Twice baked cake metaphor

Yesterday was a couple of hours of two neighbors with me at the condo, with one step back.  After much work, draining washer hoses, shutting off water, reattaching hoses, attempting and failing to remove old shutoff, danger of breaking the fitting solder, G tried just replacing the head, the turning bit.

And found the replacements are too big. This is the culprit part holding up the whole show.

The gray bits are where it broke. The tiny screw you see in that housing, that whole thing is way too small for any available replacement in home Depot or Lowe's. He tried several of them in the course of other jobs he was doing, for his daughter and himself. The one he brought wouldn't seat in the shutoff. Too big. Hi

No point in ordering a dryer when there is no functioning washer. So unless we can find this exact size, I will have to spend $$ on a plumber, and maybe have a bigger replacement job than we'd expected. Fortunately my tenant can do laundry at his mother's house.

The outlet is now replaced, only have to get a new face plate, easy job, I hope. Electric 1, plumbing 0. Team Gary, Jackie, Handsome Son, Boud 0.

So after an afternoon of anxiety in case anything dramatic happened with the water, this is an apartment with no rear access to any plumbing, because of other apartments backing onto it, we went home, all attempts tried and failed. 

This is when I seriously regret owning a second property. But the work of cleaning and fixing for sale gives me pause. HS not your model housekeeper. Not unlike his late Dad in that, in fact.  He simply doesn't notice.

So, home again yesterday, HS expected this afternoon to do, yes, laundry, I needed a bit of something to go with a pot of tea for today. 

Thought I'd try a new recipe, Olive Oil cake.

It looked fine, appeared to be baked nicely, skewer came out clean. 

And it so wasn't. I tried a slice. Very heavy. Tried toasting a slice for breakfast. Hm.

Then I put the whole thing back into a 350° oven this morning for 20 minutes. Marginal improvement. The olive oil quantity may have been a typo. The whole thing may have been an idea-o.

And it occurs to me that this twice baked cake, still not winning the roses, Kentucky Derby Day yesterday, is a metaphor for my life at the moment. 

Doing my best here, not getting much in the way of results, anxiety galore.  

This too shall pass. I hope it won't be replaced by some New Awful Thing, is all.

I definitely don't plan on making that cake again, anyway. That's one thing I can do.

May Day,asparagus part two, condo part 1,354

Yesterday was mostly about asparagus and stitching up the Mitered Square jacket in knitting group.

We will draw a veil over the stitching. I was chatting and stitched a sleeve square to the back by accident. Had to unpick. Onward.

The asparagus was more successful. 

First a steamed plate of spears, with Irish butter and lemon juice sauce. Nothing else needed. Springtime on a plate.

Then a pot of cream of asparagus and dandelion greens soup. Spring tonic.

Just a bit of Old Bay, not enough to show. The flavor here is delicate. I added in the leftover lemon butter sauce, too. 

Ahead of the game in the food department.

Still very much in the good fight on the plumbing and electrical front. Friend finally managed to find a shutoff he hopes will fit, and two possible electric outlet parts, different sizes. 

So this afternoon fitted into his busy schedule, is yet another meeting at the condo to see if we can get the washer working st least. If all goes well, I can order the dryer. 

We're not yet any further on than before. The last meeting was just to let him see the shutoff to determine if it's soldered or not in place. Evidently not, so he can try replacing it and save me a big plumber's bill.

My doctor also, speaking of parts, noticed a little something and wants a special mammogram and ultrasound. I've scheduled that for earliest possible, week after next. At that point all may be changed anyway, and possibly the whole condo issue may seem comparatively trivial. We'll see. Good vibes please.

White Rabbits and May Day!

I'm old, but evidently haven't made the proper application for my porch rocker

We've had a few exciting days, in the landlady community, by which I mean me and the tiny rental condo where there's Always something.

As you know, I've been quoted a wildly expensive dryer for the condo, and a wildly expensive installation fee for removing the old wall mounted one and stacking the new one.  No longer is installation part of the price. It's a separate career path now.

So far so, if not good, at least okay.  Then friend came over to see the outlet that the old dryer fried when it died.  And concluded that it looks bad, burned, etc., but in fact is sound and perfectly safe now that the sparking dryer is not plugged in.  We tried plugging in the washing machine, no problems. But he would still replace it for me.

He then went to find new bits for the outlet just to make it look better, and found that Home Depot, in the place on the shelf, where they would have had them, had a space, and nobody knew if or when they would restock.  The supply chain has a lot of broken links these days.  

