Appliance Funny

 This is really funny to me. I just finished writing the previous post about the problems with the shelves in two of our freezers. Then I went to Facebook and the first thing I saw was this memory:

On this day in 2025, the appliance store came to pick up the non-working 2 or 3 year old fridge and bring a new one. That was very nice and very appreciated (even though we had paid for an extended warranty) but we had not had a working fridge in the kitchen for six months. The appliance store did give us a loaner which we kept in the garage. 

I read it to Vince and we laughed and the next thing on my Facebook page was this memory!

On this day four years ago, this little stove was supposed to be delivered from Lowe's. It was going to be the canning stove in the basement. But, it arrived damaged and then there was something weird . . maybe they had sold this stove to someone else and the one they tried to deliver, aside from being damaged, was not the same stove we had purchased.

By the time Vince got done having his say, this is the stove they ended up delivering.

IF we ever move from here, I'll probably leave the G.E. stove upstairs since all the appliances match but I will take this stove with us. 

All's well that ends well, right? 

Sourdough Discard Pizza Crust

Sometimes during this past week, I saw this recipe for Sourdough Discard Pizza Crust. I thought about making it but wasn't sure. 

Kinda hopping off subject here . . but Vince detests G.E. appliances. I had never cared what kind of appliances we bought until we bought this house in 2020. I read and researched and the stove I wanted was the G.E. Cafe gas stove. That took a lot of convincing but he agreed to it and since the G.E. white didn't match the old Kenmore white, we replaced all the kitchen appliances. They were 17 years old so I didn't feel like we were being extravagant to replace them. Other than the issues with the fridge, which were enough to make me feel the same way about G.E. that Vince felt, everything has been fine and I could not love my stove more so I'll say I'm 85% happy with G.E. but we will never buy the brand again. We did get a new fridge after 6 months of them trying to repair our totally non-working kitchen fridge.

We have several upright freezers. We still have one we bought in 2006 and it works fine. We brought one from Texas with us that we had purchased in about 2017 and it still works fine. Then, because we have access to buying a whole cow and a whole pig, we ended up buying two more freezers. It was probably still during the time when it was hard to get appliances (is it still?) and Vince bought two G.E. freezers. My dislike for those freezers is why I have joined Vince in committing to never buy anything with that brand again.

The shelves are so flimsy, if you put a frozen turkey or a ham on the shelves, they will bend and collapse and then I open a freezer and a frozen turkey or ham comes tumbling out onto my foot. It's happened enough that I have learned to stand way back when opening either one of those freezers. I've had upright freezers for 40+ years and have never had one with such flimsy shelves. Vince called G.E. and they offered to send him new shelves for about $100 each and we needed 8 shelves. Vince asked if they had improved the shelves. Nope, same shelves we have. Why would we pay $800+ for the shelves that aren't working.

I kept telling Vince . . I know you can figure out a way to fix this and yesterday, for about the 100th time, I wasn't paying attention, opened the freezer and one of the shelves, which did not have a turkey or a ham on it, dumped everything into the floor . . and my foot!

The biggest problem is not so much that the shelves are flimsy but they are about 1/2" too narrow and don't really fit into the little edges that they are supposed to rest on. Even the shelves that aren't bent, if they're all the way against the wall of the freezer on one side, they fall off on the other side. It's a ridiculous design.

I went straight to YouTube and found quite a few videos with fixes. Obviously, we are not the only ones having the problem. The fix that looked the easiest and quickest to me was where a guy had a hose - something left over from a kit for changing the transmission fluid in his car. Vince was gone and when he got home, I showed it to him. This morning, he went to Atwoods but what they had wasn't thick enough. He had to go down to a hardware store and found a thick walled hose, cut it into about 3" strips, split it lengthwise so it would fit over the edge of the shelves and now it's a perfect fit. I don't think there's any way these shelves are going to fall now, even if they bend a little.

OK . . back to the pizza. I had planned to make stuffed peppers for dinner today but after totally unloading two freezers, adding the hoses to the shelves, re-loading everything, I was tired and I remembered the pizza recipe using sourdough discard. I was apprehensive but too tired to care. I told Vince . . I'm going to try this recipe and if it doesn't work, we'll go pickup a pizza.

Vince doesn't like onions and jalapeno peppers so the little one is mine.

This is the easiest recipe ever! From start to finish, I had the pizza on the table in less than half an hour. I may never make a real pizza crust again.

If you click on the link to the recipe, she has a video. So glad I tried this recipe!

Chicken Pot Pie - Almost

 It seems like weeks since I've cooked. That's not how things usually work around here but I'm still having finger issues and we've had things going on every day for over a week. We've either had appointments or Vince needed things from town. 

