chowmama
chowmama's JournalAnybody know how to reset a Maytag dishwasher?
DH thought he'd help out, so he wanted to run the dishwasher while I was away. Unfortunately, he forgot which dishwasher soap to use and used Dawn liquid. I came home to find it beeping away (he couldn't hear it) and suds on the floor.
The error message is F8E4, blocked drain. It beeps incessantly; if I hit Cancel to stop it, it stops briefly and has a 2 second ability to drain. I wiped out everything I could reach and started pouring water into it - just enough to not quite threaten the floor. Hit the 2 second drain. Over and over. It drains like a champ now, but won't let me do anything else because the error message hasn't been cancelled yet.
I unplugged it for 1 minute to reboot. I unplugged it for 5 minutes to reboot. I tried again for a half hour. It's successfully drained about 5 gallons of water now, total, with no problem (over a number of batches). THERE IS NO BLOCKED DRAIN,
It's new and under warranty, so it won't cost us a dime in the long run. But I just hate to wait several days to have somebody in to hit just the right buttons to get the error message to stop so I can run a soapless cycle. This is stupid.
Anyway, it's unplugged now, so I don't have to murder it. I guess I'm doing them by hand in the morning. But I really don't want to call somebody all the way over to come do what'll be under 60 seconds of work.
Stocking the pantry this weekend
I made chile paste last night with equal parts ancho, mulato and pasilla; 1.5 pounds total. Standard technique; stemming and seeding, toasting, soaking and blending. I also food mill to get out the skins and stray seeds, but that's just me. I got 8 cups of paste.
7 are in half-pint canning jars, just about to come out of the pressure canner. (I'll fry the paste just before I use it in a recipe.) Each jar can be assumed to contain roughly 6 chiles.
The 8th cup has been seasoned and augmented and is now combined with ground pork to make six 8-ounce portions of primo chorizo. Five are in the freezer, one in the fridge for tacos this week.
My hands are stained terra cotta and there's a blister where I touched the hot toasting pan. Heating up the paste for the canning jars, a lava bubble exploded all over the wall. The house smells...interesting. I'm pretty sure it's still unsafe to touch my eyes. This is a real pain in the ass, but I sure am feeling good about getting it done.
Well, I just found out one of my dog's triggers.
One of the smoke detectors needed a new battery and started beeping. It's that high pitched beep that's a shortened version of the sound when it goes off for real. I was busy, so I closed the door on the room briefly until I could finish what I was doing and go get the new battery from downstairs.
My husband yelled up to me "Come here! Something's wrong with Radar!" I bolted downstairs and he pointed out how the dog's head was shaking. I touched him and it wasn't just his head - his whole body was rigid and trembling. For a second, I thought he was seizing. He was conscious and aware (so not a grand mal, anyway), so I held him and started soothing him, petting and cooing. He calmed a little, but was still tense and kept staring at the stairs. It was time for dinner, so DH tried to feed him - nope, not interested. He kept going to the bottom of the stairs and staring up.
I went up with the battery and opened the door, so it got louder. Apparently, that very much upset him. Even after I stopped the noise, he was freaked out. I came down again and sat with him; he stayed pressed up against me and wouldn't even consider eating. Eventually, he slept and woke up hungry and now everything is back to normal.
Now, we do have a little more history on him than you usually get from a rescue, but we don't know how much is believable. He originally belonged to an elderly person who died. Their adult offspring tried to keep him briefly, but apparently weren't dog people - they told the rescue that he was unhousebreakable. (This is one of the most housebroken dogs I've ever had.) He also had no medical care for long enough to be wayyy too skinny, not neutered, major dental issues, and had never had a major heart murmur diagnosed, let alone treated. These conditions had been developing for longer than the offspring had him, so I suspect the original owner was too poor to afford good food or any medical care for him. Certainly, the offspring didn't bother. (We did all his medical care as if he'd never had any, including starting vaccinations from the beginning.)
He has some issues, but he's never had anything like this. Something about that sound scares the crap out of him.
A little light plumbing
Our toilet hasn't flushed well for some time, and I've been putting the job off. I did buy the toilet guts but set them aside for a weekend I didn't work. Then I wanted to get the taxes done first. Etc., etc....
