Delayed research with responses

It's been sitting there, unused, in the kitchen since we bought the house. During the inspection we saw that no water was going into it when it was turned on. Eventually, we'd get it fixed.

Fifteen months later, the dishwasher is still in the kitchen. It still was not working.

Granted, like the fireplace, the dishwasher was nice but we've never really used one before. Its presence was not why we bought the house. Unlike the fireplace though, I suspect it would not take several thousand dollars to get the dishwasher functioning.

Yesterday, tired of looking at it, I got the model number and went to the Internet to see what what was up. On YouTube I found a site that showed me what the problems of the dishwasher are. One main problem is that the float inside is jammed so no water can go in. Like the video suggested I got a wooden spoon and banged on the top of the float, to supposedly loosen whatever was blocking water flow.

I then did a dry run, as it were, and started the dishwasher up. It came to life, it made sounds like there was actual water flow. The basin was filling. The dishwasher had come to its destiny as a household appliance!

Then my wife looked at the toilet.

The bowl was kind of bubbling, like a tiny spring. It seems the toilet and dishwasher share the same inflow pipe. There was nothing wrong with the toilet, it was not filling up at it's normal rate when the dishwasher was working. A good fact to know.

This is a manageable situation, much easier than the old place when you could not do laundry and take a shower, or flush the toilet while doing the dishes.

Then we noticed one of our sinks.

There are side by side sinks in the kitchen. One of them has a non-functioning garbage disposal unit, which is fine, neither of us have ever had a working one and they seem to cause more problems than their worth - like right now.

All the spent water from the dishwasher had flowed upward into the sink where the garbage disposal unit is. It was a bit more than half full of warm water.

My response was to get out the plunger and plunge through the blockage of the disposal sink, and that seems to have solved that problem at the moment as the dishwasher finished its cycle with no further issues.

I have never bought soap for a dishwasher before so there will be an adventure at the grocery later. Not sure when we'll do our first real dishwasher session, but boy 2019 is going to be a fascinating year. Or one day in late February.

Best thing about all of this excitement is there were no tears, no cursing and best of all, no flooding.

The joy of gadgetry

A delicious, freshly cut mango is one of life's great pleasures. But, if you're like me and have the knife skills of an idiot, cutting a mango and getting enough fruit to justify the work is a very frustrating experience.

Worry no more. Just purchased a nifty mango slicer that works rather well.



There is your mango. There is your slicer.



Stand up mango stem side up.



Place slicer over mango.



Push down.



It's all separated. Do the tic tac toe slices on the fruit until just before the skin and slice off the bits. It greatly helps to have a fully ripe mango so the skin is much softer.

And there you have it. Not sure how long it will take for the blades to dull, but mangoes!

Behold, solid beer

My culinary skills are suspect, even at my best I am capable of burning water. A few months ago, we bought this cast iron skillet combo and rarely use it.

Why? Read the reviews, they are all correct. It's a very good piece of equipment.

A couple of weeks ago, I made burgers in it. Bad idea doing it in the house. The kitchen filled up with smoke rather quickly. Windows had to be opened. The smell lingered for a few days. The burgers however, were delicious.

I've toyed in my mind for a long time to make bread. Never had a breadmaker and I'm certainly not the type to spend hours flinging dough around. I am a lazy cook, on a good day.

So I was researching recipes on line and came across a few, what appeared to be simple ways to bake bread in a Dutch Oven.

Last night I assembled the ingredients, mixed them up, covered the bowl in plastic and waited. Pro-tip, do not mix with a whisk.



The mixture began to bubble and expand, for a moment I wondered if the bowl would be too small and the kitchen would fill up with a massive amount of fermenting dough. Then my wife reminded me that it would bubble then fall back which was when I remembered this process from my homebrewing days. I was not a good brewer either.

This morning the glop of dough was ready to be pressed into shape and put into the oven. I'm not sure it got into quite the shape I wanted, but it was on its way.




Did a variant on the recipe I posted and added parchment paper to the mix.

The process called for covering with the top of the skillet, then waiting half an hour to remove the top. Remember, iron gets really, really hot. No, I was not burned. I was prepared.



Bread smells came out of the oven. It seemed to be working out. Had to wait another half hour for it to be done. Would it be? Would it look right at least?



It looked alright to me. Thought it would rise higher but that might be because I did not shape it enough. The crust was hard and substantial. Yay!

Now the moment of real Truth. How would it taste?



Have to say, pretty darn good! Seems a bit salty but it's chewy, has a great crust and I can't wait to get out the olive oil and have a pleasant lunch later.

So there's my first loaf of bread, and yes, I had to blog about it. Posted pictures to Facebook too, it was my John Lennon in 1978 Polaroid moment.

Twenty four hours ago, this did not exist. I am amazed what can be done with four simple ingredients.