So he came back and said, never mind, I'll try again, meanwhile I'll leave my current tester thing here, and I'll use it when I come over after I get the doings.  After he and I both left, Handsome Son thought good, now I can continue loading the washer and get my laundry done.

Next morning he texts me to say, um, did anything happen to the valves and knobs last night?  This is very characteristic, that when he's stressed he hits on fairly obscure terms to describe a situation. Turns out he meant the shutoff, which was now in the usual off position, he does this as a safety precaution (advisable for everyone to shut the washer shutoffs when it's not in use, as you would know if you'd ever had a hose burst unexpectedly and an instant serious flood under way, which I have, in that very, upstairs, condo) where was I, oh yes.  Then he said he'd tried to turn it on as usual.  And the shutoff had come off in his hand.

Now I know this can happen, flimsy plastic stuff, I've done it myself.  The good news was that it was broken in the off position.  I've had the experience, in this  townhouse, of a shutoff in an upstairs bathroom breaking off in the on position.  

This resulted in a Three Stooges type scene, water following the line of least resistance, the electrical channel, through the ceiling, and filling the dining room chandelier with water before I could hurtle down the stairs to the whole house shutoff.  Modern building gives you a lot of plumbing experience.  I think the builders and plumbers are hand in wrench, if you ask me.

So anyway, I said well can you just do the laundry with whichever shutoff works, cold, hot, whatever? I only use one,  ever, for my machine.  Whereupon he breaks it to me that this fancy machine I installed there, the only one that fitted in the space, is so high tech that it will not fill unless both hoses are engaged and supplied with water, even if you're only using one of them.  Oh.

So he ended up spending his day off bring his laundry over here, doing the lot, and we had the last of the plum torte and tea. That part was good. The torte went over great.  Then I had him to a small job of chucking for me from the patio, rotted wooden chair needed to go.  And the next door neighbors were out, potting up seedlings and labeling and generally going at it with the fervor of the first warm day.

Then followed one of those characteristic neighborhood conversations, which intertwined plumbing questions and answers with gardening questions and answers. Friend was the plumbing answerer, I was the gardening answerer. Other friend was the commiserator about the cost of every little plumbing job.  Son was valiantly trying to distentangle the plumbing thread since that was the one that interested him. It was a wholly antiphonal experience, very funny, and probably unintelligible to anyone not from around this street.

So friend said he would go over today, not wanting to waste the sunshine yesterday, since it was to rain.  I was out all morning, getting my Annual Wellness Check, is what Medicare has started calling it, complete with new forms to fill out. Sounds like an HVAC idea.  Anyway, he would come in the afternoon with me to the condo while Handsome Son was at work.

That was before his own life got incredibly even more confused with various real estate lawyers and daughters and all kinds of things suddenly totally tying him up on the phone all the afternoon. By the time he was free, I was about to be in several meetings.  So he figured HS was home, he would go over there and just get in and check the shutoff to buy the right one for me. Never occurred to either of us to give him the key.

But HS was out food shopping, so there was a whole round robin of texts, where are you now, can I get in, no, hold the fort I'll be there, but I'm not there I'm in meetings online at my house, etc etc etc.  Finally, later in the evening, they landed.  And now Gary knows what to buy and will do so, tomorrow, or maybe Saturday. Joy, it's not one of the welded on shutoffs that only a plumber can repair. Then we'll know if the machine only needed that adjustment or if something more ominous is at work. 

I took a brief rest before my planned meeting roster started up, all good stuff I'd been waiting for.  One from Princeton U. Art Museum on Chinese bronzes of the Qin or maybe Han dynasty, that was the research, anyway, 2,000 years ago, a bit too centered on the construction of the works for this artist's taste, looking more for the history, but they're excellent researchers anyway.

And there was another Zoom, on the White House gardens under various presidents, which would have been much better if the presenter's voice had not been so muffled as she peered down at her keyboard, that it was almost impossible to decipher.  She was lovely and so were the photographs, though.  I especially like the sheep introduced to mow the grass during WW1.  No pix, since my computer was in breakdown mode, and I was busy just trying to access.  And you've probably seen pix of the White House gardens before, I rationalize.

Along the lines of things yesterday that could have been a bit better, but eventually improved, here's rigatoni with a cream mushroom and scallion sauce.  Which was okay, plenty of grated parmigian, good milk, excellent mushrooms.  But in the end I found I really like rigatoni best smothered in tomato stuff.

