How did I post those photos?

I am going to try ONE more time to post that photo of my spiffy shelf, before I must pack to go to our cottage for the long weekend. On this blog site, there is a place where I can click on "post image" and then find the photo in my computer and then click "post it" -- all of which I did yesterday. Don't those seem like very good directions? If only they worked. And if only I had the techie-brain that remembered how I did it before -- but I don't. And Techie Man Who Plays Sheepshead On His Lunch Hour will not want to be disturbed by such a phone call just when he has all the jacks -- or is it the queens? I'm equally talented at games, tools, and computers.

Okay -- here goes my last attempt. If you ever get to see this photo, you will notice the gorgeous shelf unit next to my plastic one. That shelf The Man Who Knows How To Use Tools built, and is where I usually show off my daughter's fabulous pottery (see www.suzannecrane.com). Now his shelf functions as storage for the wine and raisin bran (life's necessities) on which we will live for the next couple of months. Whether you get the photo or not, I'll return to post a note on Tuesday -- and then the restaurant reviews will begin in earnest on Wednesday.

Still operating on Zicam and aspirin and anxious to be
Kitchenless in Brookfield

Photo

NINE SCREWDRIVERS

I’m supposed to be at a Waukesha County Park and Planning Commission meeting, but I have a nasty sore throat (a gift from The Man Who Has Been Carrying His Own Personal Kleenex Box For Days) and decided not to infest the other Commissioners.

After ingesting Zicam and enteric-coated aspirin from my vast supply of pharmaceuticals, I felt up to continuing my kitchen dismantling. What I still needed was a small, spill-resistant surface in the sunroom on which to put coffee makers (my personal fav is my expresso maker) and other electric small appliances. Though I intend to eat as many meals out as My Man’s Wallet Will Allow Without Major Discussion, I know I won’t want to drive to Starbucks for coffee EVERY day. I went to Ace for some sheet of plastic to cover the wood-topped cart that The Man With The Tool Infested Workshop made for me. Immediately inside the door of Ace I spied a small bookshelf being marketed to kids going off to college. It was laminated fake wood. And it was cheap - as in $29. It came unassembled, but otherwise it was perfect. On my way to the cash register, there was a tiny microwave, also for $29. I bought it too, trying not to think about the 9-year-old Chinese children who probably assembled the thing while being paid 17 cents an hour. And also hoping that it actually has wires in it connected to the right stuff so it doesn’t burn down the house that I’m remodeling. (Actually it’s not ME that’s doing the remodeling, just in case I left you with that mistaken impression. It is Cabinet Werks, my neighbor Mike Whalen’s business. And for that free advertising, he’s throwing in the dishwasher. Actually not. But what a fine idea, Mike!)

Anyway, back to the shelf thing from Ace. I needed to put my appliances on the thing, but The Man With The Tools was at work. I figured I could do it myself – doncha think? I unpacked all the pieces, keeping them in nifty little piles, and looked at the instructions, which consisted of a picture. No words. Now I am a words kind of person. But the picture had arrows and stuff, so I figured it might be possible, even for the Tool-Impaired. After putting one shelf on these pole thingys that are the legs, and finding the correct screw thingys to attach them, I decided it required a pointy-top screwdriver. But that screwdriver just spun around in the hexagonal hole of the screw thingy. Not big enough, I thought. Got a bigger pointy screwdriver. Still didn’t turn. Hmmm.... Maybe this kind of hole used a straight-ended screwdriver. Got one of those. Too big. Didn’t fit in hole. Decided this was to be my LAST trip to The Man’s Workshop That Could Pass For Milwaukee Tool Company, so I brought up lots of screwdrivers. Nine of them, to be exact. And none of them worked. That’s when The Engineer Who Forgot His Lunch walked in. “Oh,” he said, “You need a Phillip wrench.” Or maybe it was Andrew. Or Simon. Anyway, some male-named wrench. And he pointed to this little bent piece of metal that was among the parts that came from China. Ah, ha! It was actually hexagonal on the ends and worked swell, even if it could have had a longer handle, if you ask me. And it could have been shown on the picture that substituted for directions. The Man took his lunch and left. I proceeded to build my shelf unit, with only a tiny bit of foul language following the smashing of a sensitive part of my female anatomy between a shelf and a leg pole. I bet you wouldn’t believe that is possible, but I am not making that up.

