The New Fridge--Life's Good

When we last left our heroine, she'd bravely made a choice without moaning or groaning more than absolutely necessary.  Let's resume our story as she begins life anew.

I'm adjusting to our new LG refrigerator--now happily ensconced in her cubby.  It's wonderful to have a freezer that freezes!

 

It's the simple pleasures, ain't it?

We bid a fond farewell to our reliable Frigidaire workhorse.  Well, sort of farewell--it's attractively occupying our eating nook right now as we wait for the energy company to come recycle it (and rebate us $50).

 

Fridges that sit in the middle of the room--a decorating trend I'm starting right now.  Remember, you saw it first at Meadowsweet Cottage.  And yes, feel free to Pin It.  Maybe I should slap a watermark on the photo just so I get credit?  On second thought...no.

I'm getting used to the increased width and depth of our newbie quickly.  The height is another kettle of crawdads entirely--the cutting boards which tucked nicely atop the old fridge are still looking for a new home in the kitchen and are currently scattered in three places (the cereal cupboard, the appliance drawer and atop the new beast where I can't reach them).

I confess that the textured surface I was sure I was going to hate is smoother (in a good slippery sense) than I thought. 

 

I'll think positive and hope that cleaning the shallow grooves is easier than I anticipated.  I am VERY glad that we went with the smooth finish on the front though!  And white was definitely the right choice.

I love the French doors although we haven't entirely succeeded yet in figuring out where things should go.  The split shelves inside have allowed us to customize the heights to accommodate two liter bottles and leftover containers.  Plus my guys are enjoying the ease of the deli tray after having to bend way down to access the old cheese shelf.

 

And the narrow drawer between the veggie and fruit drawers has proven ideal for egg storage.  It's probably not designed for that, but it works.  Now that I think of it--what was that lil drawer created to hold?  I think it's funny that our freshly-laid butt fruit (don't you hate it when somebody creates a clever-but-fairly-rude phrase that you just can't purge from your brain) ended up in one of the fruit and vegetable drawers.  Bet the designer didn't see that one coming!

Not that I know where to find my Miracle Whip or his mayo, or if the salad dressing goes in the right or left door yet.  We'll eventually figure out a logical way of organizing things so that we all know where to look and where to put away without standing there with the doors open while we puzzle it out.  I just discovered the butter dish today--I couldn't see it way up high where my sweetie put it (in the butter nook of all places).

The bottom freezer rocks.  My sweetie has a convenient tray for his frozen juice cans which also holds ice packs for migraines, sore muscles and owies.

 

The two drawers make it as easy to organize as my two shelves did but it's definitely easier to find what you want on the bottom of a drawer compared to the back of a shelf!

You can laugh, but our ice cubes now come from an older-than-old double metal Frigidaire ice tray contributed by the Queen Mother. 

 

My family doesn't throw anything away--we just store it until someone else needs it.


It's been an smoother change than I anticipated.  Once I finally made what I thought was the best choice (click the link to enjoy my making a fool of myself just because I was forced to get a new fridge), I just mentally shifted gears and didn't look back.  Now if I could just grow another three inches so I could reach the top... 

LG doesn't know I exist.  Neither does Frigidaire.  But my offer to help them design the perfect refrigerator still stands.

Bring joy,

My Thirty-Four Year Old Fridgidaire...Farewell, Friend

I'm a little fond of our fridge--a Gemco purchase for our first home way back in 1979.  It's lived through two kitchen remodels.  It survived babies and toddlers and teen-aged boys with hollow legs, and two adults with an empty nest. It's outlived our washer (same vintage) and our dishwasher (a whippersnapper by comparison) and two station wagons.

 

Yep, it's been running flawlessly for a long, long time.  Although it now does tend to freeze stuff stuck too far back in the summer.  It might have a barely noticeable dent or two.  The door seal is a bit torn in one area. And a green glo-stick leaked and stained the freezer fluorescent yellow when the kids were small.  And, okay, the meat drawer is a distant memory.  But...basically it's still chugging along.

