Jiaozi

In the September kitchen

Here are the last of the summer blackberries, which were also the first of the summer blackberries since I didn't get out to pick them until the end of August. As I mentioned before, I made two pies and froze one. Don't worry, I rinsed the bugs off first.

The fruitflies have been coming inside, another sign that autumn is approaching. We always seem to have a swarm this time of year. We lived in one house where they were so thick it was like living in the Amityville Horror. I don't usually mind bugs that much, but this was creepy. I've found that the best solution is to put some apple cider vinegar in a shallow bowl, cover it tightly with plastic wrap, and poke a few holes in it. The flies go in but they can't get out. I feel a certain pride when I view the ensuing carnage.

 

I made a wonderful soup, a knockoff of the Tuscan soup at [chain Italian restaurant]. It's a creamy potato soup with Italian sausage, bacon, and kale in it. Yum. The spice and the cream complement one another.

Yesterday I bought myself a pumpkin spice Frappuccino. Have I gone mad? It was pretty good.

There are first-day-of-school pictures over at Mimosa. I'm too lazy to cross-post.

Green bags

I've been fighting the idea of reusable grocery bags. There have been rumors that plastic bags will be banned in the city, which will eventually affect us in the suburbs. (And then China, of all places, beat us to it.) I was deeply resentful of this trend. I know the problems with plastic bags, but my objections were twofold: (1) I'm feeding five to six people here, and I bring home a lot of groceries each week. (People make comments about my shopping cart.) A canvas bag might be fine for a French matron walking home with a baguette and hunk of cheese picturesquely slung over her shoulder, but how would I get $150 worth of groceries into the house? (2) I use the plastic bags as trash can liners, and I would rather not have to pay for something that I currently get for free. Plus, I could just imagine the fortune I would spend buying the reusable bags in the first place.

Then the ghost of President Al Gore visited me one night and asked, "What makes you so special?" So I bought two reusable bags at the grocery store and tried them out. I was surprised at how much they held. I bought four more, at $.99 each, and I've been using them ever since. Six bags are enough to hold a full week's worth of groceries, with cartons of pop and packs of toilet paper not bagged. The bags are nice because they sit squarely on the floor of the car and house, instead of flopping around like plastic bags. The handles are sturdy and don't break. They hold a ton -- in fact, when fully packed they're almost too heavy to carry. It helps to bring more bags than I need so the bagger doesn't overpack them. I learned when I checked out that I get a $.03 discount for each bag I bring, which means that people who don't bring bags are paying three cents per bag without knowing it. I figure over the course of the year the bags will pay for themselves.

The bags are made out of some sort of recycled material. It feels stiff, like nonwoven interfacing. My guess is the fabric is made out of plastic bottles or something. And they're green, which is sort of a visual pun. They fold flat, so they don't take up much room in the trunk.

Every once in a while I'll probably dash into the store and pick up something in a plastic bag, just to keep a supply around. But otherwise, I'm sold on the reusable bags. It's nice when something earth-friendly actually works better than the unfriendly item it replaces.

Note: I'm going to be focusing on house-and-garden topics for a while, with an occasional cute-kid picture thrown in for variety. If you're looking for thoughtful discussions about adoptive parenting concerns, into which I occasionally throw my two cents, visit Mimosa. 

The shoe dilemma

When the contractors refinished the wood floors in our kitchen, dining room, and entry, they left us with strict instructions to allow the finish to cure properly: No shoes on the floors for 90 days. No rugs with rubberized backs. And no high heels, ever. We received several lectures about how terrible high heels (I think they mean spike heels, not big chunky ones) are for wood and vinyl floors.

So we put a "no shoes" rule in place and put mats by the front and garage doors for shoes. I made sure everyone in the family had indoor-only shoes or slippers to wear if they wanted them.

It didn't take long for me to realize that banning shoes in the house is a sweet deal. There are far fewer fir needles being tracked into the house, which is great -- those needles are the bane of my existence because they work their way into the carpets and have to be pulled out by hand. There are no more little bits of gravel scratching the floors. The kitchen floor hasn't needed mopping, and the stairs are less grubby. You can walk around in your socks all day and never get black feet. I feel more comfortable letting kids lie on the floor to play games, especially very small nieces and nephews who crawl and scoot around. 