Too bad my four and a half year old grandson went home after a brief visit last week. In the first place, I miss him desperately, and besides that, he knows WAY more about tools than I. He can name every piece of construction equipment made, here or in China. It’s gender. I can tell you the Latin name of most plants grown around here, and my daughters at age four could rattle off breeds of horses like jockeys. But I’m not sure that today they would know the difference between a bulldozer and a front-end-loader. If there is a difference. I have no idea.

Anyway, I'll try to insert a photo of my shelf. I’m pretty proud of it. And now it’s time for more aspirin.

Next week I’ll be
Kitchenless in Brookfield

PAIN IN THE RAIN

So what’s new? It’s raining again in Brookfield. My gardens have drowned. The only flowers still making an effort to bloom in the neighborhood are the black-eyed Susans, which I have, in the past, considered too “boulevard” to plant in my yard. But when it appears that that’s going to be it for color in this season, I may have to condescend to planting some of this plebeian stuff.

Tonight I was planning to make buffalo burgers for supper. Have you ever had them? Grasch’s sells buffalo, as well as ostrich and other cool stuff. Buffalo passes The Man's Red Meat Test, while being low fat. I served buffalo burgers to him without telling him what they were, so he didn’t declare them too “Funky.” He liked them, may wonders never cease. So the issue is: do I light the grill in the rain – again? The Man Who Does Nothing With Food But Eat It does not grill, in case you wondered. I think he’ll get them pan-fried tonight. I’m getting really tired of damp buns.

As for the pain referred to in the title for today’s blather, I would have said pain-relievers, but it didn’t rhyme. This kitchen packing has spread like a contagious disease through my house. First it went to emptying boxes in the basement for their usable packing space. Then I had to empty drawers and shelves in our sunroom, to make room for raisin bran and oatmeal and packages of paper plates. We will take nourishment in that room when not dining in one of Bluemound Road’s fine establishments. Today the packing contagion spread to the bathroom, in which, while kitchenless, I will attempt to rinse the coffee maker and whatever else requires water. Thus the need for a drawer for dish soap, those scrubby thingys, sponges, kitchen towels...

It is in my bathroom that the pain relievers come into the tale. The drawer I needed housed several flavors of Benadryl and Robitussin and the Alka-Seltzer Plus tablets. And then there’s the Tylenol. If simple Tylenol were the only pain reliever, packing it up and moving it would not require at fork-lift. However I have accumulated regular Tylenol, Tylenol PM, 2 bottles of Tylenol Arthritis plus a bottle of generic acetaminophen, in addition to one bottle of Bufferin, 2 of aspirin (one enteric coated), one of Advil, and 3 of Aleve. Should a headache strike you or any of your friends or family at any time, do drop right on over.

This entire over-the-counter pharmacy was rolling around among loose cough drops in the bottom drawer in my bathroom. (The Engineer Who Is Tidier Than His Spouse does not share a bathroom with me except when company arrives and takes over mine.) Fortunately, these pills, tablets, and syrups are only used sporadically here, so I decided they needn’t take up such accessible space. After a trip to Bed Bath and Beyond for containers, the entire supply is now stored in the linen closet, between the crackers and chips and the ice cream maker. Truly. That’s what’s in my linen closet. Plus eight flashlights, coffee thermoses for the car, an electric wok, my salad spinner and an entire shelf of vases. There a few pillows and a quilt or two on the top shelf, but it’s a token. At one of my daughter’s houses, one whole linen closet shelf is filled with candles. What’s in YOUR linen closet?

Almost ready to be
Kitchenless in Brookfield

KENTUCKY FRIED CHICKEN

KFC was next restaurant in line on Bluemound Road when The Man Who Thinks This Blog Idea Is Cool, But Doesn’t Actually Read It said he’d take me out for dinner. I had just returned from a harrowing, seriously-windy drive home from Evanston, Illinois, and I’d have accepted an invitation to eat out in our driveway culvert, if it meant I wouldn’t have to think about cooking – or anything else. Well, I did think about you all.

I don’t think I have ever eaten at Kentucky Fried Chicken. I probably won’t again either. Not that the food was awful. But... Don’t you think Bluemound must have better places at which to eat? I sure hope it does.

The lines were actually fairly long when we arrived at 7 PM on a week night. The drive-through window seemed to be constantly busy as well. The help was very cheerful – and helpful to me who doesn’t know the difference between extra-crispy and original fried chicken. I asked if they had any grilled or roasted chicken. Silly me. What do you suppose the "F" in KFC stands for?

