(Actually this was several Friday's ago but I have been on the road and camping out of cell service range so am just now getting around to posting it.)
Around our house completion of projects and chores was expected and pretty much the only praise and positive feedback we got most of the time for that was more along the lines of negative feedback if we fell short of expectations. I don't know how much of it is me and how much is the result of the environment I was raised in. Either way, I tend to measure my worth, and worthiness, based on the chores and projects I've completed.
If I don't have at least a couple of projects on my list to prove my worthiness - well, that's too unbearable to even think about!
They don't have to be big projects, like building our house, though that was a great one! Little projects, like the half-hour it took to remove the manufacture's vinyl-stickers off the sides of the teardrop trailer, count too.
Today there's six waiting projects there on top of the tablesaw and I'm as happy as a pig in Valhalla - or something like that.
Starting at the top-left corner and working around counter-clockwise, there's a box of 6 ramkens.
I carry a small 1.5 liter presure-cooker in my trailer(s) which, in addition to cooking up 5 cents worth of real rice instead of using one of those $2 packages of highly processed gunk in about the same amount of prep-time, also does the warming-up job of a microwave without that pesky neccessity to be plugged into shore-power.
I have been fashioning small 'pans' out of tinfoil to heat/cook things in it that I don't want laying directly in the water (presure-cooker + no water = explosion!), but that's awkward, fiddly, and heavy on resources, so I figured I'd try using an oven-safe ramken instead. (On-line you can only buy these in six-packs, so I now have two in each of my trailers as well as a couple spares.)
Next are 4 small mesh bags.
One is to be used as a more hygienic way of corralling my tooth-stuff than the plastic ziplock which kept everything perpetually wet. Another will keep my four perscription drugs under control while rattling around inside the food box. (The food box because it lives inside the cab of the truck when on the road - or at night when it's cooler and bears may be wandering - and inside the trailer, which stays cooler than the parked truck during the day)
I took the sewing machine to the other two mesh bags and made them even smaller to keep the ramkens snug and secure with the handy draw-cords when slamming down the road.
The next item is a new remote for our ceiling-fan because the old one lost the ability to turn the fan's light on or off. (I had to get the 8' ladder out and remove the bulb because it got stuck on 'on' and we can't live in our small space without the fan turning, so shutting the whole damn thing off at the wall-switch was not an option.
BTW, the new remote didn't help, so now replacing both the reciever up inside the fan as well as the remote to operate it has been added to the project list. (Oh goody! More projects to look forward to!)
Now we come to a couple of 14" soft-close drawer slides.
The slides that came on the two drawers of the teardrop work perfectly well. Except that they are hard-close. And when I say close, they really close.
So much so that I had to add handles to the drawers in order to get them open again without physicly damaging myself on the puney little cutouts provided as handles.
But they also close with a bang, no matter how careful I try to be, and unnecessary noise is just one more thing I'm sensitive to.
But the soft-close slides didn't work any better than that remote for the ceiling fan.
The drawers are square, the cabinet is square, but no matter how much shimming and fiddling I did, I could not get those slides to consistently shut all the way,
so I ended up putting the original slides, which work perfectly every time, back on and gluing a 'bumper' of open-cell foam to the back of the drawers to help deaden the 'slam'.
Two for four so far. Batting 500. Good for baseball, sucks for projects!
The next item is sports tape
for the Wife's 20 year old self-defense bat who's original wrap had turned into a sticky black goo.
After a lot of slicing, scraping, and sanding, the bat is ready for a new wrap.
The sock on the end of the bat is so that if your assailant trys grabbing it away from you they are left with a handfull of empty sock and you have more time for a low, knee-shattering swing to put them on the ground. Also, I'm not, by nature, comfortable with violence, but this is not the movies or TV. Once they're on the ground keep swinging until there is no longer any posibility that they will get up again. (Here in Texas it's a lot simpler to have a dead intruder on your property than a badly injured one.)
That final item is a Shimano 7 speed index shifter, but that's worth a post of it's own. For now let's just say the project-to-success rate has improved to 4 for 6. I've had better, but that will have to do.
This is traumatic. I need to lie down.
ReplyDeleteI know! Only a 66% success rate. That's barely a C-!
DeleteIncredible stoicism! Is The Wife aware of your suffering? You did a great job with her blue mug back on July 28 I suspect she could supply you with more than enough materials. Speaking of which, has her arm healed? How is the cat?
DeleteHer arm still looks like hell, and probably always will, but it has healed nicely. Now it's her foot. She spent two solid days on her feet at the sewing machines cramming to finish a couple of skirts on a deadline and a week and a half later she is still limping, though she can actually walk without screaming now which wasn't the case at first. The cat is fine. It actually survived a week of being fed by a Rover, who never actually saw either cat, and showed up within hours of us getting back home as if nothing ever happened.
DeleteI'm a fan of the pressure cooker. I had one of those for the Scamp. Unfortunately, it was included in the sale, along with all of the other Scamp kitchen stuff. I'm intrigued by the bat and the sock at the end of the bat. That sounds like quite a surprise for an intruder. I assume you have the disposal of the body covered and don't want to show the shovel or other implement of concealment for practical reasons.
ReplyDeleteLots of secluded space, feral hogs, bobcats, coyotes, black vultures. Who needs a shovel!
DeleteWhat are you cooking in the ramekins? Eats are an ongoing dilemma & I'm curious. Michelle is fine with a cheese and chili burrito each evening but I prefer a varied diet.
ReplyDeleteI found that by adding real rice to boiling water and then reducing to simmer, rice only needed to go 12 minutes. After turning off heat I leave it for another 12 minutes (do not lift lid) and it is done. It is cooked on a 2:1 ration. How does that compare to pressure-cooking?
The ramkens are mostly used for warming dense things up, like meatloaf, casseroles, potato or rice dishes. Stuff the Wife has fed us and frozen the leftovers for my trips. Sometimes I lay a small slab of salmon on top to poach while the other stuff is warming up.
DeleteI throw rice, or rice and beans in the cooker, sometimes on top of some cubed, marinaded chicken that I've seared before adding the rice and water. Keep the heat high until the weight hisses, turn down to just enough simmer to keep the weight gently dancing and start a 7 minute timer. Turn the heat off and start the 7 minute timer again. Don't really know what the ratio is. When I get a fresh bag of rice I break it down into roughly 3/4 cup batches in ziplocks that get thrown into the bottom of my food box. (When I was a kid we used to have to wash the ziplocks along with the dishes so they could be reused. I don't bother with the washing part, just throw the empties back into the food box to be reused as-is next time) Then I fill my insulated mug with water by eye, you know, about to there, then dump it in the cooker and seal the lid.