Even though we're at day 60 of the 90-day period, I have decided that we will use this opportunity to get the whole family into the habit of taking their shoes off in the house. When you think about the things your shoes are exposed to outside -- spit, animal waste, oil, pesticides -- this makes a lot of sense. I'm sure a lot of you have been doing it for years.   

Here's my dilemma: What do you do about guests? In Korea and Japan, everyone expects to remove their shoes. (In China, floors are generally filthy, and the solution is to keep children off the floor.) In this country, people expect to keep their shoes on. Most people can pick up on obvious cues -- if there is a shoe rack full of shoes near the front door, they know enough to ask if they need to take their shoes off. Others miss it entirely. I hate to ask people to take their shoes off; right now, I can use the refinished floors as a reason, but after the 90 days are up, it's just our preference. I know that not everyone feels comfortable walking around in bare feet or socks (especially if there are holes in the socks), and for women, sometimes the shoes are the cornerstone of their outfit, and removing them spoils the whole effect.

So on the one hand, you have all that icky stuff on the ground outside; once you get used to not having it in the house, it seems even ickier. On the other hand, you have the desire to be a gracious hostess and have your guests feel comfortable. What I'd really like is for shoelessness to become an American (Canadian, English) custom, and then we'd all know what to expect.

In the meantime, if you have a no-shoes rule, how do you handle it? Do you let your guests choose? Do you provide socks or slippers for visitors? Do you limit the rule to family? 

My precious

Unbelievably, I have more to say about decluttering. It seems as though it would be a dull subject, but we have such an emotional connection to our stuff that the question of what to keep and what to discard can excite all sorts of feelings. So I'm going to think about it a bit more before posting again.

In the meantime, I want to show off what I'm driving now. It's sleek and black and shiny. It's easy to steer, and the display has colored lights and indicators to let me know how I'm doing. It has a powerful motor, but it purrs like a kitten.

Yes, it's my new attachment kit for the central vacuum system. Isn't it a beaut? It would never have occurred to me to get a central vacuum, but the house already had one installed. The attachments were 30 years old and didn't work anymore, but the system itself was intact. The new kit was a bit of a splurge, but, as I've said before, in a four-level, 3,200-square-foot house, a good vacuum is a must. The hose is 30 feet long and has a cord at the wall end to provide electricity to the power brush unit shown in the picture. The cool thing about the power brush is that there is an indicator (at the upper left of the base) that shows when the carpet is dirty and when it is clean -- a red light means there is still dirt on the carpet, a green light means you can move on. Not only that, but there are actually three red lights, indicating different levels of dirtiness. How great is that? I love vacuuming with this beauty. It's like playing Pac-Man.

There are also floor, dusting, stairs, and crevice attachments. And the wand ratchets so you can shorten or lengthen it with the push of a button. All the vacuum noise is in the garage where the central unit is installed, and the dust stays in the garage as well, so it's better for people with allergies, like me. The dirt and grit make a very satisfying rattling sound as they rush though the hose.

I know there are other cleaning buffs out there. If you ever build a new house, or if you have a few hundred dollars just lying around, consider a central vacuum system. There are new systems that have hoses that retract into the walls, and you can get an inlet installed in the kitchen baseboard that allows you to sweep the floor toward the baseboard, pop the inlet open, and suck all the dirt up.

That must be what vacuuming is like in heaven.

The decluttering bug

Like everyone else in the blogosphere, I have a bad case of the decluttering bug. Actually, I have a chronic case -- you know I don't like clutter -- but I'm trying to be ruthless about discarding things this time around.

The current drive started when I was unpacking the kitchen supplies. Over the years we have received a lot of specialized tools as gifts from kind relatives who don't really know what we need. I asked myself the tough questions: Are we ever going to use an olive drainer? Doesn't a mesh strainer work just as well and serve other purposes besides? Do we need an ice-cube tray that creates ice cubes specially shaped to insert into water bottles, or can we just squeeze in some regular cubes (which aren't really cubes, they're more like crescents, since they're made by the freezer)?

