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.

Headphone Cozy

Sweetie is a musician, and wears his headphones while he composes. His favorite Sennheiser headphones still worked perfectly, but the plastic over the foam earpieces was frayed and falling apart. It was irritating his ears. Sennheiser headphones aren't inexpensive, so I offered to make a soft knit cover for the earpieces. And I did.

I used black cotton Peaches and Cream yarn. For each cozy I cast 30 stitches on to size 2 needles, and did 8 rows of k1 p1 ribbing. Rather than binding off I ran the yarn through the loops and pulled it to the right size. I then stitched 3/4 of the side seam using that same yarn. I placed the cozy on the earpiece and finished stitching the side seam with the wire to the earpiece coming out through the seam. I tied off the yarn. Then I took the loose yarn from the casting on of stitches and ran it through the first row of stitches, as if I was picking up stitches. I pulled this yarn snugly to hold the earpiece in position and tied it off. I did it all again for the second earpiece.

American Food

Our sojourn in Thailand has left us with a few dietary peculiarities. We are used to a much less contaminated food supply. The prime example is eggs. Commercial eggs make both of us sick, but free-range eggs from a local farmer do not. No hormones, no antibiotics, and no salmonella contamination. We gladly pay twice or three times the price of supermarket eggs for eggs that won't make us sick. Even the eggs sold as "natural" in the supermarket make us sick.

Supermarket chicken - Perdue or Tyson - smells like ammonia or bleach and tastes half-spoiled. We got used to SPF (Specific Pathogen Free) chicken in Thailand. No salmonella, no listeria, no campylobacter, no hormones, no antibiotics. Now the only kind that actually tastes right is the expensive organic chicken. I buy the whole bird and use the back, neck, and wings to make chicken broth. We'd really prefer to be buying packs of leg quarters, as we both like dark meat, but it looks like our foreseeable future holds overpriced whole chickens. White meat makes delicious chicken pot pie, though.

Supermarket pork is slimy and smells "off" the day I buy it. As with the chicken, we got used to S-Pure pork, which was hormone and antibiotic free, while being free of trichinosis and other pathogens as well. Pork was our standard meat in Thailand. I used ground pork freely as a ground beef alternative, in chili, lasagne, and tacos. We ate pork tenderloin regularly, along with pork chops once they started cutting actual pork rib chops instead of just random hunks of pork. The ribs came already individually cut for fast and easy cooking. I have a local source of pork, from which we buy all our bacon and sausage. I may need to start buying all our pork there.

Decent beef was imported in Thailand so it was very expensive. The local beef was all but inedible. When you can count every rib on the cow, there aren't going to be any "USDA Choice" cuts of meat within. We have adjusted well to eating more beef. We don't seem to have any problems with the beef, other than our fear of BSE.

And then there is milk. I avoided any issues there by going straight for hormone and antibiotic free milk from a small local dairy. I get my milk, cottage cheese, butter, buttermilk, and half and half from the food coop, which carries the products from that local dairy.

To sum it all up, we have experienced as many digestive upsets in our few months back here in the US as we did in our 3-plus years in Thailand. There are the previously mentioned eggs. Also affecting us badly is Mc Donald's, although it may just have been the egg in my Egg McMuffin. Pizza seems to be an issue, no matter where we get it. In fact, eating out in general seems to be a bad choice.

It's a good thing I like to cook.

Supplements R Us

A month or so ago I embarked on a plan of dietary supplementation to improve our resistance to influenza. I began with zinc lozenges. The nice thing about zinc lozenges is that once you are no longer deficient they taste nasty and metallic instead of yummy. We went through an entire small bottle of Solgar Flavo-Zinc and then I couldn't find it again, so we are currently taking a zinc capsule. Those are nearly gone, and I will replace it with more Flavo-Zinc.

The next supplement I added was Cod Liver Oil. We take the capsules, because I am certain a spoonful of it would never pass my Sweetie's lips. Cod Liver Oil isn't just about vitamins. It's a great source of Omega-3 fatty acids, which pretty much everyone needs.