Vince was probably beginning to wonder if he was ever going to get a home cooked meal but . . today was the day!

One of the cooking YouTube videos I like is The Farming Pastor's Wife. Yesterday I saw this video where she was making "Old Fashioned Chicken & Biscuits". That sounded so good. I went straight upstairs, grabbed chicken out of the freezer so it could defrost. I had everything I needed so today was Chicken & Biscuits and, while there's not much healthy about it and yes, I used canned soups, it was so delicious.

I made my regular homemade biscuits and they are so delicious!

I divided up the chicken mix into two containers for the freezer and enough for one serving that Vince can take out one day when I'm not here. Whatever biscuits we don't use, I'll use to make strawberry shortcake with the strawberry sauce I canned.

Today I also made a blackberry cobbler . . and breakfast so I spent most of the day in the kitchen.

Still not stitching much at all until the finger is better.

If I can get Vince to help peel potatoes tomorrow, I'm going to can some of the potatoes from the garden.

Otherwise . . not much newsworthy going on around here.

Last Night's Storm

  Today I'm feeling very blessed. First, I'm very thankful I didn't know how bad the storm was as it was happening last night. We knew we might have severe storms, including a chance of a tornado. We began watching Ryan Hall early in the evening and it seemed the worst of the weather was going to stay south of us in the area around and west of Bentonville, AR and north of us west and into Kansas City. We pretty much let our guard down. Ryan Hall was still on and about 11:00 p.m., he started mentioning Joplin. My phone started going off with alerts from the local weatherman - get to your safe room! The weather radio was going off. Then Vince said "I hear the tornado sirens!" I can't hear them at all from inside the house but Vince can. I know - they're not meant to be heard inside the house. Funny because Vince never hears me when I ask him to do things but he can hear the sirens and I can't!   <G>

I was saying we should go into the safe room, then the electricity went off. Vince said he was NOT going to the safe room. We were already in the basement. I took a battery operated lantern and went and took a shower. I figured I'd just go to bed but by the time I got out of the shower, our power was back on but it was on and off - on just long enough for the internet to reconnect, get the TV on . . then electricity was off again. That happened probably 8 times over the next hour so we went to bed. The storm appeared to be over by then and we did hear that tornado sirens are activated when winds are more than 80 (or was it 85?) mph so it wasn't a tornado in the area that caused them to go off. Now we know we can have sirens without an actual tornado but if winds are 80 or 85 mph, it's probably a good idea to get in the safe room anyway.

This morning I went out expecting to see fence panels missing, trees down, but nothing! I figured the storms weren't that bad and then I looked at Facebook and the news. Oh, my . . I think for half of Joplin, Carthage and the surrounding area - so many are without power and will be for days. Crews have come in from other places to help but lots of power poles have to be replaced; lots of trees on lines and lots of downed lines.

There are so many people in our area with electricity right now. When I walk outside, I hear quite a few generators running. 

We don't have any trees down. We don't have any huge limbs down. One neighbor has quite a few big limbs down and one landed on their fence.  One friend down the road lost four big trees.

The church near us didn't have services this morning because they had flooding; I heard some of the stores in the mall have water in them.

A tornado would have been worse but this was quite a storm and I'm so thankful we didn't have damages.

Stitching, Gardening, Finger Update

Not much around here is newsworthy these days but I wanted to check in.

We'll start with the finger. I am still not 100% convinced that it's gout but I guess time will tell. There is much less pain but there is still pain and swelling and still very sore. We're into the 4th week so I'm sure I don't have to tell you how ready I am for this finger to get back to a point where I can write, type, stitch, and lots of other things without pain. My biggest complaint is that I have lost so much strength in my right hand mainly because I can't grip anything. There are lots worse problems that I could have and I remind myself of that a million times a day so I am not complaining (or I'm trying not to complain) but . . I just want it to go away!

On the garden front . . this evening (Wednesday) after I got home from a day of stitching with Debbie, I pulled out the garlic. I think there's upwards of 150 bulbs of garlic. I would like to have left it in the ground another week or so. It's been weird. The top was dying and the bottom leaves were not dying. I've always pulled it when the bottom third or so leaves were brown but that wasn't happening this year. I think I'm going to find that it would have benefited from another week or so in the ground but if I don't get my okra planted, it's going to be too late to get as much okra as we need for the year. If I had to choose between better garlic or more okra, I vote for more okra so the garlic is out. The okra seeds are soaking and I will plant them tomorrow. 

This evening I dug a few potatoes for tomorrow's dinner, picked four tomatoes and several yellow zucchini. I'm getting lots of peppers. My favorite peppers will probably always be the Giant Marconi but I'm loving snacking on the Bishop's Crown peppers when I'm out working in the garden.