And then there were the duplicate items that I had been keeping "just in case" we needed them. I finally had to admit that if we ever need another nutcracker, we can pick one up for $1.79 at the grocery store. And we probably don't need to keep the old flatware -- if we ever lost our heads and had 50 people over for dinner, we'd most likely have a barbecue and use plastic forks anyway.

The keeping of things "just in case" is a hard habit for me to break. For most of my life, I had very limited financial resources. I still feel as though the wolf could be at the door at any time. But a few years ago I realized the foolishness of hoarding. We had to get a storage locker in which to keep our overflow items. We aren't alone; storage lockers are a booming business. They're as plentiful around here as Starbucks. I finally figured out that for what we were paying to rent the storage locker each year, we could buy replacements for the items we were storing there. Or we could take out a second mortgage and build an addition on the house for extra storage. So I canceled the storage locker and gave away the things it held. It scares me to think of the money people are paying to store items that aren't important enough to keep at hand.

So. I kept the garlic press, though I've never used it, because I'm sure if I ever needed to press garlic it would be invaluable, but most of the other stuff got boxed up and sent to Goodwill or relatives. There is now room for all the things we really need and use in the new kitchen.

I also, after conferring with my sisters, concluded that it will never be okay to wear plaid capri pants except on the golf course, and packed up a bunch of my old clothes (I don't golf). I hope big shoulder pads don't come back into style any time soon.

Most painfully of all, I went through five large garbage sacks of stuff that I had confiscated from Ella's room when it got too messy. I work with her on putting away toys she is finished playing with before starting a new project, but if I don't stay on top of things, her room becomes impossible to manage. Plus she hoards paper and Band-Aids. Every once in a while I sweep through her room and put everything that's just lying around into a bag. I went through the bags and came out with one large bag of trash, three sacks of Goodwill donations, and a small number of items to return to her. She got back anything that she has asked about or noticed was missing. The rest is gone, and she will be none the wiser. Happy Meal toys are not meant to be around forever. I am also starting to label the storage boxes and shelves in her room in hopes that this will help her get organized.

I usually take a vanload of stuff to Goodwill twice a year or more. Where does all this stuff come from? I certainly don't know. I always have grand ideas of having a garage sale or selling things on eBay, but after a while I realize it's more trouble than it's worth and I can't fight the urge to get this junk out of my house now. I'm happy to take the tax deduction instead. (Though if anyone wants to make an offer on 130 Beanie Babies, with tags, I'll take it.)

Yesterday I loaded the cargo area and the back seat of the van with bags and boxes. They filled two big bins at the shiny new Goodwill store in town. I felt much lighter after being freed of all that dead weight. Now I just need to persuade Big A to make a run to the shiny new (yes, it really is) garbage dump in town.

I'm proud of myself, but truthfully this round of items was low-hanging fruit. My downfall is keeping things for sentimental reasons. I am reluctant to throw away anything pertaining to the children, because they have so little tangible evidence of their early history. But maybe I could take pictures of the bulky items, like dioramas made for school projects. Someday. There's no hurry. I still have room.

Creative spaces (left-brain edition)

This post is in response to a thread on Mimosa. We're sharing pictures of our creative spaces. I don't know how "creative" my work space is; you can tell by looking at it that I write nonfiction. I told you I don't like clutter.

The framed pictures are Bess's and Ella's baby pictures. I put May on the screen so she would be represented too. The "Little Little Golden Book" on the windowsill is The Little Red Hen. Story of my life. The Smarty Pants mug was a gift from Abbey. You can see just two of my four "to do" baskets. I listen to the jazz station stream over the speakers while I'm working.

You can't see it, but the window is covered with little smudge marks from the cats planting their noses there to watch the squirrels and birds play in the garden and birdbath. The cats also like to sleep on the printer. It's warm, and the top is shaped like a chaise longue.

It really is this tidy most of the time, unless the children are encroaching on my space or the cats are arguing over who gets the prime window space. I wouldn't open the desk drawers, though.

It's not easy being green

I have more kitchen cheesecake photos to show once I get them assembled. We just got a new family computer -- we've had the old one since 2000 -- and I'm transferring all the files over.