So, I finally knuckled down today. Tried to turn the water off at the toilet - we have a convenient shutoff right there. I got it almost all the way off, but there was still a slight dribble and I was afraid if I cranked on it any harder (using a wrench by this time), I'd break it right off. A Sunday emergency plumber and a flood was not the way I wanted to spend the day. I decided I could tolerate the dribble with a well-placed bucket and a couple towels.
So I emptied the tank as well as I could and lifted off the part with the float. This left what I will refer to as the water inlet tube (I don't know any of the actual part names), which I had to detach from the water supply by unscrewing a plastic collar under the tank. That sucker was fused as fused could be to the inlet tube. It also required another set of hands to keep the tube from turning while I tried to budge the collar. I got it loosened enough to leak the water that kept dribbling into the tank - I had to empty the bucket three times before I was through. But those two parts were not separating, ever, till death do them part.
I finally gave up and gave in to DH's suggestion that we just call a plumber on Monday. Screwed the collar back tight, so the tank stopped leaking. Put the float part back on top of the inlet tube. Turned on the water.
And went to tell DH to stop looking up plumbers. I don't know what I did, but it works like new now.
I'm taking a whack at Irish Bacon
For St. Pat's, of course. We haven't had any since we travelled to Ireland. DH kept telling the restaurant staff how good the bacon and cabbage was and they all looked at him like he was crazy. I mean, it's home cooking and must have sounded to them like rhapsodizing over mac and cheese. Yeah, it's good and some of it is even better, but it's still pretty basic.
I did my internet research and also looked through my cookbook library. The first choice is whether to cure with a brine or a dry cure (rub). Both are traditional. My oldest recipe in my books is from 1851 and uses English salt, Irish salt (who knew there was a difference?) saltpetre (sic) and molasses. No other seasonings, no brine. That might be a little too traditional.
My pancetta and salt pork are both dry cured, so that's what I'm used to. I know the proportions of the curing agents (salt, pink salt and sugar). Dry cure it is.
For the rest, I'm keeping it very basic; just black pepper and garlic powder. I got the best pork loin I could find, although the fat cap is thinner than I'd like. It's in the fridge and my hands smell all peppery. With a hint of garlic.
I work on March 17th, so I'll cook it on the weekend. There are two 1# pieces - one will be bacon and cabbage. I'll fix the other one to slice and fry sometime during the next week.
Of course, this is the first try - I might tweak the seasonings later. But it can't get too fancy. That would be wrong.
Wish me luck!
How does this make sense?
Ok - God is omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. All-knowing, all-powerful and everywhere. Yet without some people (they know who they are) running around, He would undoubtedly let somebody, somewhere, get away with something. Lucky he has them, right? Doesn't this sound the slightest bit... presumptuous? Disrespectful? Suspicious of their own God's flaws and fallibility?
And then there's the whole "Love God or he'll burn you in hell for all eternity" Is this God or the Godfather? I mean, it's the ultimate offer you can't refuse, right? How does somebody worship an entity who needs this level of reassurance? If he was a human, we'd be sending him for therapy, not confirming his worldview.
I mean, I know they made Him in their own image. (And it's always a Him.) Needy, petty, vindictive, downright sadistic. But - what is wrong with these people?
Fast Eddie is high
The house panther sometimes gets cystitis, inflammation of the urinary bladder. In the past, there's been no infections and minimal crystals (he's on urinary diet anyway, just to be sure), so if there's just one or two suspicious pees, I monitor the situation. I grope the bladder gently to make sure he's not getting blocked and as long as his abdomen remains soft and not painful, and I can't feel it in there, I just watch to see if it's a one-off. It sometimes resolves on its own. (If the abdomen is painful and the bladder palpable, it's a wild ride to the e-clinic. Now. Right now. Call them on the way.)
Last night, he was starting to have problems. By this AM, he was in and out of the box every half hour. So, off to the vet.
Problem is, he doesn't always behave particularly well there. He's no longer half feral, but when I got him, he was truly scary. So the routine for a regular vet visit is a gabapentin the night before and another before the visit. He's 14 pounds of pure muscle and there are, frankly, personnel who choose to opt out anyway. I don't mind, as he's getting easier to handle every time. But since he didn't leave me a note that he needed a vet visit, he only got his morning pill today and none last night.
