adventures in cooking #1

so today . . . i cooked. it wasn't pretty.

i have this brand new lovely kitchen. it has new cherry cabinets. it has wood laminate flooring. it has stainless steel appliances and granite countertops. it has big windows and is open to the family room. it is beautiful! i love to be in it, so i've decided i should start cooking again.

i actually decided this about five or six weeks ago. it was one of those nights after rollie was staying at the new house, but i was still packing up the old house. all alone. which was ok--i didn't really want rollie to help me pack, because i knew at that point his idea of packing was going to be to throw everything into the dumpster! so i was all alone in a big, not empty enough, very quiet house, but nothing was getting packed. i just kept walking from room to room, picking things up, moving them around, but making no progress. i needed noise.

i cannot explain it, but my brain seems to need noise to function properly. which was a problem, because all the tvs that could get hd programming were gone. all i had left was the small, old tv that i used in the scary room, and it was not hd ready! it only got one channel. but luckily the channel it got was shopping tv! so i flipped it on, and started packing boxes...

i was packing boxes with half my brain, but the other half was watching shopping tv. nine o'clock rolled around, which is midnight in florida. this meant it was time for a new "today's special!" so i stopped for a minute to watch. and guess what? the new "today's special" was a set of cookware. and it came in red...

i have cookware. i got most of it as wedding gifts, so it is kind of old. but it is still in pretty good condition, because, you know, i don't use it all that often. but this new cookware had clear glass lids (the better to see what you are cooking, my dear!) a new type of ceramic non-stick interior surface (good for temperatures up to 850 degrees!!) and did i mention it was red? and sparkly? clearly this cookware was made for me.

i texted rollie--"i think if i am going to start cooking in our beautiful new kitchen, i need new pans. red ones." he replied, "ok."

ok?!?! what kind of a response is that?? i needed clarification.

"what do you mean, ok? do you mean it's ok with you if i buy them? or do you mean ok YOU will buy them? or do you mean ok, yeah, i'll believe it when i see it?!?"

and his response? "yes." (there was also a goofy smiley icon with weird eyes and the tongue sticking out. sadly for you, i can't figure out how to get that into my blog.)

"ok, then i'll take that as a yes! thank you!!"

this was a bluff. because here's how the finances work in our household--rollie keeps track of the money and pays the bills, and i don't worry about it. (although there are written instructions in case something happens to him-like he gets lost in the bermuda triangle, which could happen-and then i would have to keep track of the money and pay the bills.) i used to keep track of the money and pay the bills, but mostly i would spend it. so this way works out much better. which is why i was checking with him before purchasing a new set of cookware.

"well," he texted, "you are working and have some money to spend... or how about this? how about if i buy them after the third home-cooked meal in the new house."

he is so funny...

"it will be too late by then! they will be sold out! but you are right. i chose to buy shoes and jewelry instead... and it isn't like i don't have pans... or like i actually use them..."

i know you can't technically hear 'tone of voice' in a text, but i am pretty sure he detected my not so cleverly hidden whining and sighing. ever mindful of my feelings, he texted back. "oh, it's a sale. ok, how about if you buy them tonight, and i will reimburse you after the third meal you cook in them?"

i was beginning to think he didn't believe me when i said i was going to start cooking more. and clearly he had forgotten that it was summer, which meant i wasn't working OR getting a paycheck. i mean, i had money, but i might need it for something... like, like, well you know, SOMETHING...

i finally ordered the cookware, and it came while we were on vacation. but after we got home from vacation, i was busy still unpacking boxes, and then we had to leave on a business trip, and then my mom and dad came... so not a lot of cooking was been going on...

which brings us to tonight. we had planned to take my mom and dad to eat at ruby's in seal beach. it sits on the end of the pier, and the food is really good, and i thought it would be fun to be at the beach and drink a milkshake! but it was cloudy all day today. all day!! not a great day to go eat at the beach. and rollie was feeling a little under the weather. and my dad had his nose in a book. and my mom and i were learning how to use our new electronic devices. so we decided to eat at home.

we have eaten at home some since they got here--mostly bologna sandwiches. WHICH WE LIKE!! but this was dinner, so i thought it should be hot. and yet, we were all kind of busy... so, toasted cheese sandwiches it was!

i got out the bread and the cheese and the butter. i unlocked the cooktop and turned it on. i got out my new frying pan :-) and proceeded to make toasted cheese sandwiches for my dad and rollie, because yes, this frying pan was big enough to make two toasted cheese sandwiches at once!

here is how i make toasted cheese sandwiches--i butter one piece of bread and plop it in the pan. then i slice the cheese and put it on top. and then i butter the other piece of bread and put it on top of the cheese. then i flip it. typically this works. but tonight was not typical...

because you see, not only had i never before used this particular frying pan, i had also never before used this particular burner on my cooktop, which meant i wasn't quite sure how hot was hot enough. apparently "7" was too hot. because no sooner had i finished constructing the second sandwich for my dad, than i thought there was an awful lot of smoke coming from the first sandwich.