The last supplement I added may be the most important one. We are taking Vitamin D, in the form of D-3, 2000 IU each per day. This is currently the maximum daily dose according to the US government. However, new research linking vitamin D deficiency to depression and heart disease - and a very high incidence of vitamin D deficiency in the US population - has groups working to get that recommendation increased to 10,000 IU. If it is increased then more foods can have it added as a supplement, like milk. Relatively high doses of vitamin D are needed to remedy a deficiency.

In general we now feel healthier than we have in many years. There are a few small exceptions, which I will explain in my next post.

Dinner

Dinner tonight was manicotti, no recipe used.

I made it using jarred spaghetti sauce (Bertolli Organic, Olive oil, Basil and Garlic flavor tonight) because we are currently sampling all the jarred sauces to see if an acceptable one can be found or if we must make our own. I stuffed it with ricotta cheese mixed with parmesan, parsley, and an egg. I stuff it uncooked, and bake it longer so the pasta gets done. I topped it off with some of he fresh homemade mozzarella we got at the farmer's market.

I intended to have some of our rosemary herb bread (also a farmer's market find) with it, but I simply forgot. I also meant to have some leftover cauliflower with it, too, but I didn't. So much for planning.

Even though Sweetie insists he hates ricotta cheese (it's white) he liked it enough to go for another helping.

Cookbooks!

I enjoy cooking, but I've been in a rut. I remember when I could think of 20 or more different ways to prepare chicken without really trying. Now I can think of about 4. I need variety. I need recipes. And so I have embarked on a mission to get recipes - but not just any recipes. I want the recipes that inspired me when I was a young housewife.

Many, many moves over close to 40 years have left me sadly bereft of some of my favorite cookbooks. I never have been without my Joy of Cooking , 1975 edition, though. The newer editions just don't measure up, so although this book is literally falling apart it is precious to me.

The next thing I decided I wanted was a set of recipe cards put out by Betty Crocker in 1971. Ebay was my friend, and I managed to acquire 2 sets rather than the 1 I needed. I am happily anticipating the arrival of this in a week or so. I once had this complete set, and I remember there are several recipes in it that were staples for me. I'm anxious to revisit those old friends, and to try the recipes I couldn't afford back then! I'm sure the second set will find a good home, too.

Next I wanted the Farm Journal Homemade Cookies book, also from 1971. There is an oatmeal/coconut crisp cookie recipe in it that is superb. Lots of other good cookie recipes, too. It was well worth the $ it cost me for a used copy through Amazon.

That's all I have managed to acquire so far, and that ought to keep me happily engaged in my kitchen for a few months. Nevertheless, I am on the lookout for more cookbooks that I may eventually purchase. I want the Farm Journal Country Cookbook from 1972. I may want The Good Housekeeping Cookbook from 1963. I am considering whether I want the classic Betty Crocker Cookbook from 1975 (Looseleaf binder edition, of course!) and the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook from 1968.

So I'm hanging out more in food forums, and it's working. Supper tonight was breaded pork chops, potatoes, and parsnips in a dutch oven, and sauteed swiss chard. It was fabulous, it made me happy to cook it, and my Sweetie loved it. He even ate all his vegetables.

The Search for God and Guinness by Stephen Mansfield

I have signed up to be a blogger book reviewer for Thomas Nelson publishers. I get books for free, and all I have to do is read and review them!

The Search for God and Guinness is more than a history of the brewery, although it includes that. It is more than a history of the Guinness family, too, although it also includes that. It is the story of how the brewery and the family have been guided in both business and life by their Christian faith. The Guinnesses are not people who go to church on Sunday and don't think about God again until the next Sunday, but are those rare people who put faith into concrete, meaningful action in their lives.

I didn't expect to be interested in the history of a brewery in a foreign country. But the history of the Guinness company is fascinating even to people not interested in brewing, and it is the Guinness family who make the company's history so fascinating. I was amazed by the acts of helping the poor and Christian evangelism that continued from generation to generation.

The history of Guinness paints a portrait of how a company can be run in a Christian way. Management and labor work cooperatively rather than adversarially, because the corporate culture is one of genuine caring for the well-being of the employees. Then the employees in turn care deeply about the welfare of the company. This is Christianity in action, and this is how Guinness was run for 250 years.