what the internets don't teach u about disposals

Just before I left to meet Mr. Reluctant in Utah for my camping trip, my garbage disposal suddenly stopped working. Being alone and mechanically inept, I searched for friends to fix it in the few hours I had before my flight took off. No such luck. I then turned to the internet, a screwdriver, and trepidation. I hit the reset button repeatedly, turned off the breaker, removed particles of broken china and pieces of bok choy, fiddled with the chopper and the shaft, hit the reset button a few more times, switched on and off the breaker again, just in case, and cursed it. Still nothing. So I finished canning my brandied cherries and left. It sat, broken and pregnant with a moldering cherry, for the week.

As I've mentioned before, I have the best neighbor in the world. He's a commercial electrician by trade, a handyman and a (mostly) organic gardener. He came over yesterday and took a look at the disposal. Turns out the internet told me everything I needed to know about the mechanics of the thing, but not the electrical system. A small panel underneath the device revealed that one of the wires had been shaken loose. That was it. He rehooked the wires and we saved a hundred bucks.

a berry happy july 4

The day the lonesome can. This is the closest you'll ever see me flag-waving, so enjoy!

Mr. Reluctant and I chose Independence Day 1998 to become officially husband and wife. We liked the irony. Now, nine years later, we're spending the day apart for the first time ever, I think. Even when we lived in different states (for three years), we were always together in the beginning of July. So I slave over a hot stove, on a hot day, turning berries into magic. There are worse things, I suppose.

Next year my raspberries will be, with all good luck, fecund. This year, I had to go to the farm stand to buy them. Oregon's Willamette Valley, where I am very pleased to say I live, is a huge berry-producing area. We are most proud of the Marionberry, which is a huge blackberry and not to be confused with Marion Barry, but I love the Boysenberry the most. Boysenberries are a cross between a blackberry, a red raspberry, and a Loganberry (itself a cross between the first two). They are reddish-purple and plump, and have a particular haunting, tart edge to the blackberry flavor. Needless to say, they make delicious jam. If you are ever in Oregon, be sure to find a place to taste our varieties of blackberry jam: Marionberry, Evergreen blackberry, wild (Himalayan) blackberry, Ollalieberry, and Boysenberry.

Although I've made blackberry jam and have eaten Boysenberries off the vine in Michigan (we had them at our house growing up), I've never been lucky enough to find a flat at a farm stand. Until now! YUM! I added a bit of my homemade blueberry liqueur, and used less sugar than usual (and Pomona pectin), and put up a big stock of Blue Boysenberry Jam and Hungarian Kisses Raspberry Jam (with Hungarian apricot liqueur).

And I did it all without an operational hood fan and no ventilation in the stove area on a 90-degree day. Now if that isn't hard core, I don't know what is. Let the freedom to do dumb things in the heat ring.

hell's kitchen

OK, compared to some other kitchens I've seen, it's not really hell's kitchen, but it has been a bummer because of the poor finish work that needed to be addressed before I painted the whole thing. It's come a long way (see last picture with the horrible apple wallpaper border), but there's still miles to go before I sleep.

I had been really dragging my heels. My mom came to visit and lit the proverbial fire under me. I'm amazed by her energy. She not only spent hours digging caulk out of the crack between the counter and the wall (which had clearly been applied with a rusty spoon), she TSPd the ceiling, mudded holes and messed-up parts of the walls, and recaulked the new(ish) kitchen sink, which the plumber had done with clear caulk over a dirty counter (UGH!).

You can see her powerful cleaning action in the picture of the sponge in motion. She can tackle soy sauce explosions and grease on the ceiling like it's no one's business.

The paint colors I'm using in the kitchen are -- as they are in the rest of the house -- Woolskein and Dover White, in Bath Paint (for scrubbitude) by Sherwin Williams.

We still need to work on painting the rest of the room, and doing something with the frustrating window sitch, like ripping the whole damn thing out. Behind that weird panel just above the sink is wooden ventilation slats (louvers? I have no idea how to spell that) which were covered oh-so-elegantly with a piece of plywood.