"quick," i said to my mom, who happened to be standing in front of the utensil drawer (because how would she know that was the utensil drawer--we hadn't used any utensils!) "move! i need to get the spatula!" (i never know if spatula is the right word for that flat thing you use to turn stuff over with. i've always called it a pancake turner, but it seems kind of odd to call it a pancake turner when using it to flip an egg or a hamburger or a toasted cheese sandwich.) i opened the utensil drawer only to find... wooden spoons. no spatulas. or pancake turners. and then i remembered...

when diandra moved back in with us three years ago, some of her kitchen utensils were much better than mine (obviously, since i had been "using" mine for over 25 years!) so i had just tossed my old ones out and replaced them with her new ones. but now that she was planning to move out again, i had packed her newish utensils with her stuff. which meant that i had no spatula. or pancake turner. what i did have was a smoking pile of bread, butter, and cheese and nothing to flip it with.

i grabbed the only thing i could find. the cheese slicer. it was small, but at least it was flat. it was not however, a spatula. or a pancake turner. i tried to flip the sandwich only to have everything slide off to one side...

oh nonononono! i cannot have a misaligned toasted cheese sandwich! it might be burned, but those bread edges were going to line up properly and that cheese was going to stay inside! i flicked the now burned piece of bread repeatedly until everything was square, and then repeated the process with my dad's sandwich, which was also threatening to burn.

"you might want to turn the heat down a little," said my mom.

she is obviously the cook in the family.

it hadn't even occurred to me to turn down the heat. i was just trying to keep the sandwiches moving so that at least the second side wouldn't be burned. after her suggestion, i turned the burner down to "5"...

i've been cooking on a gas stove top for the last 20 years. on a gas stove top when you turn the flame down, it is immediately cooler. this is not true of an electric burner. electric burners take a while to cool down--especially if you have already heated them up to "7."

my dad's sandwich wasn't too bad. i can't say the same for rollie's. my mom (bless her little pink heart,) said, "why don't i eat that one, and you can make rollie another one." ok i thought, i've got the hang of this now. surely if i make a third sandwich, it will be perfect...

so i turned the burner down, buttered another piece of bread, and proceeded to make another toasted cheese sandwich, thinking "third time's a charm..."

sadly, it wasn't. not even close.but the good news is, i've now cooked in my new pans three times--i made toasted cheese sandwiches tonight, and i've boiled eggs. twice.

the bad news is, i appear to have forgotten how to cook!

i'm pretty sure that even though i have new, red, sparkly pans in my cupboard, they are not going to forget our names at rubio's...

snug as a bug in a rug :-)

so today . . . my baby is back in the garage! yay!!

no, not diandra! diandra is in oregon helping her best friend get married.

i'm talking about my car.

my car has had a rough few months. it all started at the old house when i noticed the hot water heater was leaking a bit--quite a bit, actually--which meant moving all the (now) wet boxes that i had stacked in front of it to the other side of the garage. where my car was usually parked. which meant that my car had to be moved to the driveway... the cold, dark, wet from the neighbor's sprinkler overspray, driveway...

and then we bought a house, which meant i had to start packing boxes. but the boxes had to be put somewhere, and the house was starting to look like ground zero, so some of the packed boxes joined the previously wet boxes in the other side of the garage... where my car was usually parked. which meant my car had to huddle in the driveway for a little longer...

and then we moved to the new house where we no longer had a three car garage. now we had a cozy two car garage. but here's the thing about two car garages--they are designed to hold two cars. just two. and when you have two cars that you would like to keep in the garage, that doesn't leave a lot of room for washers and dryers. or workbenches and tools. or golf clubs and bowling balls. or a shop vac and a bowflex. and so my car was still camped out on the driveway...

but the lack of space in the new garage was only part of the problem. the other part of the problem was that we didn't get any remotes for the garage door opener. our new garage has a really nice garage door opener, and it works just great... IF you stand in the doorway to the house and press the button. it is quiet. it is fast. it has a laser safety feature. but no remotes. and so the only way to open and close the garage door is by pressing the switch next to the door into the house and then running out of the garage as fast as you can. which is complicated by the laser beam safety. because when you break that laser beam, the door stops. so to get out of the garage, you have to hit the button by the door, run really fast toward the driveway, leap OVER the laser beam (which, btw, you can't see,) and hope you don't smack your head on the descending garage door.

