Haven't We Been Here Before: Some Updates

I am sure that all of you gentle readers are on the edges of your seats waiting to find out what is going on with the refrigerator. So far, the Offensive Beast's replacement has not arrived. When I called to find out what was going on, my conversation with the delivery person went something like this:

Delivery Man: "This is the delivery man calling."

Me: "Yes."

DM: "We have your refrigerator. When do you want to schedule the delivery?"

Me: "I'll be home all day today, would you like to bring it this afternoon?"

DM: "How about Sunday?"

Me: "Is that the soonest you can bring it?"

DM: "Yes."

Me: "Well, then I guess Sunday will have to do."

DM: "Is Sunday afternoon convenient for you?"

Me: "Not really, since it is Easter, but since I don't have a working refrigerator right now, I don't have much choice."

DM: "Okay, we'll bring it on Sunday afternoon."

Me: "Okay."

DM: "Well, I guess I could call you if anyone cancels today or tomorrow."

Me: "I would appreciate that."

Gee, thanks. I love that they brag about next day delivery for their in-stock appliances, but when you order one, it takes three days to deliver it after it arrives. For now, my little NuCool refrigerator will just have to do...

My Grambi has been asking me to update "It's a broad noodle." all week. I must apologize for omitting a reference to the important people who "fluff" the noodles several times a day as they dry to ensure even drying. The chicken and noodle dinners would be nothing without the "noodle fluffers" who ensure the high quality of the noodles made in the St. Timothy's kitchen.

In other news, because I know you are dying to find out what I have been up to all week, the creek is running pretty high as a result of the rain and snow that we have had lately. Here's a short video of the roaring rapids outside of my back door:

The highlight of our week was the arrival of a box from Mother and Father of Ken. McKenna was convinced that Piper and Boomer were in the box and she spent most of the morning sniffing and rubbing on the box and trying to put her head inside.

McKenna received a special gift from Mother of Ken: a St. Patrick's Day t-shirt from Old Navy. For some reason, she loves to wear clothes, although she doesn't have an extensive wardrobe nor do I dress her regularly. Here she is modeling her new shirt:

Maybe my next post will include news that the Offensive Beast is gone and the new refrigerator is presiding over the kitchen--wish me luck!

Believe It or Not

This picture of McKenna after we got back from taking a walk on Thursday pretty much sums up how I feel after two days of work on the house.

Friday was installation day for the new carpet in the bedrooms, so on Thursday night, I took everything out of the downstairs bedrooms.

I had stuff in the kitchen:

The laundry room:

The living room, but I forgot to take a picture of the queen size mattress and box spring that I shoved behind the wood stove.



The downstairs bathroom:

And I put a few odds and ends in my loft study. It took me about an hour per room and then I did the same thing in my bedroom on Friday morning, which you will see later in this post.

So, beginning with the larger of the two downstairs bedrooms, the Father and Mother of Ken suite, here's what I started with:

You may remember me writing before about how the carpet in the downstairs bedrooms was a hideous teal color and also smelled like cat urine when I moved in, so we removed the carpet and I just painted the sub floor. When the realtor came a few weeks ago, she said that we would get more for the house if the bedrooms were carpeted.

And now the new Mother and Father of Ken suite:

During all of this, McKenna found various places to make herself scarce:

The other downstairs bedroom, the Leah suite, looked like this before:

And now, with the new carpet:

McKenna found another place to hide:

Perhaps the greatest transformation took place in the "master suite." I have hated this carpet since the day I moved in, but really had no reason to change it because it was in good condition in a room that few people ever saw. The realtor took one look at it and encouraged us to put new carpet in that room as well.

The previous carpet:

And the new carpet:

None of the new carpet is something that I would choose for a home that I planned to live in longer than the year I have left here. However, we were able to purchase two remnants for the downstairs bedrooms that were half off and the carpet that went in my bedroom was clearance. The carpet installer told me that this was some of the thickest carpet he had ever put down. Apparently, we paid a quarter of the original cost per square foot for this carpet. As someone who prides herself on finding good sales, I feel pretty good about the deal we got on this carpet.

