Breaching The Web

We’ve been on a massive consumer binge lately, fueled by year-end bonuses, fungible Christmas gifts, and a long vacation. The highlights:

I spent parts of 4 days last week working on our very small half-bath — peeling wallpaper, painting, caulking, putting up a new mirror and choosing & installing all the little things (trash can, towels, floor mats, a towel bar, a tp holder, a hook, etc.) one needs in a bathroom. Now we just need to track down a new light fixture for that room, and it’s done — at least until some later point when we put in a pedestal sink and a tile floor. At first I wasn’t sure about the color I chose for the walls — my husband pointed out that it is the exact color of guacamole — but now that the room is coming together I really like it.

[Breaching the Web PSA: If you must hang wallpaper, for the love of all that is holy and good and right and pure in this world hang it properly! That means priming the drywall before you hang it and using wallpaper paste. Don't just slap it on bare drywall with whatever glue you have around the house, or those who come after you will curse you and your descendants with angry cries, gnashing of teeth and invocations of various gods. I'm just sayin'.]

My other big home project was reorganizing my spice rack. For most people, this probably isn’t such a big deal, but for me it is. You see, I have — and use regularly — over 50 different herbs and spices. And I have a small kitchen. This forced me to get creative. Inspired by Alton Brown, I put sticky-back velcro up on my cabinet doors, then put little bits of velcro on the tops of all my spice containers. Then I used my handy-dandy labeler to put labels on the bottom of the containers. Now all my savory seasonings are on one door, and my baking seasonings are on the other, and I have a whole empty shelf to fill. I haven’t decided what to put there yet, but I will find something.

[Why do I have so many herbs and spices? Because I use very little fat in my cooking, and when you take the fat out, you've got to find some other way to put flavor in. And it's fun.]

We also bought some things for our office — frames for pictures and a much-needed desk chair. We still need to put the pictures *in* the frames, but at least we have them. And the desk chair is sweet.

Finally, since our old crock pot died in an unfortunate accident involving mashed potatoes, a missed step and a little alcohol, we needed a new one. We got the fancy programmable one, and let me tell you it is huge and shiny. The instructions say it will work fine as long as it is half full, and last night’s trial run came out quite well. The warming function worked perfectly, and on high the food simmered beautifully. I’m going to try out the long low setting tomorrow (mmm… Chinese pork ribs. So good), but so far I’m very pleased with it. Now I just need to find a place to store such a gargantuan beast.

We also bought a few other odds and ends, and we are planning on buying a new TV in the next week or so, just as soon as we decide whether to go with HD — yesiree Bob, we are definitely doing our part for the economy.

As of right now, the FDA is requiring food manufacturers to include the amount of trans fats on nutrition lables. This is a very good thing, as trans fats raise our bad cholesterol levels and our risk of heart disease. However, the FDA has allowed food manufacturers to to assert that their product contains 0 grams of trans fats per serving, when it contains less than .5 grams per serving. Given the vagaries of how servings are defined, this is a very bad thing — it means that those of us who want to eliminate trans fats from out diets completely still need to read the ingredient lists of the food we buy.

Why can’t zero just mean zero?

Last year, I resolved to read 52 books between Christmas 2004 and Christmas 2005<. Unfortunately, I didn’t make that goal — but I did read 36 books, which isn’t half bad. But still — it’s not 52.

I’m not going to make a similar resolution this year, as I have a large sewing project that will take up most of the next few months — I need to focus on that. However, I’ll continue to keep track of the books I’ve read on my sidebar. I’ve enjoyed perusing the list.