As we waited for our order, I watched the workers filling orders in the kitchen. None of them were wearing any kind of rubber gloves. Isn’t that required of a person who is handling food? Perhaps not. They were using tongs and scoops to fill orders, but they used their bare hands to put the covers on the take-out tubs. I decided to ignore this and assume they wash their hands A LOT. The kitchen was not exactly dirty, but it wasn’t as clean as my own kitchen, which, on some days, probably wouldn’t pass health inspections either. I checked out the ladies bathroom while we waited, and chose not to use it. One stall had not been flushed (not the restaurant’s fault exactly) and the other stall had no toilet paper. There were tiles missing from the wall below the sink. Okay, back to my dwindling appetite...

I tried to order what other people seemed to be ordering, assuming the regular customers would know what was the good stuff. My not-extra-crispy chicken breast still had plenty of fat-absorbing coating on it, yet the meat was surprisingly dry. My mashed potatoes bore no resemblance to having ever been a vegetable of any kind. More like gooey, white soup. The gravy could have come from any kind of meat – or none. The cole slaw was tasty, but very sweet. The Man Who Thought He’d Died and Gone To Fried-Food Heaven decided to try Teriyaki wings. The menu said he’d get 8; he got 18! Even he could not eat all of them. The wings were coated with the extra-crispy stuff, deep fried and then drowning in the sweetest sauce you can imagine. His baked beans were perhaps the best of our items, until I looked up the nutrition information on this food. No wonder they were good: the baked beans have 220 calories and 20 grams of sugar in a single order!

Having been a weight watcher in a previous life, I occasionally check out the calories I’ve consumed – when it’s too late to do anything about it. My meal had 900 calories and The Man’s had 2060, had he eaten it all. YIKES! KFC offers 8 drink choices, but only one was sugar-free, and that one had caffeine, which I’d prefer to avoid at any time after noon, so I do not find myself staring at the ceiling, counting deep-fried chicken wings at 2 AM.

KFC's fowl is not just deep fried; it is "cheap fried." My chicken breast meal, which came with a biscuit, two side dishes and a large drink, was $6.19. The Man’s Teriyaki meal was $5.99. It’s scarey to think how this factory-farmed food is being raised, if they can ship it all over the country and sell it at those prices.

Hoping for better meals to come while I am...
Kitchenless in Brookfield

JOSE'S BLUE SOMBRERO

It’s not quite September, but we needed a spot for dinner last night after chugging about the Preview of the Parade of Kitchens – er– Homes, that is. There ARE some really cool kitchens in these high-end homes in Broken Hill subdivision. The islands in these kitchens are bigger than my entire kitchen. We noticed that the living rooms are pretty small these days. So do people entertain in the kitchen? Or perhaps in the bathroom. Master bathrooms are bigger than our "master" bedroom – and I’m not exaggerating. So are the master walk-in closets. While at the Parade, we met The Neighbors With The Stunning Hibiscus In Their Garden. We decided that four of our neighborhood families could move into one of these mansions. Well, actually, four of us would have to sell our houses to afford to BUY one of these homes. We all agreed that we love our neighborhood way too much to move into a new home, even if it did have (and one Parade house did) an exercise room, a home theater, a gallery, and a flex room – in which there was a pool table. You’d never see your kids again – which I suppose isn’t always a bad thing...

Back to Jose’s Blue Sombrero at the corner of Barker and Bluemound, a location which has been called Goerke’s Corners as far back as when my not-yet-18-year-old brothers would drive from Wauwatosa to buy beer in Waukesha County. But I digress. I must learn to be more professional if I’m to be taken seriously as a restaurant critic.

The Handsome Guy I Was With Who Was Dressed In A Sportcoat and I sat outside at Jose’s to check out the al fresco ambience, even though it was a bit chilly for August in WI. We also chose to sit outside so we could converse. The decibel level throughout the seating area inside was nothing short of astonishing. No wonder people are communicating via text messages these days. Everyone is deaf. Unfortunately, the music playing inside was also blasting outside, where it competed with the roar of the Harley’s starting up from the stop lights at Goerke’s Corners. So much for ambiance.

While The Man Who, I forgot to tell you, Is Fond Of Margaritas, drank a one of those ($4.50), I ordered a glass of Sangiovese wine from Jose’s petit wine list. It was actually very nice and, for $8, the volume of the pour did more than just dampen the bottom of the wine glass.

