetical bannee’s Constitutional right to free speech?

Remember: this blog is my Internet home. There are limits to what I will tolerate on it, just as there are limits to what I will tolerate in my home.

Kit, Digi, or Dale: your assistance (not to be confused with formal legal advice) would be most definitely appreciated. If you don’t have time, that’s OK too – I am comfortable with my position.

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