Isn't that just the prettiest sink caulking job in the whole world? If you remember, we replaced the utilitarian stainless steel sink with uber-heavy enameled cast iron one the plumber "found" for us, via a client who upgraded to who-knows-what because of her new granite counters.

THANKS, MOM!

lookee what I got

My mom came in from Michigan, and all I got was this color wheel. And it ROCKS! I now have the power of Sherwin-Williams at my fingertips. We're going to work on the menacing kitchen walls. I'm pretty excited about it all.

contractors overcharging

We were recently surprised and irritated to receive a bill for $300 to bring our gas line up through the floor from the T under the house about 6 feet away from the stove. The contractor, who was recommended by our plumber, came over for an estimate. He tried to tell me it could be up to $500 for the job if the gas T was far away, and that it would need himself and another man, each at $60 an hour. I told him that the inspector indicated the gas T was close and it shouldn't be that complicated of a job. I OK'd the two men and made an appointment.

He shows up with two additional men, not one, and they install the gas line in an hour. I'm not sure how licenses in gas appliance contracting work, but he seemed to be there solely in a supervisory role, and the two younger men (subcontractors, I later find out) do all the work. I figure one of them is an apprentice and don't say anything, since apprentices very frequently show up with contractors and I've never yet had them charge me.

A couple days later, I get a bill for $300, with no breakdown. I call and ask. In a series of several calls in which I express my surprise at having to pay for the third man and such a high price for parts when I was led to believe the labor was the major cost, he provides me an oral breakdown of the bill. He tells me that he charged $60 for his labor, $15 for a gas cock, $25 for the flex connect above the floor, and $17 for the floor flange. The subcontractors charged $123 for their labor (charging $61.50 each?) and $60 for parts. He said they didn't specify what their parts were, but it sounded reasonable to him to charge $60 for line under the house and brass fittings.

Sears charged me $8 for the flex connect that came with the stove, and since he also charged me for the same part at $25, I am suspicious of all the charges.

This angers me especially because our plumber did great work and we were counting on his referral. We were happy to give him a big chunk of change for his work, because he did a fine job and worked the entire time he was here and watched the clock and provided us with a list of parts he used and their cost. We don't mind a slight markup on parts -- that's the cost of having a contractor do business.

We do mind a lack of transparency in billing and taking advantage of customers.

I got the contractor to remove the $25 from the bill and am going to call the plumber and let them know what happened with their referral. At this point, I think we're just going to pay the rest and make sure other people know not to use this business.

I've decided I want this stove. I probably won't get it, because we have no money right now and there are cheaper models that would work just as well. For example, a warming drawer? Handy, but highly not necessary. We live a streamlined life. We are academics, and I'm still in graduate school, so we really can't afford such luxuries as a warming drawer. Plus, it's one more thing to break down. Furthermore, we need to get $omeone to hook up the ga$ line under the hou$e AND vent the $tove, since the crapta$tic "vent" we had in the kitchen ceiling wa$ permanently di$connected when the electrician$ changed the outlet$. Are you $eeing the $ubliminal me$$age here?

It's way too expensive. But I want it! *stamps feet*

In that perfect world where I can pick out what I want and have it arrive at my doorstep the next day, I would still have qualms about the stainless steel finish on my new stove. I posted my profound thoughts about black appliances a month or so ago, and said we were leaning toward white. The problem I did not realize at the time was that our entire kitchen is currently white (why? WHY??), and it would make white appliances sink into a sea of white. See the white cast iron sink in the picture of our kitchen?

No? Well, that's what would happen with white appliances. Poof.

Consumer trends say to go with stainless for resale value. I'm afraid, though, that on top of the cleaning issues with stainless, stainless may become the next avocado green. Will people be turned off by the industrial, smeary look in a few short years?

Image of canisters courtesy of Cyber Attic.