That's actually the problem.  It's now running 24/7 in an effort to keep the freezer compartment cold, and failing.  Our frozen fruit for smoothies is slightly squishy rather than frozen solid.  Giant sigh.  The day I've been dreading finally arrived.  We need a new refrigerator and I knew I wouldn't find anything I liked as well as our old one.  I was right.  Sometimes I hate being right.

We spent the weekend refrigerator shopping.  Which, let me tell you, is a whole different category than mere appliance shopping, for say, a microwave or range or dishwasher.  Those were relatively easy.  I'd rather spend a day in a room with garter snakes than go refrigerator shopping.  Garter snakes just make me scream and levitate three feet laterally.  Modern refrigerators make me moan, groan, gripe, wail, curse and drive my husband crazy.  Snakes do one thing and do it well.  Refrigerators do over a dozen things but none of them in a combination that suits me.  I'm picky simply practical and unimpressed by bells and whistles.

My Frigidaire is easy to clean.  It's large enough to hold plenty of food and still small enough that it doesn't dominate our kitchen but plays nicely.  I can store my extensive collection of wood cutting boards, my family-sized serving bowls, two recipe boxes and all my metal measuring cups on top and still reach them easily (I'm only five foot two).  Our galley kitchen is small and I use every inch of storage including the refrigerator top.

New fridges are so deep that they either stick out into the room or come at a premium price. They are mostly stainless steel and I'm sooo not a gray person.  New fridges have water dispensers and ice-makers and I need neither.  New. Fridges. Do. Not. Have. Egg. Storage.  Someone apparently circulated a memo regarding eggs being jostled as the door opens and closes.  Seriously, people?  Your store-bought eggs are already probably at least a month old, what possible harm could come from storing them in a nice egg bin in the door?  My eggs seemed to weather frequent door openings and shuttings for thirty-four years with no adverse effects.  I'm just sayin'.
 
Worst of all...the new refrigerators are textured.  Have appliance designers ever cleaned a refrigerator?  Do they all have maids? Do they enjoy scrubbing grease off a textured surface?  Sheesh.  The smooth top of my fridge still needs more than a bit of elbow grease to sparkle. It takes me thirty minutes to remove the stuff on top, climb up on a stool with a warm soapy washrag, scrub it my smooth surface, climb down again, rinse my cleaning cloth, climb up again, scrub, dry it all off and replace my goodies.  I can only imagine how long it would take to scrub the greasy residue off those textured surfaces!

(I know...what a tragic First World problem--choosing a new refrigerator.  I should be ashamed. I am ashamed.  Just a tad.)

Shopping day one involved a patient husband researching refrigerators and dragging a kicking and screaming wife into Home Depot.  Shopping day two involved a patient husband listening to my moaning and rants in Lowe's, Best Buy, Sears and a different Home Depot and ignoring some tears.  Shopping day three involved a patient husband taking me back to several stores to take a second look as I began to accept the fact that I was never going to find the perfect fridge and would have to compromise.  Late shopping day three involved a husband who'd pretty much had it up to here.  I suspect he then slyly played the I-think-this-stainless-steel-model-would-be-our-best-choice card which steered (or panicked) me into immidiately choosing a model available in a less obnoxious appliance color--white.

Voila!

 

Our choice has been made--astonishingly, amazingly unlikely as it would have seemed when we started.  I'm not going to like it as much as our old one.  It probably won't last as long as our old one. I'm sure enough of that we bought an extended warranty and we NEVER buy the extra warranty.  But I can live with it.  And I'm busily figuring out how to reconfigure all the junk (see photo 1 above) that's currently living in, on and around Frigidaireland--a task I'm realizing was long overdue.

 

Throughout most of the process I wondered if I was being unreasonable.  I found out I wasn't the only picky customer out there.  One lady wanted an almond microwave with no negative reviews.  One gentleman wanted a shiny stainless steel front, not brushed.  I guess we all have an idea of what we want and sometimes it doesn't exist, at least in the here and now.

I have to say that every salesperson we encountered was patient, helpful without being pushy, informative and just plain nice.  Even with picky customers like moi.  They're probably the only reason we survived and are still talking.

