The Fear of Cooking and My New Adventures

I have said on many occasions that TheHusband did not marry me for my domestic capabilities. Stop laughing. You all know it's true. I'm not one to clean the house (hiring a cleaning service has done a lot in keeping our marriage sane). I will do laundry with minimal complaints, but I hate hate hate putting it away (I never said my behavior was rational). I don't care if you put your shoes on the furniture (within reason -- not the dining room or kitchen tables...). And I don't like to cook.

Cooking, in fact, makes me nervous. I've written about this before. The process of finding a recipe, making sure I have the correct ingredients, and actually creating the food brings me no joy. It stresses me out. We eat out or bring in take out (I realize that phrasing is weird, but you know what I mean) way more than we should for the sake of our wallets and our health. I work full time (and not infrequently in the evening and on weekends), so coming home and cooking something at 6 pm, after a full day's work is daunting. To be honest, I like washing dishes better than cooking. You'd think that maybe TheHusband would cook, since I will do dishes without complaint. But he likes cooking even less than I do, and he has even fewer culinary skills than I do (yes, that is possible and actually true. He'd agree.). So that tradeoff is a no-go.

TH and I are firmly in "middle age", no matter what definition you use (and no matter what we wish to think). Therefore, we really do need to take more care with our diet and eat more healthfully (healthily?). A diet consisting of lots of restaurant food is mostly antithetical to a healthy diet, unless it involves lots of veggies and salads. Which ours does not. Also, it is important that ThePinkThing learns to eat well. She likes veggies and salad, and we should encourage that. TheHusband, OTOH, doesn't really do veggies. He's a meat-and-potatoes-hold-the-potatoes kinda guy. And my gluten-hypersensitivity also complicates things. (God, I miss good bagels and pizza. A lot.)

So, on the one hand, I'm scared of cooking, and meal choices in my household are fraught with the minefields of food sensitivities and narrow or conflicting palates. On the other hand, we need to eat more healthful foods, I'm bored of my current menu (and, believe me, I'm being kind calling it a menu), and takeout/restaurant food is more expensive. And I don't have a housekeeper or wife to do this for me. (I've joked many times over the years that my BFF is my wife. I wish it were the truth. She loves to read books as much as I do, likes similar foods, watches HGTV with me, and likes different flavors of Ben and Jerry's so we don't fight over the ice cream. And she is a wonderful cook. But she lives on a different continent, so I can't depend on my wife to fix the culinary problems in my house. But I digress.)

In that prior blogpost, I listed several things that my cookbook-writer aunt suggested I do to improve my (lack of) culinary skillz:

1. Get a grill
2. Experiment with soups
3. Brown the meat before cooking in a sauce
4. Move beyond potato bread
5. Buy a small freezer
6. Try recipes (there are a million-bazillion recipes online)

Out of these six recommendations, I've accomplished one (#3), failed at one (#4 -- TPT really likes potato bread, and I'm now stuck with the GF stuff, so it doesn't matter), kinda done one (#6 -- I have tried a few recipes, really, I'm not fibbing), and not done the others (#1, 2, and 5).

This all leads to Neurondoc's Culinary Adventures (in 3-D?). This week, I've surfed the web looking for recipes to widen our household's food horizons. And solicited ideas on how to make weekday meal prep easier. I don't want to spend the entire weekend buying, preparing, and cooking food.

One of my friends recommended that I drag my crockpot out of purgatory. (Yes, my house house has a purgatory. It actually has several purgatories, most of which are high up out of my reach. This particular purgatory is the only-occasionally-visited cabinet above the refrigerator...) I've found several recipes that I think the three of us will enjoy. I will be cooking some over the weekend. We'll eat the meals (outcomes? products? experimental results?) next week, and I'll report back.

Planned kitchen obsolescence?

Our house was built in 1962. It is a "split-Colonial", whatever the heck that is. The house was built during the heyday of teeny galley kitchens in nicely-sized houses (and let's not even mention the size of our master bath...). It isn't a generous space, isn't a "cook's kitchen", and is NOT set up for more than one cook at a time. Not a social kinda kitchen.

We renovated the kitchen in spring 2003, because we had to. Some of the drawers in the cabinets would literally fall out if they were pulled out too far. Note that "too far" was a little more than halfway. I nearly lost a foot to the silverware drawer one night. When the contractor pulled off the countertop, the entire lower cabinet section fell in pieces to the floor. He had no idea how it had been held together. I will admit that the appliances were new -- purchased by the son of the owner in order to make the house sellable. The whole family was a bunch of cheapskates based on the quality of the work that had been done to the house over the years (they owned it from ~1965-2000, when we bought it). The dishwasher was the cheapest model that Sears sold at the time. The fridge was pretty close to the bottom. There was a teeny little wall oven. The only nice thing was the cooktop -- a flat radiant heat cooktop that worked well.

