I Wish I Had Thought of This:

If you like to bake, as I do, you soon run into the problem of where to store all those essential baking pans. Cookie sheets, pizza pan, cake pans in assorted sizes, pie plates, bundt pans, springform pans and more. If you have a small kitchen like mine it’s even worse. I know what your cabinets look like, because mine look that way, too.

I got one of those vertical organizers for holding things like pan lids and baking sheets. It takes up the entire top shelf in the pan cabinet. It keeps the nonstick surfaces from scratching, but it’s not an efficient use of space. So I ran across this little gem while wandering around the Ikea website:

I want about three sets of these. One an inch from the top of the cabinet for my cookie sheets and pizza pan. One two inches below that for my cake pans and pie plates and griddle. Another one two inches below that for my cutting boards. I will have to set a shelf of some kind on the second shelf to support the cake pans and pie plates, but that’s easily done. By using 5 inches of otherwise wasted space I will reclaim an entire shelf.

But you don’t even have to buy the brackets from Ikea. You can hammer in four brads and set a piece of quarter-inch plywood on them. You can hammer in more brads and lace twine to support something light. You can even modify this idea to suspend your cutting boards horizontally below your upper cabinets. They would be off the counter but easy to grab there. My mind is swirling with the possibilities.

Herbology

Living in a place where the Sixties never died has real advantages. The natural foods movement that began then – the whole Mother Earth, back to the land movement –  is thriving. The food coop does 6 million dollars in sales per year. Small ethnic restaurants, hippie skirts, and cozy little bookshops abound.

One of these cozy little bookshops, CrazyWisdom, is the venue for a course in using herbs. It’s a session once a month, taught by a respected expert, Linda Diane Feldt. I enjoyed the first class, and have put what I am learning to good use already. In fact, I will be buying her book next month at the class.

I have made two infusions, one of kale and one of ginger. The kale infusion should supply us with lots of beneficial minerals, especially calcium. The ginger infusion has multiple uses. I applied a hot ginger compress to help relieve Sweetie’s chest congestion/asthma. I need to drink it to help reduce inflammation (read arthritis) and normalize my endocrine system. (read diabetes and menopause) Now, neither of these are cures. They are natural nutritional supplements that help the body do what it naturally does. But I’ll take whatever help I can get.

Bathing

I took a bath yesterday. This may not sound like a big deal to you, but after 3 years of showers only it was glorious. There were no bubbles, no perfume, no powdering and pampering. It was steamy hot water until I was pruney. I loved it.

When I was in the Philippines the ladies were advised that if the water was unsafe for drinking, it was also unsafe for bathing. Something about bacteria, fungi, and parasites. I applied this bit of wisdom to my life in Thailand. We had a positively gorgeous blue tub, over 5 feet long with armrests molded in the sides. I took showers in it for three years, because the water was unsafe for drinking.

There are benefits to living in the USA.

Back in the USA

We’ve been back in the USA for over three weeks now. The plan to try living without a car? It lasted two days after arrival. We got caught in a nasty cold pouring rain the second day, with a bit of a walk from the bus stop to our destination, and then back, using a bus stop with no shelter. Jim was afraid I would get sick out in that cold rain, and he says he didn’t want his stubbornness about not having a car to be the cause of me getting ill. We got a car on day 3.

So we have a shiny new red 2009 Chevy Aveo, and we love it. Jim says it is nicer than our Honda Jazz/Fit we had in Thailand. It’s not a hatchback, but has a spacious 2-body trunk. We have a free year of OnStar, too, and 0% financing. Woot! Being out of the country for three years left Jim with a wholly clean license, so the car insurance was less expensive than I feared. And we got a discount by getting renter’s insurance from the same company. Jim is keeping that license clean by not speeding.

Our apartment is almost fully furnished, thanks to Ikea. All our furniture is from there, except Jim’s desk. If you are curious, just ask and can link you to what we bought.

Our bedroom is white and blue, a calm retreat. It has warm fluffy down alternative pillows and comforter. The living room is white and birch, with a red sofa. It really needs that splash of color. We are using the far end of the living room as a dining nook, and using the dining nook as my office. It’s really working well for me, to be open to the kitchen. My desk and bookcase are white, as is my chair. The dining room table and chairs are birch. No real decorating has been done yet. Plenty of time for that.

We are both happy to be back. Jim is following the Detroit Lions, seeing how long they can extend their record-setting losing streak. I am shopping at the local food coop and farmer’s market for fresh food. I still shop at Meijer’s, but I’m spending far less there than I would otherwise. I can’t wait for the kitchen appliances I ordered to arrive! Having only a toaster and coffeemaker is a bit limiting.

Calibre

I love my Kindle. I hate my disorganized folder of e-books. Sure, they are all neatly in folders by author name, and sometimes by series name. But I finally have a solution, and even better it converts formats my Kindle won’t read – lit and rtf – to mobi files that my Kindle will read. Who could ask for more?

I could. I want to be able to sort my e-books by author, by series, by genre. Calibre lets me. Even when a series is started by one author and added to by another. I want iTunes, only for my e-books. Yo, Steve – some of us still read.

