We wait for the cabinet tops.
We are also going to shed some things—going to sell off the Lenox princesses, all but one, and sell off the Russian fairy tale plates, we think. We’ll sell them at Ebay prices, so if perchance any of you are longing for a plate or a princess, let us know.
I’m meanwhile in quest of a small rice pot. TFal can’t make rice: it has a hole in the lid. Calphalon apparently has a hole in the lid of its smaller pots. Sheesh! I think I’m going to go to Walmart (shudder: it’s the holidays) and see if I can find a simple oldfashioned enamel-ware small lidded pan.
Weather’s held cold, but the air quality is crap. SO bad I couldn’t work yesterday, so we put away things in the kitchen. Jane’s trying to put up the plates that we are keeping…and it’s the usual story—where are the small black screws that secure the plate frames? So we go off to Ace looking for small black screws and this morning—did you bring in the bag with the (8-10) small black screws for the plates? Uhhh. I think. Well, I unpacked what was with them. Then we go on a trash search.
OTOH, it’s looking good. But last night I dreamed for some reason that we had moved to Wasp 12b (a real exoplanet) and that we were reconstituting the kitchen but I could’t get the flooring to join properly because the floor was curved. Try THAT one for sanity, eh?
A while back I dreamed we discovered sentient life on another planet, and I was attending a lecture to learn about new classes of extraterrestrial vertebrates and how they are different from Earth vertebrates, so… it sounds like a perfectly normal dream to me. (for my personal standard of normal at least)
I just looked up Wasp 12b and I have to say there are probably a lot better places you could move to, but the real estate is probably very cheap.
I’m used to cooking rice in a basic stainless-steel saucepan with lid – 1-1/2 or 2 quart, because it does need a lot of headroom while cooking. (I was cooking 1 cup dry, so it made a lot of rice.)
You could always buy a small rice cooker. Used extensively in Japan and China. Perfect rice every time with a minimum of hassle.
As it happens, I picked up the 2017 Cook’s Illustrated annual yesterday, and they recommend the 8-cup Aroma digital rice cooker – about $30.
I have a wonderful Zojirushi rice cooker, but hauling it out to prepare the single cup our diet permits is overkill. I just need an itty bitty one. Of course, I could cook up a lot and freeze it—it will freeze–but the kitchen is still in some disarray. It does also lose a little in freezing.
Aroma also makes a non-digital 4-cup rice cooker (we have one); no bells or whistles like a timer and takes up about as much room as a 1 1/2 quart saucepan. You might try haunting secondhand stores. Our Sally Ann has one for sale almost every week around $10. Amazon has a Black & Decker 3 cup (cooked) one for $15. Annoying when a very nice, very pricey piece of equipment is suddenly superfluous to needs.
Actually, a hole in a pot lid doesn’t automatically disqualify it from being good for rice. Most electric rice cookers have steam vents anyhow.
My TFal set absolutely cannot cook rice by any standard measure of water to rice. I’ll find something, no question.
I’ve become partial to Baked Brown Rice (lots of recipes out there) and then freezing in appropriate quantities for ease of use later.
Have you tried covering the hole with a piece of wet paper towel when you put the lid on? It will retain most of the steam, and what passes through will keep the paper from burning. I know there’s a trick with amount of steam still escaping and removing from heat, but I forget what it is.
I’ve never had anything to cook rice in except for my Le Creuset pot with lid, really (since downsizing and moving to an apartment) I don’t have space for anything that can’t be used for a variety of purposes.
Hey, Walmart does have some halfway decent stuff. . .
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Chef-s-Classic-Non-Stick-Hard-Anodized-1-1-2-Quart-Saucepan-with-Cover/38454492
Of course, you could always get one of those Pioneer Woman pots which are usually either turquoise or rampantly floral and which would clash horribly with your kitchen decor. . . .
I always figured that show was the “Little House” version of pioneer life, done for current TV. I’ve read my grandmother’s memoirs of growing up in southeast Kansas in the 1890s, including kerosene lamps and patent medicines delivered in black coffee (which is why she drank tea the rest of her life).
I’ve watched the show a couple of times. It’s Martha Stewart for the cowboy/ranching set. Like Martha Stewart, it’s not just the cooking, it’s the lifestyle around it, too. She and her family actually do live on a ranch in Oklahoma and work it. She has four kids. They must be raking in the bucks from somewhere, though, because judging from their house, it’s on the very high-end of that lifestyle. Guess those endorsement contracts pay big money. . .
I really don’t have room for more stuff–but what are Russian fairy tale plates?
They’re 6″ black plates illustrating the major Russian myths, in Russian Palakh style painting.
https://www.ebay.com/i/291897921829?chn=ps
NASA’s having a big announcement Thursday apparently about something Spitzer and Google’s AI found.
“Thursday, Dec. 14, 1 p.m. EST: NASA hosts media teleconference to announce the latest discovery made by its planet-hunting Kepler space telescope. The discovery was made by researchers using machine learning from Google. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence, and demonstrates new ways of analyzing Kepler data.” https://www.nasa.gov/nasalive
Air quality was bad so you couldn’t “work”, presumably write, instead doing physical labor in the kitchen remodel? How does that work?