I think I've mentioned before that this is the third house we've remodeled. We have been in a constant state of remodeling for the past 16 years. The experience falls somewhere between purgatory and hell in terms of suffering. Comparisons with the toils of Sisyphus are apt. There are many reasons why we've engaged in this insanity -- a red-hot housing market that has allowed people to ask top dollar for fixer-uppers in desirable neighborhoods, our larger-than-anticipated family, a tendency to be overcautious financially, maybe a teensy bit of perfectionism on my part. Unfortunately for Big A, this is the fifth house he has remodeled, and though he is a trouper, it's time for a break. That's why we hired a contractor for this job.

I was more concerned with being "green" this time around. Certainly remodeling creates less waste than new construction. Too often in this area we have seen people buy a property for the view, tear down the existing house, and throw up a mega-mansion that stands out like a sore thumb and blocks the neighbors' views. It's a shame to see perfectly nice mid-century modern houses torn down and tossed into the landfill. I hate to see all that wonderful architecture lost.

Still, it pains me every time the pickup comes to take away our remodeling debris. We saved as much as we could, but unfortunately this house, like our previous houses, was not well maintained. The appliances were nearly 30 years old and no longer functioned. The wood in the cabinets was damaged. The counters had burn marks. In the bathrooms, the fixtures had rusted and the walls were peeling. So we had to buy new cabinets, fixtures, and appliances. (Our refrigerator was only 9 years old, but it didn't fit, and we were able to send it to my brother's in-laws, who recently lost everything in a flood.)

All the new appliances are Energy Star certified. I got a little thrill looking at the yellow EnergyGuide tag on the refrigerator and seeing the arrow at the far left of the scale. We replaced all the old windows in the house with insulated ones. We patched and refinished the oak floors instead of replacing them. The bath fixtures are designed for low water consumption. We are starting to replace the light bulbs with compact fluorescent lamps. At some point we will probably tear up much of the lawn and put in low-maintenance landscaping and perhaps a vegetable garden.

I don't know whether any of this will save us much money on our utility bills, with the exception of the new toilets (we discovered that one of the old toilets leaked when we got a $300 water bill after we moved in). But perhaps it will help reduce our carbon footprint. And, despite the nuisances of remodeling, I feel good that we have saved three houses from decay and made them into pleasant homes that three families are enjoying today.

So all the suffering was worth it. Right? That's what I keep telling myself.

Sneak peek

I've been fussing with pictures of the kitchen, trying to put together a nice gallery of photos, but since I have to bounce between two computers it's going to take a while. So here's a quick before-and-after picture to give you an idea of the overall effect.

Home is where your heart is

Our house is situated in an interesting spot. A half mile north of us and up the hill is an exclusive neighborhood of million-dollar homes, some with lake and mountain views. A half mile south of us is a road lined with trailer parks and commercial buildings. It was the proximity to the trailer parks that made our house affordable. The house itself would not be out of place in the million-dollar neighborhood (at least, it won't be after we finish remodeling). But it's just a little too close to the low-rent district.

I pass the trailer parks when I drive the girls to school. When I first discovered them, I thought...well, you know what I thought. You would have thought the same thing. No homeowner is delighted to find that there is a trailer park in the neighborhood. I speculated that the current plans to "revitalize" our town's business core might gentrify them out of existence, which was okay with me. They're not exactly pretty.

After I'd driven past the trailer park a few times, I noticed that kids lived there. Lots of kids. I'd get there behind the school bus and a dozen kids must have gotten out at that stop. These kids go to school with mine. Almost all of the kids are Hispanic, children of Mexican immigrants (some legal, some probably undocumented) who have recently moved to our area in large numbers to find work in construction.

I also noticed that the whole family -- parents, grandparents, and babies -- turned out to put the kids on the bus in the morning. And in the afternoon, there were always parents waiting when the kids got off the bus. The children would chat animatedly about their day while their moms and dads walked them home. I saw one dad put his arm around his son, listening intently to what he had to say as they turned toward home.