The thickness of the carpet in the upstairs bedroom:

I was informed that the carpet installer was not a morning person and would not arrive before 11:30, so I waited until Friday morning to clear things out of my bedroom. Here it is before:

I put as much as I could in the bathroom to get it out of the way:

I also had to dismantle the closet organizer so that they could put new carpet on the closet floor. In the process of taking it apart, I noticed that the brackets that support the lower shelf had been completely pulled out of the wall. Once again, thanks to Mr. Disgustington, I had a problem on my hands.

At first, I thought that I was just going to have to buy a new closet organizer because I didn't think that I could put this one back together in such a way as to ensure its stability and safety. By the time the carpet installers left, I had decided to take another look at that shelf and the brackets and see if I could somehow make it work. As I studied it, I realized that the brackets had built-in anchors and a little tab that you have to flip up to insert a screw and then flip down to lock the shelf in place. When I flipped the tabs up, there were no screws. So, the shelf pulled out of the wall because it wasn't screwed in to begin with! This moron just stuck the brackets into some holes he drilled and called it a day. Why am I surprised by this? Once I put the brackets back into the holes and inserted a screw into each of them, the whole closet organizer came back together in a snap and is much stronger that it ever was before.

All is right with the world when my clothes and shoes are in place and organized by sleeve length and color. Stop laughing.

After moving back into the closet, I put everything back in my bedroom:

New carpet!

All of the rooms are so much brighter and they look a lot bigger now with the new carpet, especially the master bedroom. It was a huge relief to see that ugly carpet being hauled away from the house.

I stayed up until almost 1:30 in the morning putting things back together and felt satisfied that the house was in good shape when I went to bed. Then I woke up and found that all hell had broken loose on the other side of the house in the kitchen. I had water all over the floor this morning because my refrigerator, the Offensive Beast, died.

After making some phone calls and looking at a few places, it became clear that it was going to take at least three days for me to get a "bisque" colored refrigerator delivered to match the rest of the appliances, so I ordered one that could arrive as early as Wednesday or as late as next Saturday.

Here is the Offensive Beast, which I have never liked because it is huge and ugly and ingrained with dirt from the Disgustingtons and if you put anything on the left side of the refrigerator, it freezes.

I can't exactly spend the next several days with no refrigeration unit, so I ended up purchasing a small refrigerator that I have installed in my laundry room. It is very tiny, but it holds the essentials and I suppose that once I get the new refrigerator, it can become a wine fridge or something fancy.

Here's the new tiny, energy efficient refrigerator. It runs on the same amount of power as a 60w light bulb--it's like the Easy Bake Oven version of a refrigerator. The important thing is that it works and I was able to move it easily on my own.

Isn't it cute?

You can see what is important to me--apparently all I need to survive is butter, butter, butter, cream cheese, a couple of other cheeses, potatoes, and garlic. I was able to salvage some of this from the Offensive Beast, so at least I didn't lose all of my food.

All I Need

Last night, I had to prepare all three bedrooms for the new carpet to be installed today, and I knew that I would need some sustenance to get me through the evening. So, I decided to make Nigella Lawson's Honey Bee Cake into cupcakes.

The ingredients for the cake include semisweet chocolate chips, butter, cocoa powder, brown sugar, flour, baking soda, salt (not pictured), honey, and an egg. I cut the recipe in half and ended up with eleven cupcakes.

I made a few changes because I was in a hurry to get these in the oven. I used melted butter instead of softened butter and used the heat from the butter to melt the chocolate chips:

Then I added the brown sugar:

Some honey:



And an egg:



I mixed all of that well and then added the flour:

Baking soda:

And salt:

Then the cocoa powder:

I stirred that together and then poured boiling water over everything:

Once all of the ingredients were combined, I filled my muffin tin and ended up with eleven cupcakes:

These baked for about 20 minutes at 350 degrees. After I took them out, I put the cupcakes on a cooling rack while I made the glaze.