and of course you can't do any of that from inside the car.

so until the problem of the remotes could be fixed, my car still sat in the driveway...

our realtor, jill, assured us that she could take care of this remote problem. we were not going to get any remotes from the sellers. they were not the most cooperative people we have ever encountered. but rollie climbed up on a ladder, wrote down all the necessary numbers from the unit, and jill ordered new remotes from amazon...

problem solved.

maybe in the real world, but in julieland, the problem was NOT solved. the garage door openers from amazon wouldn't work. rollie tried everything! so jill called a garage door opener guy, and he came out, and HE tried everything, and it still wouldn't work.

and my car was still sitting in the driveway, collecting dust and water marks from our sprinkler overspray. i was seriously starting to worry about the paint. watermarks on black shiny paint are not good... not good at all!

and then, while we were on vacation a couple of weeks ago, jill had the garage door opener guy come back, and he connected some sort of device to the garage door opener so that it would work with a new set of remotes.

yay! my car was pretty excited. so was rollie. so was i...

... until we got back from vacation, and i opened the garage door only to remember that i had put a bunch of boxes in the garage in order to get the last of the stuff out of the old house. so now even though i had garage door openers that worked, i still couldn't get my car into the garage...

sigh.

i immediately started trying to unpack those boxes to clear out that space. but i kept getting sidetracked. like yesterday. yesterday, i rearranged the kitchen cabinets. yes i said rearranged! i unpacked the kitchen a month ago, but i found a few more kitchen things in the boxes in the garage yesterday. and when i brought them in to find a place for them, i found that there wasn't a place for them. so i rearranged things. in the kitchen. which used up time i could have spent unpacking more boxes...

you see, this is why it is taking me so long to unpack! i want everything to be in the perfect place. but i don't always immediately know where the perfect place is. so even after i have unpacked, i am still moving things around...

but a few days ago, i was alarmed by how terrible my car was looking. i was suddenly worried that maybe the paint was going to be ruined, if i didn't get it in the garage pretty soon. so i stayed up until 3:00 a.m. last night working in the garage. and finally, i had cleared enough space to get my car into the garage!

oh it still isn't perfect. there are a bunch of boxes that are diandra's which need to be moved to her storage unit. there are some boxes that need to go to my school. and rollie hasn't had a chance to put up the shelving yet that is going to hold the bowling balls and golf clubs. so one side of my car is still crowded. but the important thing is that when the sprinklers go off at 5:00 a.m. the water is not going to be hitting my nice, clean, shiny car...

because now my car is nice and shiny and clean. rollie took it to the car wash today. and those water spots? they wouldn't come off. it was pretty bad. but those car wash guys have some tricks up their sleeves, and they somehow used some clay to remove the water deposits from my paint. and now my car is very shiny, and happy, sitting in our new garage.which is where it is going to stay! because that car wash magic? i'm sure it is cheaper than a new paint job, but maybe not by much...

sorry, no blog tonight... oh wait...

so today . . . there will be no blog. here's why...the move is finally happening. i hope. as you can see, there is still packing to be done. we have spent the last two weeks trying to get everything done in the new house before we moved in, but it has been a nightmare for me! decision after decision after decision. and not making decisions. and changing my decisions... it has not been pretty, people!

the interior painting went well. i only had to have the painters repaint one room. it was the man room. everything else looked exactly like i had pictured it, but the man room was baby boy blue, not the muted turquoise i had in mind. i tried to like it, but i just couldn't. i didn't know how they had gotten the color so very wrong! i went to get more paint chips, chose a new color of blue, went back to the house, put it up on the wall, and guess what? it was the exact same color. i don't know how it could look so different up on the wall, but it sure did. when i told jose' he was going to have to go get another color of paint and paint the room again, he just smiled and said, "no problem!" and so, the painting was completed and the new color looks good. and i only changed my mind once!

i spent several days working on the wood floor that was hidden under the awful carpeting in the master bedroom. i spent most of one saturday just pulling up the tack strips and the staples from the padding--over 1300 inches of tack strips and hundreds of staples. and then i spent the next saturday and sunday afternoons cleaning it, square by square. it was a lot of work and every muscle in my body ached! but when i got done, it looked sooooo good!