The trailers are old but mostly tidy. They are crammed so close together that there's no room for gardens. The kids play in the driveways between the rows of trailers. It's probably a lot of fun to have your friends and cousins so close by. They have a real community there. The 4,000-square-foot homes up the hill are so far apart on their half-acre lots. Do the kids play together on the manicured lawns? Does anyone in that neighborhood even have kids? We went trick-or-treating there on Halloween, and almost all the children going door to door had traveled up the hill from another neighborhood, drawn by the promise of better-quality treats.

Now I see that those trailers serve a purpose. Where will these families move when the town goes upscale? Already a nearby apartment complex has converted to condominiums. One of Ella's friends, who lived with his brother and single dad in the apartments, had to move because they couldn't afford to buy.

I helped out in Ella's classroom on Halloween. I talked to one little girl who lives in the trailer park. When we're on our way home from school we see her get off the bus and run toward home with her friends, laughing all the way.

"Raquel," I said, "we see you get off the bus every day. Ella waves at you."

Her face brightened. "Oh, does Ella live in a trailer?"

"No," I said, "we live down the street."

"Oh," she said, a little disappointed. Then she smiled. "I love living in a trailer."

And why shouldn't she? She's surrounded by people who love her. Love can make even a trailer feel like a palace.

I hope you're surrounded by people who love you. Thanks for sharing NaBloPoMo with me.

Terminate torment

Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied

--T. S. Eliot, "Ash Wednesday"

I like to throw a little T. S. Eliot out there from time to time. He could really turn a phrase. I love "Ash Wednesday." It was all I could do not to quote the whole poem here. "Three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree" -- that's good stuff. Anyway, this quotation captures perfectly the ambivalence we feel when a desire is satisfied. And that's where I am with my kitchen right now.

The kitchen is no more. It is a late kitchen. The much-reviled range is lying on its back in a jumble of countertops and cabinets. Ding-dong! The witch is dead! The room has been stripped to its bare bones, and, in the words of the electrical inspector, we've seen all the sin under the drywall. The contractor assures us that the kitchen will be finished by Christmas (take that with a grain of salt). This is good.

On the other hand, all cooking, eating, and homework activities are now squeezed into our 9.5- by 11-foot dining room. We have a microwave, toaster, and coffee maker. The nearest running water is on the next floor down. The refrigerator was briefly installed in the living room, until I pointed out that it was sitting where the Christmas tree goes. So now it's taking up one corner of the dining room. I won't be able to do any Christmas baking, but I'll be darned if this project gets in the way of my decorating.

Dishes must be washed in the garage utility sink. I've been trying to avoid using too much disposable stuff. I stocked up on paper plates, but we're using our regular flatware. I had intended to use our regular glasses, but last night in the confusion of getting dinner ready, I gave up and grabbed the plastic cups. We wrote our names on them with a Sharpie pen so we could reuse them. Last night I lay in bed and wondered whether I could justify the financial and environmental cost of using plastic forks and cups and throwing them away every day. (Hey, they can go in the recycling bin.) And it has only been one day.

While I'm happy to be getting a new kitchen, this part of the process is painful. Four weeks of camping. It drives me crazy. The kitchen also drove me crazy, but I was getting used to it. I finally figured out how to use the oven (turn the pan around halfway through cooking, and don't assume that the temperature is correct) and dishwasher (prewash the dishes and hope it sterilizes them). I forgot about the four boxes worth of cookware and dishes that are still sitting in the garage, unopened, because there was no room to store them. (If I haven't missed these items over the past 18 months, do I really need to keep them?)

I tell people we're remodeling the kitchen, and they chirp, "Hey! That's great! You must be so happy!" Obviously they've never remodeled a kitchen. I want a little sympathy. I want people to acknowledge the struggle, the better to appreciate the subsequent triumph.

Oh, plus we're all still sharing a bathroom because they just started on the master bath and the guest bath is only 75% finished (no shower).

I'm getting too old for this.

(Our big cat keeps burrowing under the plastic to get into the torn-up kitchen and cause trouble. I just asked, "What is her problem?" and Ella said, "She has issues with the kitchen.")

Here's T. S. Eliot again:

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitful face of hope and of despair.

I think he could totally be talking about remodeling, don't you?