So we decided on a budget for the renovation and made some cuts to keep the costs under control. I think we went about $50 over budget, which was great. What was not great were some of the decisions that I (fine, *we*) made to control the costs. We kept the white linoleum floor, which was a reasonable, but not pretty, choice. However, it's still in decent condition, even 9 years later. We went with white cabinets instead of wood, which I regret. We didn't get the cabinets with those fancy no-slam drawers. I regretted that decision too, because I did slam a drawer once, and the face fell off (not my face, you silly readers, the drawer's face). TheHusband was highly displeased. Instead of solid granite countertops, we used granite floor tiles and have a tiled look for the countertop, as well as the backsplash. (It cost ~$400 instead of $3000). I hate the way it came out. The contractor did a good job on it, and it looks just as he said it would. But I had buyer's remorse within the first week. TheHusband said that I had to live with it, but that we could replace it after 10 years. I agreed (crabbily) and am looking forward to getting new countertops next year.

We chose well-rated appliances that were middle-of-the-pack appliances based on cost. The only item that was more expensive than should have been was the fridge. I really, really wanted the upside down refrigerator (freezer on bottom). The drawer-type freezer has turned out to be highly annoying, as I can never find anything in it. But that's a different issue.

A bit over a month ago, the diswasher died. So we bought a new one. I don't like some aspects of the new one, but, boy, is it quiet. Two days ago the microwave died. Why it couldn't be the fridge that died, I don't know. Is there some sort of planned obsolescence about kitchen appliances for the 9-10 year mark, nowadays? Mind you, my grandparents are using a 30-something year old dishwasher. Things were made better in the good old days (said in crotchety-old-lady voice).

I wonder if I can convince TheHusband to get a new fridge this weekend, too. Nah, didn't think so. But it doesn't hurt to ask.

Harriet the Homemaker tackles laundry soap

We bought a new washer and dryer a couple of months ago. In general, I have been very pleased with both. The washer produces clean clothes, and the dryer gives me warm fluffy dry clothes. Our prior washing machine developed a mold problem, which I was never able to get rid of. Apparently mold is not uncommon in front-loading washers, and the way to deal with it is to prevent it. One way is to use HE laundry detergent. These are low sudsing products that are more easily rinsed from the items in the washer, produce pess residue and clog up the lines less. While there is something innately satisfying about a sudsy wash, it isn't the suds that clean the clothes.

Basically, the workhorse component of laundry detergent is a surfactant. Surfactants are molecules that have hydrophilic and hydrophobic ends. The hydrophilic end is attracted to water molecules, and the hydrophobic end tends to stick to non-water molecules – in the case of dirty laundry, that’s the dirt or grease or oil. Nothing really constructive happens until the water is swished around. Agitation of the water allows for many of the surfactant molecules to surround the dirt or oil and lift it away from the clothing into the larger pool of water. The warmer the water, the easier it is for the detergent to work.

I also try to use eco-friendly cleaning products. I've been using environmentally-friendly HE liquid laundry detergents for several years now (although by the time I started, it was too late for the other washer), but they are pretty expensive and still leave a residue. The new washer has a delay option, in which I can put the clothes inside and the detergent in the little drawer. But the company strongly recommends powder detergent for the delayed option -- to prevent staining.

Anyway, in an effort to use a reasonably eco-friendly and low sudsing powder laundry detergent appropriate for front-loaders, yesterday I made my own. I scouted out a few recipes online and tried out a relatively simple one:

1 bar Ivory soap, grated
½ cup Borax
½ cup washing soda (NOT baking soda)

Stir the ingredients together and use 1-2 tablespoons per load. This makes about 20-25 tablespoons, and probably costs about 8¢ per load.

I learned some valuable lessons from the experience.

1. Take care when grating the soap. It is very easy to grate one's fingertips. (ouchy, ouchy)
2. Don't stick said grated fingertips in one's mouth. Ivory soap tastes pretty nasty.
3. Dry out the bar of soap for a week before grating it. Apparently, it makes the grating process much easier.
4. Do not accept assistance from a 6 year old. The process goes much less smoothly.

Even so, the towels came out clean and fresh this morning. I'll let you know how it works on a 6 year old's marker-stained and paint-encrusted clothing.