last weekend we had new windows installed in all the rooms upstairs. i have never seen windows replaced, but since i was on my hands and knees working on the wood floor, i got to see the process. either it was much simpler than i thought it would be, or those two window installers were just really, really good. either way, it didn't take them long and we had beautiful new windows. although, i learned that i should not watch work in progress. i kept thinking, "oh no! the windows are too small! oh no! the windows aren't level! oh no! i can see that foamy stuff all the way around the window! oh no! these are going to look awful!!" i was feeling a little sick and wishing maybe i had spent the big bucks and just hired home depot. but as it turns out, i am glad i went the cheap route, because they turned out really nice.

we have prairie shutters coming (if i can find a way to get my window sills trimmed down--none of my windowsills are level!) i've scheduled grass for the backyard, and i am currently doing battle with lowe's over carpet installation. (i am mad at them. i will never, ever use them again. but i am madder at home depot's carpet people, and i need carpet NOW, so i don't have a lot of options. if i had taken care of this two weeks ago, i would have had more options. but two weeks ago i was busy making paint decisions and trying to get rid of the leftover furniture the seller's left and degreasing the kitchen--which, btw, i am still doing--and so carpet was not the high priority it should have been...)

i also should have been packing. but rollie had a plan and it seemed so simple. he said to just pack the things i wanted to take, and then after we had all that stuff moved, we would dispose of the stuff we had left. it seemed like a good plan. and i especially liked it, because it didn't sound like it required a lot of actual packing. but it does...

and so, that is where i am right now. packing. this is not the fun part of moving. but it is necessary, so i guess i had better get back to it...

...which is why there will be no blog tonight.

get ready! the search is about to begin...

so today . . . a bank decided they could trust us with some of their money.

this is a good thing, because soon we are going to have to move out of the house we have lived in for the last ten years. since rollie has a new job, he isn't the pastor of our church anymore. and since our church owns the house we live in, they are probably going to need it for their new pastor. eventually.

i'm going to have to live in a tent in the park...

we have known since the beginning of the year that we were going to have to move, but it just seems like circumstances have been conspiring against us. rollie had to move to a new office, diandra got married--in las vegas. rollie has been out of town 4 or 5 times. i had lesson plans to write and report cards to do and pre-k evaluations and parent conferences... and the list goes on.

whenever i had a little extra time, i would look at houses for sale online, but i was pretty sure i didn't have enough money in my bank account to buy one. we finally managed to find an afternoon to go talk to a realtor, but that was as far as we got in our search for a house. because she said we really needed to know how much we could spend before we did any looking (duh! well, she didn't say 'duh,' but i sort of think she was thinking 'duh'...) which meant filling out paperwork. which took time... time we couldn't seem to find.

i'm sure there are some nice parks where we could put a tent...

our realtor had planned to be gone for a month on vacation in march and april. she was worried that we might have to move before she got back. but we have a little time to work with here, and besides, we hadn't done the whole bank thing yet. so we told her it was ok--we would just wait for her. a month should be plenty of time to get a loan pre-approved...

and then it was time to do the taxes. and you know how that went... and then suddenly it was time for our realtor to come home--could she have possibly already been gone for a month?!?!? and we still hadn't connected with the bank yet.

i'm starting to really think i might have to live in a tent in the park...

i was worried about the whole bank thing. housing is not what you would call reasonable here in southern california. and we have two dogs that need a yard, and two convertibles that need a garage, and some storage space for all the stuff i can't seem to get rid of (although rollie assures me i will be able to get rid of some of it when we move. he says he will help me. i can hardly wait...) and i am worried we won't possibly be able to afford all of that. so this whole loan pre-approval thing has been torturing me. but our realtor is coming back tomorrow. and really, how can we tell her that in all the time she was gone we hadn't been able to find a few hours to do our paperwork?!?

i was afraid that is exactly what we were going to have to do. and then, miracle of miracles, rollie did it--he got the paperwork filled out yesterday. he faxed it to the bank, and today they said YES! they would love to loan us some money!

of course they would. for a fee. a pretty hefty fee, actually, if you figure out how much interest we will ultimately pay...

rollie is excited. i am a little sick. because now that we have the money, we have to find a house. can you imagine how many decisions are going to have to be made??? that we are going to have to agree on?!?!?!? and the pressure of choosing a house to live in until we die (which is our plan--we never want to have to move again!) and what if, after spending enough money to feed a small country, and moving all our worldly possessions (well, the ones that escape rollie and the dumpster,) we find out that the neighbors hate dogs? or that the back yard floods when it rains?? (that could be 4 or 5 miserable days every year!!!) or that "the last people who lived in that house let all the neighborhood kids swim in the pool whenever they wanted to!" (hey, we could have a pool! the realtor says houses with pools in cerritos are actually cheaper...)

maybe a tent in the park isn't such a bad idea. we already own a tent...