Life is too short (to hang on to dishes you don't love)

It's White Elephant Sale time again! This is the mega-garage/warehouse sale put on by the Oakland Museum. Honestly, it's so big it's overwhelming unless you have something specific you're looking for.

This year Wayne was looking for vinyl records to add to our ever-growing collection. And what was I looking for? I didn't know. Then, on the first day, my friend Mary mentioned the beautiful sets of dishes they had. She didn't need dishes she said, but it reminded me that I had a whole set of blue and white sailboat dishes I had inherited from a long-ago relationship that I had never liked much. I mean, they were OK and there were a lot of them - a double set - so I used them whenever I had a big party and needed lots of plates or bowls. But they didn't give me pleasure. They weren't really my style.

So I went over to the dishes section at the White Elephant and looked. If I found something I liked, I figured I'd buy them and bring my old set in to donate the next day. Luck was with me - here's what I found . . .




9 of these gorgeous orange plates at $2 a plate, plus one salad plate to match for $1. Total: $19











And 12 of these raised-pattern white plates at $1 a plate (what a bargain!) plus 4 wide soup dishes to match at $2 apiece and a gravy boat for $4. Total: $24

These are both dish patterns I love and I bought all of them plus 4 brilliantly colored blue, green, and red salad plates at $2 apiece.

The next day I packed up all the sailboat dishes, including the platters and bowls and the baking dishes and the creamer and sugar bowl and the gravy boat, and donated them to the White Elephant. Someone would love them and buy them. Suddenly there was SO MUCH ROOM in my dish cupboard, which is the hutch I'm still stripping in the dining room.



Here are my new plates (plus a few Pottery Barn Colors plates I already had and love) on the shelf.  Yay!

I'm really enjoying my new plates and use them all the time. They give me great pleasure, as they should.


The hutch: New life for an old project

I've been working on my hutch for years, trying to get it back to its original finish - the one that matched all the beautiful dark wood in the house when it was built in 1917.  I finished stripping the paint off the windows above the built-in just in time for my son's wedding. . . in 2000. Yikes, that was almost 14 years ago.

Over the years, I've done a bit more here and there. Last week I picked up the project again after a long time of no action. I sanded the paint off one more drawer and replaced the drawer pull. Here's how it looks now on the left. You can see the drawer I just did - it's the large one on the bottom.

This thing sits in the middle of my dining room, and I can't believe it's taken me this long to do. After all I use it as a bar and display center for some of my dishes, and I guess I've looked at its unfinished state so long I hardly notice it. That's all changed. I'm still far from finished, but I have a new commitment. I WILL get it done this year.

So far, most of the work has been done with stripper. I tried the humane, not-dangerous-for-humans, green kind and it just didn't work on this paint. There are at least three layers, the bottom two part of an attempt at "antiquing" the hutch. They are dark gray and couldn't have been attractive even when they were new. Anyway, those two layers are gummy, and nothing gets through them stripper-wise except the really strong stuff. So I have to wear a ventilator mask to use it in the house, although I did the first part, the windows, without it. Hopefully I won't come up with some dread disease. The ventilator mask is a pain in the neck, and I really dislike it but oh well. Have to do it.

The drawers I did with a small sander, and of course I took them outside to sand. I'll do the same for the cabinet doors on either side of the drawers. I'm not sure yet what I'll do for the glass doors, but the remaining painted parts of the frame will have to be stripped in place with the stripper. And the mask.

When I finish stripping, I'll stain the whole thing and finally brush a couple of layers of shellac on it. That's how all the rest of the wood in the house is finished, and the trick will be to match it as closely as I can. Fortunately, none of the already stained and shellacked wood butts right up against the hutch, so 'close to the same' will be just fine.

I never thought it would take this long, but when I'm done it'll be a thing of beauty. Can't wait!

Christmas vacation in Oregon

We've just returned from Christmas vacation in Oregon - it was a blast! There were many highlights  -  opening gifts at my son Arthur's home in Portland, a trip to Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood,



catching up with Arthur, my daughter-in-law Allie, and my grandson Jack,


and spending quality time together with extended family. It's an 11 to 12 hour drive each way from Oakland to Portland. Can be brutal, but the weather was great and we took our time. Mary, Marja, Wayne, and I made the trek in Marja's royal blue Prius, packed to the gills with suitcases, coats, boots, and gifts. Fun was had by all!