The glaze consists of water and honey, which I heated in a saucepan:

Then I added chocolate chips to the hot mixture and stirred until they melted:

Last, I added the powdered sugar and whisked it until the mixture was smooth:

When the cupcakes were cool, I spooned the glaze over each one, letting it run down the sides:

The end result:

These are very good--I'm not usually a big fan of cake, but I love these. The texture is light and airy and the honey in both the cake and the glaze adds a nice spiciness to the flavor. The glaze stays a little sticky, as you might imagine, but you can store these in an airtight container for several days. I don't bother with the marzipan bees that Nigella suggests for decoration--I just want to eat the cupcakes!

Next up: the new carpet!

April Food Day

What great timing! After publishing my last post, I learned about April Food Day. This is a great opportunity for all of us to join the fight against hunger and I hope that you will consider donating to Feeding America or to your local food pantry or food bank.

"It's a broad noodle."

Almost every month, Mother of Ken's church, St. Timothy's Episcopal Church in Iola, Kansas, hosts a community dinner. They serve everything from spaghetti to such southeast Kansas delicacies as ham and beans and chicken and noodles. The chicken and noodle dinner (sometimes referred to in that part of the world as a "feed") is probably the most popular because they make the noodles from scratch and have some of the best potatoes around.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am not a fan of chicken and noodles nor is Mother of Ken. Father of Ken, on the other hand, loves this dish. Mother of Ken is still supportive of the noodle making efforts, even though she doesn't eat them. When chicken and noodles are on the menu for the community dinner, members of the church participate in "Noodle School" after church on the Sunday before the dinner, which is usually held on Wednesday evening. When they started this a few years ago, experienced noodle makers taught the others how to make them and it is still called "Noodle School" even though everyone knows what they are doing now. Having never participated in "Noodle School," I don't know all of the steps, but I do know that Mother of Ken is in charge of cutting the noodles and I think that Father of Ken is in charge of rolling out the dough. I'm sure they will correct me if I am wrong. This is a picture of the noodles drying on tables:

It takes a lot of noodles to feed all of the people who come to these dinners. They are open to the community and the church does not charge anyone to eat. They do accept free will offerings and all of the money that they receive is used to purchase food for anyone in the community that needs it. Iola is a small community that suffered a lot of damage from flooding a few summers ago and much of the local economy relies on agriculture and manufacturing jobs, which means that people are feeling the effects of the national economic situation. So, there is a lot of need in the community, especially now.

These community dinners have grown quite a bit since they started several years ago and the most recent chicken and noodle dinner was no different. Mother of Ken reports that they had ten roasters full of chicken and noodles, 100 pounds of potatoes, 8 gallons of green beans, and 24 pies and they ran out of everything but noodles. A lot of people come to the church to eat, others pick up orders to take home, some (especially older people) have their dinner delivered, and lots of people purchase extra chicken and noodles to take home and freeze for later.

I wish that I had more pictures to show you, but the picture of the noodles drying will have to suffice. There are acts of kindness like this happening all over the country right now as people suffer from the economic downturn and various natural disasters and I'm glad to be able to tell all of you gentle readers about the people at St. Timothy's in Iola and their commitment to making sure that no one in their community goes hungry.

In addition to the community dinners, they also run a backpack program to provide food for school children over the weekend. There were kids who did not have anything to eat between school lunch on Friday and school breakfast on Monday, so the people of St. Timothy's put together packages of food that teachers can slip into the children's backpacks as they leave school on Friday.

To all of my gentle readers, please consider supporting your local food pantry, food bank, or any other program that provides food to those in need. Every little bit helps, so when you are doing your grocery shopping, buy some extra food to give to someone in need. As one of the women of St. Timothy's always says, "If you need it, they need it."

One last note--St. Timothy's has published a cookbook that includes contributions from parishioners and relatives and friends of parishioners (including me). The cookbook just happens to include the recipe for St. Timothy's famous potatoes, which they serve with the chicken and noodles, among other things. If you are interested in ordering a cookbook, I could probably coax Mother of Ken to send one to you. The cost is $10 plus shipping--just leave a comment with your e-mail address and I'll be in touch.