The Empty Cabinets of my Mind

I Took a Chance on This

Another Reason I Love Big!Lots Stores.  

They have things I probably would never buy at retail on sale so cheap that feel OK taking a risk.  The screenshot is from my smart phone.  I took a picture of the cup cake (not cupcake!) kit complete with price tag.  The hard to find low baking cups with handles that come in this kit are perfect for other kinds of baked goods, and also for soup or stew, so after trying one box, I went back and bought several more. 

 

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This posterized image shows the cup.

 

 

 

Hump Jumper

Wow, I met a celebrity today.  Well, sort of. 

I had mentioned this sewing tool in on online forum, some years back, actually, and another member introduced herself as the inventor of the gadget.  Here is her website:

How to Use the Hump Jumper

I love my little yellow hump jumper and was honored to make the acquaintance of its inventor.

Furnature or FUNature?

The place I am staying right now is too small for me to even consider any bedroom sets, but there is room in my bedroom for a drafting table. Now you know my priorities.  I've talked before about how I'm not much into furniture.  But what I have has to be fun. 

I prefer modern furniture with lots of storage space and no rough edges.  I like light colors, too, mostly white, and if it is wood, then pine or white oak.  It has to be easy to keep clean and smooth to the touch.  I like lots of light bouncing around in my space and miminal everything. 

It is safe to say that I have more furniture out in my gardening area than indoors.  Whenever anyone wants to get rid of a tab le or set of drawers, out there it goes.  In fact, I now have more used shower doors than I can actually use for raised planter projects, but the neighbor who donated one of them suggested that I use it for a hothouse instead.  We do not have much winter, here, but I am thinking that in the rainy season I should be able to put one of those big panels of tempered glass over my herb garden to keep the little green things from getting pounded. 

Before I Forget

Here is what I THINK  I put in my bread dough yesterday which was so delicious after I baked it:

Dry ingredients ground in the Magic Bullet, then mixed together:

1 3/4 cup of flaked grain (2/3 oats, 1/3 red winter wheat)

1/4 cup of ground seeds (1/2 pumpkin seeds, 1/2 sunflower seeds)

Liquid ingredients mixed together after I heated the water, then left to "rest" for a while (to see if the yeast was active):

1/2 cup water (heated)

1 teaspoon dry yeast

1/4 tsp baking soda

1 teaspon honey flavored rice syrup (It said honey, but I read the label)

When I mixed the dry ingredients and the liquid ingredients, this dough looked way too runny, but I was busy and left it while doing other stuff.  When I came back, it was nice and thick and ready to knead.   I coated my hands with olive oil, shaped it into and ball, worked it just a little bit, then went off again to do other stuff. 

When I came back, using more olive oil, I worked it just a little bit more, then separated the dough ball into 3 parts and shaped each one into a flattened ball, and baked them in my counter top infrared/convection oven using the pizza setting.

FACT:  This was the ugliest looking bread that I ever baked.  When I cut into it and saw the inside I almost threw it out without tasting.  But it tastes delicious, so here I am trying to remember what I did so that I can make more of it exactly the same. 

ANAYLYSIS:  I think it was the pumpkin seeds that made the bread turn a color that initially seemed so unappetizing.  But the flavor and texture they added made up for it. 

I am the only person I know who puts a bit of baking soda in bread dough.  I do not put much salt in any of the food I make, but in bread-baking salt helps control the fermentation rate of the yeast, strengthens the gluten, and gives the bread a good "crumb" (interior consistency) so NaHCO3 is my salt-substitute of choice.  

While salt slows down the fermentation of the yeast as well as providing flavor to the dough, honey speeds it up.  

I buy rolled oats and other grain flakes in bulk from bins at Henry's Market, Whole Foods, or whatever health food store is available.  Usually I add a handful of fresh-ground flax seeds to my baked goods, but this time I didn't.

This recipe made three individual loaves, each about the size of a large hamburger bun, but as this bread is dense and packed with nutrition, each loaf made more than one serving. 

The crust was very much to my taste, both in texture and flavor.  I cannot promise that I will get the same results next time.  Also, people who are used to eating white bread probably would not like the kind I bake, as mine is always 100% whole grain.

After putting these notes down, I decided to post a version of this "recipe" on Associated Content (now called Yahoo Contributor Network) -- I would have put it on Triond first, but I had already hit the "Publish" button when I decided to share, so it was too late to do that:

Ugly Bread

Oh, and I would have taken a picture, but honestly the greenish black color of this bread might have scared some readers away ;-)

Another reminder...my friend's father has a beautiful motor home for sale and I listed it for him on eBay.  If you are interested, please take a look:

Jim's Winnebago

 

 

Wood Shutters Look Pretty on a Vacation Home

These weeds come up after the spring rains and cover the little back yard behind my vacation home:

They are probably brown sticks by now and I should make a run up there and weed them out.

One of my neighbors has the prettiest outdoor wood shutters and when she goes away for a while they help to keep the blinding summer sun from heating the interior of her home to the boiling point.

I have the dark film on my windows, which is great because when I am there, I can see out without anyone looking in and therefore do not need sheer curtains. They are a little dark on a rainy day, but seldom does it rain in the Mohave Desert, especially at the times of year when I am able to visit. Still, I would like to enhance the appearance of my place by putting some shutters up in the front at least, as the dark windows look quite black from the outside.  Of course that would be a give-away as to whether I'm home or not, but it is a gated community, and my neighbors on either side are year-round residents and not nomads like me. 

It IS Possible...

...to get quality eyeglasses at an affordable price.   I blogged about Zenni Optical before and they just keep getting better.  If you missed Eric Hammer's review the first time, here it is again:

Cheap Eyeglasses are a Reality

Now that sounds like a satisfied customer to me.  