Jose’s lengthy menu sounds Mexican enough, but the food is only nominally so. I had the seafood burritos ($12.95), which said they came with a chipotle cream sauce, but tasted like nothing but melted butter. The rice and beans were also lacking herbs or spices, or flavor, actually. The Big Beef Man I Was With had a ground beef chimichanga ($8.95), and even The Man Who Is Not Critical Of Food Made With Red Meat So Long As It Contains No Funky Ingredients, said it was "boring". Wow! Since one of my many readers requested that I review desserts, we split an order of flan. Another Neighbor And Her Date Who Is Also From The ‘Hood stopped to visit with us and shared a spoonful of flan. We all agreed it was delicious – rich and smooth, with a light caramel sauce.

May I compare a similar meal we recently had at Ruby Isle’s current Mexican restaurant, Fiesta Garibaldi? This is also a locally owned restaurant, as is Jose’s. Though Garibaldi’s red wine was pretty pathetic, the meal cost less than Jose’s and the food was far superior. They spared no crustaceans in my crab enchilada ($9.95) and The Man commented favorably on his beef burrito, both served with a nicely spiced red sauce.

My advice? Wearing earplugs, go to Jose’s for a glass of Sangiovese wine. Next time I would try Jose’s made-at-your-table guacamole. Then drive to Ruby Isle and have a real Mexican meal at Fiesta Garabaldi. You’ll be too full to have dessert that evening, but another night you might want to go out for flan at Jose’s.

RECIPES & RAFFIA

Today I took most of my spice collection to the temporary storage dump in our basement rec room. How many spice jars would you guess you have? I had 87. I stored 65 jars for future use, pitched 8-with-no-smell-left in the garbage, and kept out 14 that I might use before Sept. Of course I've packed away all my cake pans and tart pans and cookie sheets. So in what am I going to use nutmeg?

By the way, I kept the Beau Monde seasoning, since one of my many readers gave us a recipe for the stuff.

I’ve always been a recipe nut. I used to read cookbooks while soaking in the bathtub. Really. A year or two ago I did a minor sort-job and gave away 128 cookbooks. The Man Who Doesn’t Know A Grapefruit Knife From A Melon-Baller, said, "NOW what are we going to eat?" To which I replied, "Not to worry; I kept 75." Heaven knows what for; I now buy cooked chickens at Grasch’s. Is that pathetic, or what?

Anyway, I’m into sorting through the recipe files now. Will I ever make "Almond Potato Puff Casserole?" How about "Baked Chicken and Rhubarb?" YUK! I actually cut that out of a newspaper and saved it. I have recipes from my vegetarian phase and my low-fat phase and my Weight-Watchers’ phase and my South Beach phase.

Since I’m now in my ‘Drink-Wine-And-Eat-Cheese’ phase, very few recipes are required. I think I'll store the scale too.

Signed:
Almost Kitchenless in Brookfield

PS: If you know anyone in Our Fair City who needs a perfectly good, 21 cu ft white Amana refrigerator with a top freezer and ice maker ($150) and a great gas stove ($75) that makes amazing bread (if kneading is your thing), I will have them for sale after Sept 5th.

PPS: Our 4 ½ year old grandson is coming tomorrow for a couple of days. His mom, our daughter, is a potter in Virginia and has a craft show in Evanston this weekend. (You can see her gorgeous work at www.suzannecrane.com). As I have NO art or craft talent, she must have inherited her artistic ability from The Engineer Who Can Draw Anything From Buildings To Buffalos. Just to give you an idea of how craft-challenged I am, I was asked to buy some raffia for the Waukesha County Land Conservancy’s Gala Party coming up this Friday evening. I am president of this organization, but, thank goodness, not in charge of any part of this party. I had volunteered to make price tags for the centerpieces. Easy enough, I figured, as long as I have a computer and a printer. Then the Party Committee decided I should tie these tags on with raffia. Now, I’ve heard of raffia, but I had no idea what it was. Truly. I assumed it was some kind of ribbon. I went to Michael’s Craft Store, a huge place on Bluemound Road, in which I discovered miles of ribbons. I walked up and down aisles and more aisles of ribbons, reading labels, searching for something called "raffia." Finally I had to ask a clerk to please show me where the raffia is. When the clerk pointed it out to me, I declared, "Oh, THAT stuff!" Which probably gave away the fact that I was not a regular customer of this shop.