kls987's Profile

I recently discovered the joy of making up the whole recipe, but dividing it between two (or more) smaller dishes. One gets baked for dinner, and the other(s) get tossed in the freezer for the future. It's nothing novel, but it sure does make it worth the effort (of making a casserole).

Anyone have a good alternative for those of us who are caffeine-free? I have looked high and low with little success.

I agree that if you want the beige to appear less dingy, you need to remove the white. It only accentuates the beige. You don't want to hide the beige so much as let it fade into the background so you don't notice it. (OK, you might want to hide the beige, but I just don't think there's anything you can do to cover it all up.)

I had one and an old house and loved it. Perhaps some brown spray paint (specifically for plastic) would help. You could paint the metal parts too, and if you found a color that was close enough to the balcony, it might just blend in perfectly.

We just painted our bedroom this color, and we love it! It is very hard to find the right orange, so we did a lot of testing first (which I highly recommend if you want to go that route - they look so different on the wall than on the little piece of paper). The color is warmer and a bit lighter than the room used to be (a red-maroony color that I hated), and surprisingly cheerful and peaceful at the same time.

We have an undersink (with dedicated faucet) one from Sears. Warning: when you replace the filters (supposed to do it every 6 months, but we do it every year because there are only two of us), inevitably some part will break. Apparently this happens a lot with this type of filter - in researching the problem, we found a lot of complaints about it.

That said, we love the undersink, especially with its own faucet. The water is always cold and there aren't any flow issues (because it's not reverse osmosis). Hopefully we'll find another undersink model that won't break on us.

I'm growing heirloom paste tomatoes this year, started from seed (Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds). The sprouts aren't in the ground yet, but they have grown a lot and look quite strong. I chose paste tomatoes because I don't actually like tomatoes, but would like to make up a big batch of tomato sauce (and freeze it) like my parents did when I was a kid. Since no one was going to be eating them straight-up, paste seemed the way to go. We had good success last year with Early Girls (bought plants, not seeds), but thought we'd try something different this year.

What throws me off is produce going bad before I get to use it. We order our groceries online, because we're lazy, and the quality of fresh produce is terrible. All but the heartiest of fruits and veggies don't last a week, which can severely hinder a meal plan. Thank goodness farmer's market season is starting soon, and we're growing some of our own veggies this year too.

At our old house, countertop space was limited and the microwave sat out in the garage (the door to the garage was in the kitchen). At our new house, we put the microwave on a shelf in a cupboard. Needless to say, we don't use our microwave very often, which is why it has been relegated to such an inconvenient spot. Once every 1-2 weeks is about all the use it gets.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kls987/3589077929/

The jam-filled cookies at the store are usually filled with a gooey substance that seems like it used to be jam/preserves/whatever and had a substantial amount of liquid removed, thus preventing the sogginess.

Of course, I have no idea how this could be done at home (and am not really a jam/jelly person myself), but maybe someone else does.