So the next day I did so.  Got the container of tomato/sausage sauce from the freezer and improved this dish quite a bit, a good rescue.  Rigatoni needs a lot more sauce than the original recipe offered, is the main thing.

However today, a fraught day, what with the physical this morning, complete with being hurled from here to yon getting every part of my bod counted and assessed and stuck with needles and sensors, and then the excitement of the afternoon, I thought I needed a treat.

Which see:

Medjool dates, pitted and stuffed with yogurt cheese.  Three is plenty, these things are filling.

And, just to show there's hope everywhere, here's the base of the recent Misfits romaine lettuce head, started in water, and leafing out nicely. Two days.  So I might have a bit of lettuce before the next Misfits box arrives.

Processing of various kinds

I got a quote for a dryer for the condo. Twice as much as I'd expected. Installation will be another chunk. I think I'll go with it, though, since this guy has never steered me wrong, with several appliances. Sigh. I buy appliances so rarely it's always a shock to see the price.

I'm about to become a statistic, someone whose relief check, and some, was converted into a long needed appliance. Good for the economy. And my tenant has been without a dryer since March 2020, in a place with no outside drying possible.  He's been very patient about it.

In turn though, it may mean that another thing I wanted to do for the condo, a new mantel to replace my 25 year old diy one which finally fell off the wall, goes on hold. We'll see. I was thinking of getting my craftsman friend to make and install one like mine in the townhouse. 

It lifts the tone of the place.

Today we're recaulking  the bathtub over there, plumbers wanting incredible $$ amounts to do it.  It seems as if the condo is getting all the focus at the moment.

Plus there's a special HOA assessment since this year's snow removal far exceeded the budget. Because previous years hadn't been so snowy, it was a bit optimistic. So I'll have to write yet another check for this tiny condo.

When I lived there, my downstairs neighbor, who had all kinds of problems, dryer fire, swarm of bees, flood, commented "this place is the size of a shoebox, and there's still always something!"

Then, back at home, there's my little Oskar food processor which I was given about twenty years ago by a friend emptying her aged parent's house. She already had one, and gave me the one her dad had for many years. I rarely use it, usually find it's not much trouble to use a knife, though it's a sturdy old item, well made.

But yesterday I was a bit tired, and after washing and chopping a lot of Misfits items, especially ginger, which is a real bother to peel and dice.

I got distracted by the ginger and thought I'd start  bit of it as a houseplant, with a possible long-term hope of harvesting a bit. Since this is organic it won't have been treated to stop sprouting. I've been wanting to do this for a while. 

I ordered plenty this time, so I could pick a section with little growing eyes and plant that. 

The ginger we eat is a rhizome, like iris, and is planted similarly, very shallowly. It grows sideways and sends up foliage on the way. It's strictly tropical so may need more heat for growth of the rhizome  than our summer will offer. I'll put it outside once the weather warms up. Meanwhile I'll watch with interest to see if it starts.

After that I peeled and diced and froze the rest of it.

Then I thought I'd drag out Oskar for the carrots. They were long and slender and I needed to shred them. I thought I'd spare my knuckles,  and go the high tech route.

First I had to find the moving parts, study the booklet to remember how to proceed, and translate the booklet (translated from the German, I think) into usable English.

There are two options, two different food containers, one for slicing and shredding, one for reducing to smithereens. I thought I'd try the shredding option. 

All set up, chute pointing at the bowl, vivid past memories of missing the bowl and  chuting fragments at high speed all over me and the floor. Oskar is small but powerful. 

Anyway all set, everything correctly in place, and I couldn't get it to start. I couldn't push hard enough to engage the start mechanism. 

This involves turning the bit holding the food through a counter clockwise half circle and into a slot with some force. I remember this was stiff last time. 

That bit sticking up is a pusher you use to keep the food moving into the blades. It's not part of making it run. But it needs to be ready there on the offchance you manage to start O.

Soooo I decided on the smithereen option instead, and did get that to work. A bit finer shreds than I wanted, but at this point, I was past arguing. 

I now have several cups of rainbow carrots shredded together, looking very pretty, for carrot cake, salad and maybe the leftovers in soup.

Oskar and I declared a draw. And his various parts are all washed and back on the shelf, the counters are all wiped, and the floor swept, and the carrot shreds wiped off my glasses. 

I have a Donna Leon ready as first aid, reading style