Back to Work

Yesterday, both The Squire and I tried to settle into our old routine.

I mentioned that I had noticed a funky smell in the bathroom, which turned out to be a leak in the tank, and resultant rotten floor boards. Lovely. Just lovely. Two or three trips to Home Depot, much grunting and groaning, a helpmeet who put the wax seal on upside down, and I think it’s fixed. There is a kit to patch the leak – which is a very small one, but had been going on for quite some time – which needs to be installed, but that will be tackled tomorrow or soon after.

It has rained every day for the last two weeks, so if it is nice tomorrow, The Squire needs to hit the lawn mower; we are in no immediate danger of falling into the crawl space but we are apt to disappear behind the tall grass, so priorities need to be set.

I decided it was time to get back on the job in the kitchen. The floor is down, the cabinets are in, and now I need to get the wallpaper up.  I guess most kitchens are odd spaces and weird cuts, and you are just thankful for the few places where you can go ahead and put up a swath or two. The space between the pantry and the windows was a snap, and the short bits over the windows weren’t too bad, but papering under the cabinets is a beast. Naturally, the pattern repeat is off by about a half an inch, so there are lots of wasted bits to drive my thrifty German soul to distraction.

I am currently searching for slate blue curtains of some sort, which are remarkably hard to come by. The other color is a very pale beige and I haven’t decided if the background is white or cream or eggshell.

However, this is the part that I dread.  I easily own over fifty cookbooks, plus umpteen paperback leaflets, all of which must be unloaded and stacked – someplace. Most of them are vegetarian books, but some are vintage treasures – I have a book from Frigidaire, telling housewives how to use their new “electric icebox”, and books from both World Wars, with recipes for stretching meats and other rationed items. My grandmother could have fed Coxey’s Army with a pound of ground beef and a handful of oatmeal; I have the recipe.  You want to make Junket pudding? I have a recipe for that. I can remember my mom making us “Bags of Gold” – cubes of cheese wrapped in biscuit dough and simmered in canned tomatoes. Cheap and quick.

For a gal who enjoys cooking, and loves history, this is my inheritance.

Wish me luck!