It's our birthday present, and we likes it very much

Yep, I'm quite pleased. Lindz gave me the Seiko Orange Monster for my birthday. It's preciousssssss.......

Concrete Board

The bathoom smells like a room now, as opposed to a musty cave.


We need to find a vanity.

Bathroom Floor

My inlaws gave me an extra heapin' helpin' of construction aid this weekend. Lindz had chiseled out the granite on the floor, but concrete board remained under that. Her parents unleashed the full fury of a couple who enjoy home projects and were recently rejuvenated by an Alaskan cruise. They busted out the old concrete board like a couple of game show contestants who have been put in a room with money nailed to the floor.

Next, we removed the toilet (always enjoyable). The flooring under and behind it had been rotted by a water leak that had occurred long ago. It had been fixed the old fashioned way: covered up with more boards and crap. We ripped out the offending boards:

We got a big piece of 3/4" plywood and made some cuts for the toilet and shower drain. The floor is now stronger than it has been in decades:

At this point in the project, we reached the turning point from demolition to construction. Everything old and undesirable is gone, and we have begun adding new material.

Peanut Butter and Chocolate Chip Sandwich

I made it with the bread I baked earlier today. I warmed it on a cast iron griddle, and I posed it beside some Jamaican rum on the rocks and On Food and Cooking, the Science and Lore of the Kitchen, by Harold McGee (open to the page about peanut butter).
Since it's on the internet, everyone is free to view this. But it's for my sister, and she'll know it as soon as she sees it.

Got Crap?

Lindsey's aunt has moved recently. She was kind enough to drop by with three boxes of old stuff. It was actually pretty interesting to me, given my nostalgic bent. Lindz was quite annoyed at her aunt's lack of regard for our time and any plans we might have. The phone call began with "I'll be by in about an hour with some stuff. Some of it's family stuff like silver; some of it's kitchen stuff." Hmm. Super. Anyway, it was interesting. We were the proud recipients of several silver platters (age and value unknown), an old aluminum chafing dish set, a couple of iron skillets, some old glass bowls and a stuffed cactus. Here it is:

What, I might ask, do we need with a stuffed cactus? Now, a macrame owl for the wall, that would be desirable. But a cactus?

And how about a bunch of old, stale spices? Among these items was some 1978 meat tenderizer. I can safely say that our household had been lacking that.

You'll also notice not one, but two bottles of Angostura Bitters there. In addition to the fact that we've already got one, I found it interesting that one of the two bottles we received yesterday seems to have been manufactured before the days of tamper-evident packaging. My sister-in-law is pregnant right now. That child, even blessed with a centenarian lifespan, will not outlive our supply of bitters. There's some alum in that array of items, too. I had never seen that stuff except in old Tom & Jerry cartoons.

Here's where my nerdy kitchen interest seized control of me. Among the boxes of stuff was an old Pyrex casserole dish. It's on the left. The dish on the right is a Pyrex dish which I purchased two or three years ago at the most.

I'm curious about how old the one on the left is. Notice the tighter corners and different handle styling on the ends. And take a look at the writing on the bottom. It mentions microwaves, so it can't be too many decades old:

And this is the font on the newer dish (it's backwards because they reverse it for legibility when viewed from the top down):

There was a Pyrex bowl that might be of the same vintage. I intend to use them. The stuff lasts for ever, and it works great.

And here's a funky brass bottle opener, posing next to a loaf of bread I baked this morning:

I like the bottle opener. Not surprisingly, however, we, um, didn't exactly keep everything.