He behaved. It's confirmed as cystitis again, although he'll be back there Monday to see if we can get some urine to test. But he needs to continue the gab (a smaller dose) for pain through the weekend and there's some buprenorphine added, also for pain. The kid is definitely pain-free. But there's a certain 'Wow, man, look at the lights' aspect that's not really usual for him. Now that I'm not worried, it's pretty funny.
I'm married to a smartass
He wanted to talk to me as I was setting up some leftover spaghetti sauce for canning. The sauce was a bit thick and there was some stuck in the jar, so I decided to rinse the jar and add it to the mix. I carried it out, shaking it, to talk to him.
"What the hell is that?"
"I'm rinsing out the jar with vermouth."
"Ok, as long as it isn't, like, stomach contents."
"Well, it will be eventually."
"Aw. hell, everything around here ends up being stomach contents eventually!"
Smartass.
I'm going to try something
Probably not this weekend, but the next. I've got my baked bean recipe pretty well down. But I want to try something else, based on ingredients I have on hand.
I started curing meat because I was sick of arguing with my grocery about pancetta (Italian cured pork belly). They just couldn't believe that there was any use for it that didn't involve shaving it thinly. I do pasta Amatriciana, which requires thick strips (julienne on steroids). I kept asking for it thick-cut and couldn't get it any thicker than a piece of sandwich bologna. So now I've usually got this on hand in the freezer and I just finished another 2#. It's good and remarkably easy.
Last fall, I made grape molasses (saba). I'm thinking of putting these together into a Italian baked bean recipe. Pancetta instead of salt pork, saba instead of molasses. I could use cannellini beans, but I'll probably use the regular white beans.
I think it'll be OMG - I just don't know whether it'll be OMG good or OMG bad.
A karate sensei used to tell the class that you never stop making mistakes - you just make better mistakes. No newbie rookie mistakes, but interesting mistakes. More advanced mistakes. When it comes to cooking or fabric, I can now make a mistake that will simultaneously rock your world and blow your socks off. This might be one of those.
I really need to get moving.
I have ten days vacation, and this is the third day. I have gotten done exactly diddle-squat.
I’m stalling on a sewing project. Don’t know why, I’m nearly done (but also nearly out of fabric). So of course today I cast on yarn for a pair of socks. To be fair, the end of my ‘vacation’ is 2 days of continuing education, which I need to remain certified as a vet tech.
I love the education part, but really regret that there’s no distance learning option this year. Last year I not only paid attention for 2 eight hour days, but I also got to drink a lot of coffee and complete most of a sock. When I’m physically at the convention, I can only knit during the breaks – they look at you oddly if you knit during the lectures. I mean, you need a simple project, so you can give your full attention to the speaker and slides, but it actually helps some people (like me) focus. Just sitting is deadly. I need a sock to work on. Especially after lunch.
I just need to get the ribbing at the top done before Friday. That way, I only bring one pair of needles and just work on the leg tube for 2 days. No shaping, just a nice rib pattern to hug the leg.
I like knitting. It’s got to be the most primitive fabric-making technique there is, just two sticks and a long string. Only two possible stitches - you’re pulling one loop through another. You can either pull it from the back towards the front, or from the front towards the back. Everything else depends on which one of these you do and when you do it. If you need to make something wider, there are ways to make more loops. Make something smaller, catch two loops into one. Cables or twists? Make the loops out of order. Making a hole by accident can be a mistake, but if you make enough of them and arrange them decoratively, you’re making lace. If you’re knitting a tube and twist the stitches before you connect the circle, you get a Moebius strip. Not good for socks, but it makes a lovely scarf.
There’s nothing that you can actually do to destroy anything and you can always unravel and start over. Or embrace it. Two of my early mistakes have actually become my individual methods. A twisted-knit cast-on is great as long as it’s done on larger needles (otherwise, it makes a really good tourniquet). And my misunderstanding of some directions on a particular sock heel flap has led to a twined padded heel that is a true pain in the ass to make, but guarantees no blisters ever and I’ve never had one wear out.
Now if I can only get back to sewing.
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Member since: Sat Apr 9, 2022, 09:43 PMNumber of posts: 414