Comfortable shoes and handsome lightweight eyeglasses top my list of must-haves.  I have been wearing glasses since 4th grade and really suffered from low self-esteem over having to wear cheap ugly frames most of the way through high school.  Even now I cannot look at those old photos without cringing.

When I got my first contact lenses it was like going straight to heaven.  My whole life changed!    The next revolution came with my first pair of rimless titanium frames.  That is when I went back to wearing eyeglasses.  That was more than a dozen years ago so I have changed frames a few times since then.  What has not changed is the the way Zenni Optical keeps providing durable and stylish products at rock bottom prices.  The offer their fasionable eyeglasses in their own manufactured brand and cut out the middlemen so that they can give their customers high quality eyeware at reasonable prices.  In return, happy customers spread the word about their company so that they save on advertising.  Then they pass the savings on to you. 

In my view, it just doesn't get better than that. 

PS:  I was going to get this pair:

But then I saw these and I adore the spectrum coloring: 

Of course, at these prices I can probably afford to get them both.  It is always good to have a backup pair. 

 

What is Worse than Going to the Dentist?

Someone asked me that recently and I said Job Interviews and Weddings. What do those things have in common? For one thing, you have to dress up. I hate that. In addition to just not liking to wear fancy clothes, I don't like to spend a lot of money on something that will hopefully be obsolete by the next time it is needed.

I especially dislike having to spend more just for a dress or shoes to wear to someone else's wedding than I spent on the whole affair when I got married. But then, we only spent $40. Yep, that was the cost of one night in Reno, and the room came with a free buffet and a roll of nickels that we were supposed to use for gambling. We paid for our gas with some of the nickels and kept the rest. I might still have a few of them around someplace. Oh, and we packed peanut butter sandwiches for on the way, and I wore jeans and a sweat shirt. It was one of those "let's do it now before we chicken out" deals. Sometimes you just have to take the bull by the horns. Talk about a wedding on a budget! But the marriage lasted.

Unfortunately that is more than I can say for some of the fancy shindigs I've been forced to attend. Also, fancy does not guarantee civil behavior. A high school chum got married right after she graduated and her family spent a fortune on the wedding. But her mum only paid on the condition that the girl's sister not be invited. So just as the photographer was lining everyone up, the uninvited one shows up in curlers and a bathrobe, saying "I just had to see you in your wedding dress" and the water works began, and then the yelling and screaming. Ka-Ching! Extra money for touching up the photos afterward.  Aren't the guests the ones who are supposed to cry at a wedding, not the bride? 

I have also been to a few truly lovely weddings, though. In each instance they were second time arounds, modestly done, but with lots of family and friends.

Knowledge is Power

Knowing how to manage time and money makes a big difference in the quality of life.  Today time got away from me because I was determined to save some money by doing my own plumbing, but the repair kit I had on hand was not as universal as the young man at the hardware store said it would be.  So I had to gerrymander a bit and  by the time I finally got the leaky toilet fixed, it was rather late to try to go out and run any errands. 

Just as well, because this time of year it is pretty hard to go out without spending money.  I decided to stay home and blog about debt management instead.

This is a paid post.  I did not spend any money today, but now I will earn some:

debt consolidation loans

Today's sponsor is DCC.  They are a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people who have debt issues.  The website has articles that are simple to read and understand about all sorts of money management issues.  They explain some of the traps people fall into with credit cards and mortgages and they say why debt consolidation may not be the best answer for people who are in debt over their heads.

One of the articles I enjoyed most is called Money Saving Tips.  There they explain how when we think we are saving $100 we are really saving more like $150 because of the marginal tax rate.  That is pretty amazing and it makes me feel better about all these sore muscles I got from saving so much money on my home repair.  Maybe I will reserve a little bit of that money/saved money/earned to spend on a better wrench in order to be better prepared for the next leak.  

In a way, that is a good analogy, because having a well thought-out budget and sticking to it is a lot like fixing the plumbing.   Paying attention and doing careful work to prevent leaks is just as important as fixing them later on, but in any case we need the right tools.  DCC has some useful tools on their pages.

I get a lot of self-esteem from being to do much of my own home maintenance.  Knowing how to plug those financial leaks is empowering too.  That said, I should like to take this opportunity to wish my readers happiness for the rest of the holidays and a very happy and prosperous New Year. 

Critters

A while back I inherited 5 lovely stone slabs from a neighbor who was moving away.  Here is one of them:

  When I dragged one across the back yard , I noticed something had dug a hole under the gravel, chewed through the plastic barrier and burrowed right underneath our shed. 

So I stuff a plastic trash bag with some metal jar lids and other recyclables, and push that into the hole and then covered it with an unopened trash bag, shoveled gravel back over the top, and we shall see where they dig next.

The neighbors think it is the work of ground squirrels, although I've never seen any about.  What do you think?

A Used Watch

Once long ago, when I was addicted to having a watch on my wrist,  I forgot to put mine on and headed out on a vacation.  My first stop was the beach at Carmel and even as I was lamenting about the fact that I was wristwatchless, guess what swept up on the shore right in front of me?  It wasn't a Rolex, but it was a very nice watch.  It was waterproof and running perfect time.  I wore it for the rest of that trip and for quite a few years thereafter.   Sometimes things like that happen.  If I ever lose something special, I hope that it falls into the hands of someone just like me.

The last thing I lost was my cell phone.  How embarrassing!  I replaced it with a much nicer one and was ever so glad to have lost it in the long run, but it was rather irresponsible.  Sometimes phones have personal stuff on them that could fall into the wrong hands.  This one didn't, and anyway it turned up  about three months later.   I had put it inside an eyeglass case in my suitcase.  Now I am wondering where those eyeglasses went.