That’s what we’ve been doing. We now have most of the living room clear, but the kitchen is re-cluttered as we’re trying to finish construction and de-box things or get them to the garage for the eventual garage sale. This morning was particularly nasty, so we moved the Steve Scherer glass collection (blown glass, by a friend who does marvelous little globes containing glass scenes or specimens of the Burgess Shale or just whimsy like a glass squid or jellyfish)…onto another wall where it will better catch the light. We keep it in a netsuke cabinet with a mirrored back. And Jane is started, doggedly and happily, to decorate and bake for Christmas.
Sometimes if you have a bad head and cannot brain, simple things like decluttering, dusting, and sorting are good placeholders, because they need to be done anyway. I’m baking the library’s gingerbread house today for our party at the end of the month; I’ll cut the slabs of dough, bake them, then freeze them until time to decorate and assemble. I was going to make the traditional date pinwheels today, but couldn’t find dates at the grocery store, so will need to go further afield.
I’m surprised that you found Calphalon pots with holes in the lids; mine don’t have holes, but of course they are 20 years old, so maybe they’ve changed. My favorite rice cooking pot for years was a small Chantal pot with a glass lid. I liked that I could see what was going on in the pot without taking the lid off. I’ve never owned a rice cooker since we don’t usually cook that much rice at once.
Hate to say it, but the extent of my rice cooking is Uncle Ben’s in a microwave bag.
That’s what I did at Thanksgiving – partly to get it out of the cupboard (rice is limited on my diet). But it’s not bad stuff.
🙂
Smileys aren’t being rendered here.
My brother (who still eats with my parents) prefers unpolished rice, my father prefers small potatoes, and my mother eats neither. She always cooked the rice in a small ovenproof glass bowl (that would hold about a cup) set in the pot she cooked the potatoes and/or the vegetables in.
Put the rice in the bottom of the bowl, add water to about 1 cm higher than the rice, put it on top of the potatoes or the vegetables, or embed it among the vegetables so the lid of the cookpot can close. Cook your vegetables, and when they’re done so is the rice. This works well with a lot of firmer vegetables that need cooking, boiling or steaming, but not so well with spinach, and of course not at all with stirfry.
Off topic, something very sad happened Sunday night/Monday morning. My mum had a sudden bleeding in her brain during the night, and she died early Monday morning. We’re all still shocked by the suddenness and unexpectedness of this.
Oh, no! Hanneke, I’m so sorry!
Oh, that’s terrible!
(I’ve had the experience – my father died that way. Not quite so fast – it was at breakfast, so we called 911 and waited for the ambulance – but there’s so little they can do for those.)
Dear Hanneke, my sincerest sympathies. Anything I could say would sound like platitudes, but condolences to you and your family.
I’m so sorry, Hanneke. A favorite aunt cooked the US traditional Thanksgiving dinner in late November–and died from smoking-caused cancer around now. It’s a shock to lose someone so very, very suddenly, and in the midst of the holiday season. I can only suggest: be happy in honor of her; she would want it so.
Hanneke, I am so, so sorry to hear about your mother. Hugs to you and all your family. Is there possibly a charity your mother would favor—a place where we could send a gift in her honor?
Big, big hugs. Nothing can prepare you for that. Mom died of an aortic aneurism. No warning whatsoever. Doing aquasize in the morning, in the hospital that night. Never woke up after surgery. Our thoughts are with you…
Oh…Wiishu sent you an email. Hope it brings a smile.
More hugs….
Dear Hanneke, a huge hug. Having lost both my parents in the past couple of years in situations where they lingered, all I can say is that perhaps that was the best for your mom. I know it was a shock to you, but it’s a shock even when you’re waiting for it, isn’t that weird? Nonetheless, love to you and your family.
What’s wierder is feeling good, relief, and then guilt when the way one’s family member dies is quickly, and it’s not a long drawn-out, painful affair for everybody. My mother died of an unexpected coronary.
p.s. Don’t overlook this flu going around, even if you got the shot! It kicks butt!
I am so sorry to learn of your mother’s sudden death, and hope that being with your family provides some comfort! The part of your heart that held your mother’s love must feel tremendously shocked and empty. May her memory be for a blessing. I wish we lived closer (half a continent and an entire ocean apart) so that I could bring you some comfort food, but words and food are so inadequate at a time like this.
My aunt died that way, too, just a few years ago. I am so sorry for your loss.
Hanneke, I am very sorry for your troubles. No person who is not you can truly understand how you feel, but we can all sympathize, and do. What time you need to yourself, take; what time you need in company, we are here and so must others be, though in person.
Hanneke, so sorry for your loss. Losing a parent is very hard.
Yep, I’m still alive and around. The various chronic maladies are playing heck with me, so I mostly just luuurrrkkk. And think nice thoughts about all of you.
Thank you all for your kind words and thoughts.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to hijack the whole kitchen thread!
What else is being in the kitchen for?
No matter, that, at all. Warmest hugs from all of us.