I think I'm supposed to let them get red and they may be much hotter then but Vince and I have both been eating them while outside working.

I don't think it's going to be a good year for the tomatoes. It was so late when I was able to plant them and we're already having temps in the upper 90's and lows in the mid-70's. We are still having a fair amount of rain but I think those temps are not working in my favor with the tomatoes.

The best garden news is that we seem to have control of the squash bugs. I planted lots of mint and basil and fennel and dill - every strong smelling thing I could plant . . and wedged a squash or two in the middle of it all so almost every bed, tub and bucket had at least one squash plant in it. I also have marigolds and other plants that were said to deter insects. So far, I've found squash bug eggs on three leaves and killed two bugs. That's kind of a miracle but . . there's still a long way to go with the squash bug season. I've also been using lots of food grade D.E. out there and Vince came up with a possible solution which I'll talk about more once I know for sure how well it works.

On the stitching news, I am not getting much done. Out of the last 7 days, I've had two stitching days with Debbie and those are the only days I've stitched. Mostly it's because of the finger so I'm hoping very soon I can get back to stitching and have something to share.

Poor Man's Crockpot Beef Ragu

 Chad made this Poor Man's Crockpot Beef Ragu last week and he was telling me how good it was. I made it yesterday for today and it really is good.

The best part: Ever since I met Vince, over 30 year ago, he's told me that every Sunday they ate meatballs and sauce. Apparently they saved the leftover meat during the week - roast beef, steak, pork - whatever, and that went into the sauce. I've tried all kinds of recipes and nothing was ever close to what his dad made. It's kinda hard when I never even tasted it and Vince isn't 100% sure if he even remembers it after all these years.

So . . I made this recipe.

Chad was cooking his in the Instant Pot so he made a few changes.

I made a few changes even though I cooked mine in the crockpot.

1. I had pork . . I call it backbone but I think everyone else calls it some kind of boneless ribs. I cut that into good sized chunks, seasoned it and browned it in beef tallow on the stove. I used this because it was in my fridge and needed to be cooked and my chuck roast was on the smaller side.

2. I also cut the chuck roast into chunks, seasoned it and browned it.

3. I had a bit of ground beef left over from yesterday's grilled hamburgers. Our ground meat is in 1-1/2 pound packages so I usually make hamburgers for us and then use the rest for a meatloaf. Because I'll be gone a couple of days next week, I made extra burgers for Vince to have so I probably had about 1/2 pound of ground beef left. I browned it and added it to the crockpot.

4. I didn't have red chili peppers so I chopped a couple of jalapeno peppers and sauteed them along with the celery in onion in the leftover drippings from Browning the meat.

5. Since I was cooking it yesterday for today, I cooked it (crockpot) on high for 6 hours, then let it all cool, put the whole crockpot container in the fridge overnight, then scooped off as much of the hardened fat at the top, put it back on low and cooked it for several more hours so it would be ready for lunch today.

6. This morning I took it out of the fridge, scooped out all the hardened fat, put it back in the crock pot for about 6 more hours on high. I did add a bit of water.

Before it was done, I decided this would be a good day to make egg pasta so I made that.

I ended up with two nests on two trays for the freezer, and plenty of pasta for us for our meal.

The first bite Vince took, he said "This is as close as any sauce has come to tasting like I remember my dad's sauce tasting!" I was so happy to hear that. I had not been trying to make his dad's sauce and accidentally did it.

Hopefully I can repeat this . . just maybe not every Sunday!

A Little Italian Cream Cake

 Making bread is fun for me. I don't mind making pies but I love eating pies so I gladly make those. I will occasionally make cookies but cakes . . I do not like making cakes. I don't like making icing and I don't like putting it on the cake. So, I rarely make cakes.

There's a lady in a neighboring town and I've seen her cakes on Facebook. She has one that 5 or 6" round and I ordered one - an Italian Cream Cake.

Vince was a little frustrated with me. They are not cheap but neither are the ingredients to make a cake like that and I'm not going to make it and I wanted it so . . what's a girl to do? Vince is perfectly happy with the marked down, past the best buy date cakes from Walmart.

He ended up saying it was probably the best cake he's ever had. We each had one small slice. I saved two slices for tomorrow, sliced the rest and wrapped it - two slices per package wrapped in plastic wrap and then all stuck in a ziplock bag and put it into the freezer. Counting what we had today, what we'll have tomorrow and enough for us each to have a slice three more times, that's 10 servings of cake. 

I think even Vince will agree that it wasn't a bad deal. I may order one for Thanksgiving - a carrot cake! We won't get them often - neither of us needs that much cake but that Italian Cream Cake was so delicious!