Hope you had a happy Christmas too!

 

Feet up!

Are your dogs tired? Here's a terrific thing I've just learned at yoga for those of us who are on our feet too much (whew, bartending for 6 or more hours at a stretch gets more challenging every year).

The solution: Put your feet up in the air when you get home.

Best way is to lay on your back and snuggle your butt up to a wall, then lean your feet up the wall. 

Next best way is to just lay on your back and put your feet straight up in the air without the wall (see photo).

The benefits:

• All that blood that's been pooling in your feet flows back into your legs and body
• The bones and muscles of your poor little feet get a break from all the pressure of having your body weight concentrated on their small surface
• This helps avoid varicose veins by reversing the blood pressure in your legs
• It's totally easy to do
• It feels great!

 

Turkey stock

I made 3 quarts of turkey stock tonight. The turkey has bit the dust for this year. It was a really good one - thank you, Turkey!

Here's what I did:

• Cut most of the meat off the turkey and put it in the fridge (...I'm so over turkey - happens every year)
• Chopped the carcass into 3 or 4 pieces
• Put it all in a big pot with a cut up red onion and 4 cut up carrots.
• Added 3 quarts water and some bay leaf and thyme.
• Brought it to a simmer.  Simmer is important - no boiling!
• Simmered for two hours. Looked for scum, but for some reason this turkey didn't produce any. Would have skimmed it off if I'd seen it.
• After two hours I turned off the stove and let it cool down while we ate dinner (not turkey - we had corn chowder and salad).
• Strained it all through the big strainer into two large bowls. It smells good!
• Will let sit overnight to cool, and will remove fat, if there is any. Then I'll spoon it into quart freezer bags, label, and freeze.
  
  

I'll use it just like I'd use chicken stock - for soup, or beans, or risotto.

In fact, tonight I asked myself - why don't I make my own chicken stock instead of buying it? It's not hard. And who even knows what commercial chicken stock is? Maybe I will.

It's almost Thanksgiving!

It's Thanksgiving week, and today I'm going to start cooking. First, I'm going shopping. Then I'll salt the turkey and brine it in the downstairs fridge until Thursday. I'll make cranberry sauce too today, and that will be enough. At least I'll have those two tasks out of the way.

We're having 8 for dinner on Thursday - both family and friends and friends of family. It will be fun! If you'd like to take a look at recipes for some of the side dishes I'll be serving, click here. That'll connect you to my cooking blog Two for Dinner, where you'll find recipes for Cauliflower Sformato, Candied Sweet Potatoes, Cranberry Sauce, Kale Salad, Wilted Spinach Salad, and Bread Stuffing.

Of course there are many other recipes on my cooking blog that don't have anything to do with Thanksgiving. You might like some of them, and we give thanks for all good food, don't we?!

Have a wonderful holiday! I hope you're as lucky as I am, and get to spend it with family and friends. I'm thankful for them, and for your friendship, and for our lives of bounty and plenty.

Into the wild

Yeah, I know I've been absent. It's that time of year. I've been so darn busy I hardly have time to ....well, you know.

Anyway, more on this later. I just looked at a blog that a lovely lively young 20-something lady named Jeanna is putting up called 50 Food Truck Dates. Jeanna got tired of the truly tiresome old dating scene - how is it this hasn't really changed in the 40-some years since I was that age????? - of waiting for some hopefully-cool guy to chat you up in a bar, or waiting for answers to your match.com emails (well, that's changed, but it's still basically the same thing). So unbelievably boring. She decided to take matters in her own hands and have a little fun and adventure while looking for love. Take a little read, and keep on reading past the first part until you get to the "philosophical" part where she talks about what she's up to with her project and life. What a smart smart young lady!

And what does this have to do with me or you? I say it doesn't matter what your situation is - whether you're still or again lookin' for love, or whether you've found your soul-mate and that's where you're staying - life is meant to be lived to the fullest. Ask my friend Beppy, who went for a walk in her neighborhood last week and got run over by a car coming out of a driveway. And died, age 59. Live, people!!! Have fun!! Act as if there will be no tomorrow, because there just might not be.

So here it is http://the50dates.com/food-truck-date-25-wild/.  You go, Jeanna! Remind us how to do it.