I still don’t have my regular refrigerator in my house. The smaller one that was already here is still in place, and I’m tired of not having enough room in it for a fridge pack of Cokes to sit the right way for accessing the cans inside. The way it is now, I have to practically ram food containers into this small fridge in order to keep things cold. If anything is the least bit forward, the door of the fridge won’t shut!

I’d also like to have my ice maker running. I’ve been buying ice, which is crazy when I’ve got a fridge that will make all the ice we need. I’ve just got to get a couple of other guys over here to pull the other refrigerator out and install mine. A former tenant obviously had an ice maker refrigerator because the water line for that is already in place.

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As wonderful as this house is that we moved into, and as beautiful as the unfinished wood siding is, there are some problems. For one thing, since the siding wasn’t finished or preserved there are places where it’s suffering some damage. I figure that eventually the owners will want to cover it with vinyl siding so the house will last longer. But they will still have to make some repairs before they do that.

I wonder if there is a vinyl siding that gives the board-and-batten look of wood that this house has now? It really suits the style of the house and the woodsy location out here in the country. Nevertheless, this house is a treat to come home to after work. It’s my sanctuary.

The kitchen isn’t large but it has loads of counter and cabinet space in its “U” shaped configuration. The counter nearest the dining table doesn’t have any cabinets under it. Instead, it’s open shelving. And since there are also no suspended cabinets over it, you get a sense of roominess in the open look of the entire great room. It goes from the kitchen to the far end of the living room with great space for dining, for living room furniture, and is really conducive to get-togethers, as we proved on Memorial Day!

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It looks like I’m going to have to go to the storage unit some time today to pick up some more of my stuff. In particular, more kitchen stuff. I’ve got only a few little sauce pans, a Dutch oven, and a couple of knives here now, and I really want my cast iron cookware along with all my regular dishes and silverware here. I’m currently serving everything out of pans and on paper plates, and eating with plastic forks!

I only have limited room in my car to haul stuff, which means I’ll still have to leave my leather desk chair and other office furniture in storage until I can find someone with a truck to bring that stuff for me. But if I could just get my kitchen stuff here to my new home, I’d be pretty satisfied for awhile, I think.

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I love to cook and I love to collect recipes. I have a box full of cook books in the storage unit right now that I need to retrieve and display in my kitchen. However, I really rarely use them. Mostly, I find and share recipes on the internet. Since you’re here reading, I bet you do the same.

See, the internet is an almost limitless source of recipes, food information, nutrition information, and shopping tips that we can all access these days. I’ve got a laptop, which makes accessing all the great information even easier. I can just pack up my laptop and take it with me where ever I go. And I do!

The laptop case I’ve got now is sufficient, I suppose, but it’s really not a laptop case. It just happens that my computer will fit into it. It’s actually a large document bag. Since I take my laptop with me so often, I’m thinking it would be a good idea to browse around at http://www.xoxide.com/allcases.html to see if there’s one that’s more suitable for the purpose. A real computer case would give my laptop more protection from heat and jarring. I’m always very careful with my laptop, but I still often wonder if the case I carry it in is really enough.

I really don’t want to take my laptop with me to show Mom recipes or share pictures with my Sis, like I did this past weekend, and have it be damaged. It’s too expensive to think about that and I’d sure hate to lose the pictures and other data that are on it.

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I’ve got a number of handy counter top appliances, but right now they are all still in the storage unit. We are getting that stuff moved in little by little, but I do miss a lot of my gadgets. I use my steamer, my food processor, my crock pot, and my electric roaster a lot, and not having them here right now really puts a crimp in my cooking style.

There are some things I really need to replace. My electric mixer has seen better days, and the food processor has a crack in the lid. I might want to get a centralized motor base that will operate several appliance attachments, instead of buying all the appliances separately. It would be funny if I were shopping for that and came across air tools for the kitchen. Can you imagine a blender that runs off a blast of compressed air? It could blow the lid off! Seriously, it could actually be a good idea in a commercial kitchen where the compressor could be house outside the kitchen itself and all the kitchen tools run from hoses instead of electrical cords. It might even be safer.

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Wow! It’s been several days since I posted here. I can’t believe how many! But, I’ve been really busy with work since I’ve been transferred to a new store. I’m liking it better. Far less stress which will translate into better control of my blood pressure.

This is a new McDonald’s located inside a Walmart store. Most of the equipment is brand new which means not much down-time from it. I like that. It’s really nerve wracking to have to deal with equipment break-downs and try to explain to customers that there’s really nothing I can do about it.

A few days into the transfer, a terrible storm came through and knocked out all the power. When the electricity came on, the beautiful, shiny, new, nearly Cadillac grills weren’t heating up again. The display screen on them kept showing an error message. Yes, the grills and all other equipment are controlled digitally, and while that’s a really good thing, that day, it wound up being a road block.

Repairmen came in and reset everything for us, replaced a breaker in the grills that had blown out from the storm, and got us going again. However, it takes about 30 minutes for them to heat back up. I thought we’d have to get a couple of electric griddles from Walmart to be able to make burgers!

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I’ve got most of my countertop appliances packed to move. Everything but my electric skillet, toaster, and coffee maker are packed away now. At least with those, I can still produce something to eat for Brandon and myself.

My intention was to haul stuff to the storage unit all day today, but it’s raining hard and I don’t know when it will let up. However, I’ll continue packing and putting the boxes in the living room anyway. We still might be able to make some trips to the unit even though it is raining. I hope so. This job needs to be done!

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You know, we’ve actually only looked at the outside of the house we are considering. We really like the location and the appearance of it from the street, but I don’t have a clue what’s inside, other than it’s a three bedroom home. I am really hoping that it has enamel-over-steel bathroom fixtures and kitchen sinks, or at least stainless steel kitchen sinks.

I’m out for durability in any kind of fixtures, you know? Fiberglass and plastic never seem to hold up the way steel fixtures do. In fact, even here, our old fiberglass tub cracked and we replaced it with a really old steel tub, which is doing great.

I also prefer metal faucets instead of plastic ones, again for the durability factor. Once I install something, I don’t want to have to replace it in a few years.

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I’ve got a small pork roast in my tabletop roaster oven now, and have just added green beans to another pan in the roaster. I really haven’t utilized this appliance nearly enough, so today seemed like a good day to give it another trial.

I had some drippings from another pork roast, so I just added them to the pan with this one. It’s really smelling yummy now and I’m getting hungry!

I put the green beans in a pan in the roaster after the pork roast was beginning to get pretty well done. It still has enough time left on it to cook till it’s fork-tender, and that gives the green beans plenty of time to finish cooking to a turn, as well. I’ll get rice into the steamer so everything gets done at the same time. It takes about 30 minutes for the rice. By the time it’s done and I make some sauce from the drippings, we should have a lovely, hearty meal for this chilly winter’s day!

I’ll make a nice honey mustard glaze to go on our slices of pork roast when it’s all ready to plate up. I’ll add another picture of this feast on the plate later today!

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When you’re in the kitchen, cooking, it’s a good idea to have a sink full of hot, sudsy water available so you can clean up dishes and utensils as you go. Keeping up with cleaning in this way will keep you from having a big pile of dirty dishes to do later.

The sinks in my house are small and old. I’d like to have some new Kohler sinks for the kitchen, but I really don’t want to put any money into this old place. It’s just not worth it. However, the day will come when I can have a set of deep double sinks in the kitchen so not only is clean up easier, but I’ll be able to wash fresh greens in larger batches. It’s a real chore to have to wash greens in a lot of smaller batches before I can even put them on to cook!

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