There are over seven hundred fifty refrigerator models available at one of the big box stores but not one shallow, short, smooth, white one with adjustable shelves.  So, our deep, tall, smooth (sort of), white LG arrives Friday.   I'm good with what we're getting, but if I were to design refrigerators some would be smooth on all surfaces including the top and sides.  Some might be deep and wide for large families but would be available as a traditional, shallow counter-depth model too.  I'd design some wide and some narrower, some tall and some petite.  I'd offer them in every color and finish.  (Okay, not every color although it would be fun to have turquoise or cherry red or sunshine yellow or apple green to choose from.) All my fridges would have infinitely adjustable shelves.  I might even design some without honkin' big pulls. And, oh yes, they'd all have thirty-four year warranties.

I'm available for hire should any appliance makers want some real world input!

Bring joy,
 

Kharma 1 - Family 0

What's for dinner when the cupboard's bare? It's cold and blustery out as the storm front moves closer--how about some nice chicken noodle soup? Yummy!

Take three cans of soup, open them up, dump them in the big pot and add water. Listen to the wind howl outside.

Get another big pot, fill it with water, turn the burner on high until it boils. Add some nice whole wheat noodles (because we like lots of noodles in our soup) and cook them until done.

While the two pots are cooking, defrost the very last chicken breast (because you can never have too much chicken in chicken noodle soup). Decide that you'll strain out the cooked noodles when they're done and reuse that nice hot water to boil the poultry. Think about adding chicken to the Costco list. Cut the chicken into five smaller pieces so it will cook faster.

Check the timer--the noodles still have five minutes before they're al dente--that's plenty of time to go upstairs and check email before the bell starts dinging.

Ding. Ding. Ding.

Go downstairs and transfer the cooked noodles into the simmering canned soup. Turn around to get the chicken. Look blankly at the cutting board. Why is there just a wet juicy circle on the board? Wonder outloud where the chicken went.

Notice that Kharma suddenly has a very guilty look while Zelda just looks hopeful. Put the K-dog in timeout.

Add some curry powder to the soup instead and call the guys for dinner. Try to wipe that half-exasperated, half-proud dogmom smile off your face before they ask why you're grinning.

Naughty dog! (Grin.)

Lesson Learned

We've had a recipe-to-try on hold for a week or so. Roasted Pepper & Crab Soup--doesn't that sound delicious? We thought so.

Had the crab (frozen imitation crabmeat, but, hey, it was free...), got the red bell peppers, the half-and-half, then discovered that we didn't have potatoes. Finally got the potatoes before any of the other ingredients rotted, so tonight was soup night.

First, we roasted the bell peppers and peeled them. After three years of roasting and peeling Hatch Valley chiles to feed my yen for New Mexican cuisine, I am a pepper-preparing expert, and this was simple in comparison. We peeled and diced the potatoes. We measured the spices and the light cream. We defrosted the crab. We began to combine and heat the ingredients. (I use the term "we" loosely here--Erkie-pie provided the recipe from AllRecipes.com, I provided the muscle. )

Before adding the flaked crabmeat, the recipe directed us to put the heated soup in the blender and puree the vegetables.

Yeah, that was my reaction too. The volcanic lentil lava episode made me cautious about blenders and hot soup.

I grabbed the strainer instead, separated the veggies from the hot liquid and pureed them by themselves. I added them back to the hot liquid, tossed in the crab and voila! A feast.


Hot sourdough bread was the perfect accompaniment. I have no idea how many calories I've ingested, and I don't really want to know, but my tummy is very happy. Compared to lentil, crab soup doesn't make a very exciting blog post, but my kitchen and my pants are a lot cleaner.

Hot Lentil Stew

or
Do Not Try This At Home

Did you know that lentil soup, if it has too much water in it, looks like something served to orphans in Victorian England. I decided to make it look thicker by ladling it into my blender and whirring it around.

Did you know that lentil soup is hot? It really holds the heat well, even if it's been sitting on the stove (burner off) for thirty minutes or so.

Did you know that blenders and volcanoes have a lot in common? They both erupt when filled with a lot liquid.

Did you know that lentil soup looks a whole lot like someone blew chunks? It looks like barf whether spilled on the counter, all over newly-laundered black denim pants, or in hair.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.