Monday, January 31, 2022

...1.31...Over the Weekend...

...I'm very sorry to say that...over the weekend...our dryer broke...and I thought it would ruin our movie night...but...I checked and found a fuse blown...a simple fix...or so I thought...ordered one from Amazon...and we were surprised to see that it would be delivered "tonight by 9 PM"...ok...I seriously was not expecting that...but what a service...right?...
...this is the culprit...
...and here's the new guy...I just popped it into place...and we were back in business...clothes drying...movie watched...haha...
...and then...for the third week in a row...we woke up Saturday morning to snow...
...not a lot...but it's still pretty...
...I picked up the InstaCart...
...absolutely nothing of note...we are so boring...haha...
...and then we were sweet-less...so I jotted down a lemon cake recipe from the interwebs...and whipped that up quickly...
...and y'all know that I think the crust is the best part of any baked thing...so I made them in my cast iron muffin pan...
...which fits neatly in my toaster oven
...I don't use it a lot because I often put multiple things into the big oven at once...and in the winter time it warms the kitchen up nicely...
...see what I mean about the crust...seriously the best part...
...these were good...more like a muffin than a cake...so they'll be good for breakfast too...
...and then since I was out of my little hockey pucks...(frozen cornbread muffins)...I made a pan of those as well...
...and again...the crust is the best part...
...I needed some for the leftover potato soup that we had for lunch...because snow = potato soup...haha...
...I mixed up my homemade "Sleepy-Time Tea"...

...I mix the chamomile that I buy in bulk...I also use it for Bee-Free Honee...with peppermint tea and lemongrass tea and nettle leaf tea...then I pulse it a few times in the spice grinder...
...it makes a lovely calming evening tea...and I store it in an old tea tin...
...later in the afternoon I got out a couple more small appliances...
...and made another half loaf of delicious bread...
...and then last night...the Man had said he had a split pea soup recipe he wanted to try...so I got out Grandma's Veg-O-Matic...and chopped some veg for that...
...I love using it...it's so quick...
...and all of the veg is so uniform...
...everything is ready for the Insta-Pot...
...and the Veg-O-Matic cleanup is just a quick rinse...I spray the little teeth with the sprayer to dislodge any bits that got stuck there...
...and the pea soup with a hunk of homemade bread was a perfect supper...it's really soup weather here with temps dipping into the teens...
...and then...sadly...the dryer was not fixed...and since I had continued washing clothes...and it's too cold to hang them outside...I just put them on hangers and hung them up in the laundry room...
...the fuse had blown again...and the heating element would stay on even when the dryer was not running...and the Man said..."I was afraid of that"...haha...

...but I insisted that I was going to fix it myself...and started searching the interwebs again...
...and apparently the problem is the heating element itself...but testing it with the meter did not show any problem...and again...I ordered one from Amazon...and it came the very next day...
...that's the old one on the right...and the new one came with 'everything'...I replaced all of the other fuses and the temperature gauge along with the heating element...so basically we have a new dryer...haha...
...and this is just funny and interesting...this is what I found when I took the dryer apart...which is not as difficult as you might think...I definitely suggest that you try to fix your dryer instead of replacing it...
...and I'm even a couple of dollars richer now...haha...but no idea at all what that little key belongs to...

~Wishing you a lovely start to your week!

Saturday, January 29, 2022

...1.29...Dinner and a Movie...

...dinner was a nice warm chickpea curry...and then there's a very small little bit of Foreman grilled okra...and that's because I was nibbling on it the entire time we were cooking...haha...

...and the Man chose the movie...South Pacific...which may sound surprising...I mean that he would 'choose' a musical...haha...but he watches a lot of political content...and the way South Pacific dealt with race came up in one of the interviews...and I just mentioned that I'd never seen South Pacific...the Man was surprised...I guess I was too...I mean I was aware of the movie...and I knew of a few of the 'tunes' from it...but I'm certain I've never ever seen it...and I'd certainly never pondered how racism was treated in the movie...and it was really interesting...there's this song...You've Got to Be Carefully Taught...it's sung by the character Lieutenant Cable...and he basically says that racism is "not born in you! It happens after you’re born..." which I thought was really interesting and pretty true...

...what have you been watching lately?...

~Have a lovely weekend!

Friday, January 28, 2022

...1.28...Antique Book Repair...

...remember when I broke the binding on my 1817 Cookbook...like...right after I got it...
...well...Beth...gave me some good advice...and I decided to go ahead and 'fix it'...this is the back cover...and I can easily pry off the 200+ year old leather...I know...eeeuuuwww leather...I would not buy a leather bound book now...but this poor cow died over 200 years ago...
...and this is the spine...also fairly easy to pry away...but I don't want to do any more 'damage' during the 'repair'...
...so I raided the stash for some appropriate patching material...I got a few nice sturdy cottons out and some of the leftover naugehyde from Our (small) Airman's chaps/Cowboy Costume all those years ago...I had quite a bit of the brown left...but none of the black...
...this light coloured cotton...
...and this thinner and a bit shinier one...
...and a sturdy brown cotton...
...but I was actually surprised as I thought the naugehyde would be too thick...but it's really quite thin...and I'm going to go with that...I think it will hold up better than a cloth repair...
...I cut two thin strips of naugehyde...and applied some glue...
...then I lifted up the cover...and slipped it inside...
...and left it to dry...
...and did the same again for the front...
...and then once that was dry...I gently pried the spine away...and applied some glue to the other edge of the patch strip and slipped that inside the between the spine covering and the book proper...
...I know it's kind of hard to see...
...and that was it...I left it to dry...
...and you can see the little patch peeking through...
...but the book now opens easily...front...
...and back...I'll be as careful as I can with it though...
...because I definitely plan to use it...along with my Read Harder Challenge...I've set a goal to read just 10 pages a day...I've finished the interesting introduction...and I'm reading through all of the gruesome meat section...the 1800's diet must have relied pretty heavily on dead animals...and I know I could skip those parts...but I often get some good ideas about how to make tofu and seitan dishes...just like from Julia...haha...
...and this is looking down at the top of the repair...
...all in all I'm really happy with it...

~Have a lovely day!