It’s not a perfect app. It crashes quite a bit, particularly when accessing the database for the meta information via the Internet. It hasn’t ever lost any data due to the crashes, however. I’m going to be sending the developer of this app a donation. He deserves it, and it may improve Calibre.

It works on OS X, Windows, and Linux. Go download it now!

Ash Wednesday Penitence

I thought I was giving up coffee for Lent. Apparently I was mistaken and I was giving up the Internet for Lent. Well, for the first three days of Lent, anyway.

I was excited on Ash Wednesday. Not only was I going to get ashes smudged on my forehead, but my Internet package upgrade to Premier service (2meg/1meg) was going to take effect. I put the new username and password into our router settings, and prepared for blazing speed. I was underwhelmed. It was not only not blazing, but something I wouldn’t even call speed.

We gave it half a day or so, and then I called the Call Center. The Call Center can only be called from a mobile phone. It’s the local equivalent of those *-something numbers in the US. They offer a English language menu option, but unless you press 9 before they finish the sentence telling you what to press (“to continue in English, please press 9″) you get Thai. Your finger had better be on that 9 button before she starts talking. Once you successfully navigate the voice menus, they put you on hold while your mobile phone minutes tick away.

Eventually a nice Call Center lady told me a technician would call me. The technician called on Jim’s mobile instead of the land line. Jim was working on music with his headphones on, because he was not expecting a call. So we missed the technician’s phone call and he never called back. Day 1 with barely useable Internet.

The next day the service had degraded from a 10K upload speed to some unmeasurably low speed. We printed out a copy of the speed test screen and took it in to the TT&T office at The Mall. They called the Call Center and arranged for a technician to come to our house that afternoon. The technicians came. They saw the problem. They made half a dozen phone calls. Then they left, saying that the trouble was with the phone exchange and it would be fixed by 6PM. It wasn’t. I called the Call Center around 7PM, per the instructions from the technicians. They promised to have a technician call me at 10AM the next day. Day 2 with wholly unusable Internet.

Day 3 dawned with a worse download speed than before, and a still unmeasurable upload speed. When no technician had called by 11AM I called the Call Center yet again. There was a bit of confusion on the part of the nice lady, because she could not understand how it was possible that the technicians had come to my house and had not fixed the problem. She then wanted to send a technician out to my house again. What part of “the problem is not at my house” is so hard to understand? I gave up and had Jim call them.

Jim insisted that a technician be sent to the house, after humoring the nice lady by removing the power from the router for 10 minutes. She actually thought that would solve the problem. No technician ever came, but the Internet suddenly started working again. Jim got a phone call an hour after it began working, informing him that a fiber-optic cable somewhere had been repaired.

We really did go get ashes on our forehead. We went to the Thai service, as no English one was scheduled. We got to see the inside of the main church for the first time. We were both amazed by the beauty of the crucifix on the wall behind the altar. I wanted to take a picture, but it didn’t seem like the proper thing to do. It was miserably hot in the church, as it was nearly full, the end of a very warm day, and all the doors were open so the only cooling was a few fans.

I am getting tired of fried fish.

Food Court

 

This is the pretty waterfall in the food court area of The Mall. There’s another, larger, one outside in front of The Mall. The pond into which the water falls  has huge fish, about 6 feet long. I suspect they are Mekong catfish, which are known to grow to be large. There is a shallow pond just to the right of this one. That pond has two Manta Rays, and children “pet” them regularly. The orchids and trees and other plants are all real. It creates a lovely calming atmosphere.

Yes, that’s a Dairy Queen just visible behind the waterfall.

Yet Another Lifestyle Upgrade

When we decided to live in this housing development, there was a nice little restaurant in the clubhouse. It served a Western style breakfast, and a Thai lunch and dinner. The food was delicious, the surroundings were clean and pleasant, and the prices were low. Since town and restaurants are 10 miles away, it was nice to be able to get something within walking distance.

Two years later, when we moved into the house permanently, there was no Western breakfast anymore. There was no longer a menu, and dining room service didn’t exist. You had to go to the kitchen door to order food, and see the filthy kitchen, complete with rats and roaches. The prices had increased, and the food was barely palatable. Worse, the food was frequently spoiled. We quit patronizing the place after I got a bowl of chicken curry containing chicken so spoiled I literally hurled after placing one spoonful in my mouth. I never even swallowed it.

Business flagged so badly that the owners of the restaurant-minimart-clubhouse franchise from the developer finally decided to lease out the restaurant to new management. It was taken over by the wife of a Western man who lives in the housing development. She is a fabulous cook; she made a larger profit the first week she served food than the previous management had been making in a month. She was only serving a rice congee breakfast and a fried rice or noodles lunch at the time.

Now she is serving full meals, some of them Western and some of them Thai. Her fish and chips is delicious; she makes her own french fries. Her cottage pie -shepherd pie to Americans – is my new favorite. Her fried rice is a lunch standard at our house. I can’t wait to try her curries.

We now have the convenient place to get a meal that we expected when we chose this place to live. The place is spotlessly clean. There is a Thai menu, and we are working on an English translation. The dining room is again a pleasant place, but they also will deliver to your home. The prices are reasonable; not too high, but not the lowest we have seen, and  the food is much higher quality. Yet another lifestyle upgrade.