The best thing I’ve purchased recently:
My Kuhn Rikon Gripper Jar Opener. I saw it in a Kuhn Rikon catalog, decided it couldn’t hurt to give it a try (though if I’d realized it came in red, I would have gotten that instead of white!), and it is SO handy. Because I’ve apparently gotten old and frail since I turned 40, I’ve been having one hell of a time opening the damn baby food jars. With the Gripper, I turn the wheel to make the gripper thingies grip the jar lid, and with a simple turn, that damn thing is open. No muss, no fuss! And best of all, it adjusts to lid sizes from 1″ – 3.5″, so if I could have figured out in which direction to open the lid on the spaghetti sauce jar last night, I would have been able to open that, too.
Awesome, and highly recommended.
(And recommended to ME: exercises to strengthen my grip. I’m too young to be old and frail!)
I bought mine online, but I’m fairly certain I saw it at Bed, Bath & Beyond the other day, too.
The thing I will never ever ever EVER buy (and you better not, either!):
So, you’re making dinner. And you’ve got a lot of dinner garbage. It’s a pain in the ass to keep running to the garbage can to toss the garbage in, right? But if you leave the garbage laying on the counter, it makes a mess, right?
Rachael Ray thinks you should spend FIFTEEN GODDAMN DOLLARS on a BOWL to leave by your sink, to toss your garbage in, so you can toss the garbage all at once.
Fifteen dollars. For a BOWL. The sole use of which is to toss garbage in. Really – are you fucking KIDDING ME? What a rip off. Hey, here’s a little-known secret Rachael Ray (or the cheeseballs in charge of her “empire”) doesn’t want you to know: open your cupboard. See that bowl right there? That bowl just sitting there doing nothing? That you won’t need in the preparation of dinner?
Guess what?
You can use that bowl to put your kitchen garbage in!
GASP!
And then you can wash it out and use it for something else!
GASP!
What a revolutionary idea!
Buy the goddamn bowl if you think it’s pretty and you want to put your popcorn in it or eat cereal out of it, I don’t care. It’s YOUR money, not mine. But I will tell you this: if you buy a goddamn FIFTEEN DOLLAR BOWL to PUT YOUR KITCHEN GARBAGE IN because RACHAEL RAY SAYS, I will disown you.
DISOWNED.
So watch your step, is all I’m saying. Don’t be suckered in by the bullshit.
Excellent side dish we had last night with dinner:
Take yellow squash, slice it however you like (I do it kind of on a diagonal, about half an inch thick), put it on a (already sprayed with Pam) cookie sheet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and very lightly with parmesan. Cook it for 27 minutes at 350ยบ. Remove from oven.
Using a 8×8 baking dish, put a layer of the squash on the bottom. Put a VERY thin layer of spaghetti sauce on top of the squash, sprinkle with parmesan if you like (or your husband is a parmesan-addicted freak), put a second layer of squash, thin layer of spaghetti sauce, parmesan, last layer of squash, last thin layer of spaghetti sauce, last sprinkle of parmesan. Sprinkle a little mozzarella on top, put it back in the oven until the cheese is melted and bubbly (5 – 10 minutes; keep an eye on it). SO GOOD.
I had my six-month dental cleaning yesterday. It turns out that a “shadow” on an x-ray they did back in January, located under an old filling, has gotten bigger, and so the old filling needs to be replaced. This is fine with me, because the old filling is silver and shows through my tooth (it’s on the upper right, near the front of my mouth), and they’re going to replace it with a tooth-colored filling.
I’ll be going for that in about a month.
Anyway, I really like my dentist’s office, because they are very thorough and careful and double-check the medications you’re on, and ask after your health and all that, and the dental hygienist takes copious notes. But anyway, she asked if there was anything new going on with my teeth or my tongue, and I told her that we’re fostering kittens, and every time I pick up one of the kittens I bite my tongue so I won’t squoosh it to death, and she gave me a look and then made a note.
And then we discussed why I had foster kittens, and she went on to basically tell me that cats are “too independent” and have no personality.
She’s a dog person. You know how THEY are.
(Oh, I kid. I know many of you are crazy-add weirdos dog people. Nothing wrong with that! Some of my best friends are! Etc. etc.)
She’s a good dental hygienist, polishes my teeth up nice, always does a good job. You ever feel like punching the dental hygienist when they get the floss out, though? It’s nothing personal against her, but feeling that kind of pain always makes me feel like inflicting pain, you know?
Anyway, my teeth are looking good. The dentist came and looked ’em over, told me I had nice teeth (“‘ank ‘oo”, I said.), and then told me that Monday was a banner day for him. He had eight or nine adults come in who’d never had a single filling. He usually gets one or two in the course of a day, but never that many all at once.
The economy might be going to shit, but we’ve got us some nice teeth. At least those of us who can still afford to go to the dentist!
Today is my first day back at the pet store since surgery. I’ve really missed it! So, a few kitten pics for you, then I’m outta here.
Kaylee the fearsome beast demonstrates that she can unhinge her jaw and swallow your head whole, if she so desires.
(More kitten pics over at Flickr.)
Sugarbutt has found a soft place to snooze. It kinda makes me want a bed of padded envelopes for myself.
I tried to tell Fred that we could TOTALLY easily fit another five cats into the house if we give them all cat carriers to sleep in. We could stack ’em five high! They do it in Japan! He wouldn’t go for it, though. Hmph.
Previously
2007: WHO AM I AND WHAT HAVE I DONE WITH THE REAL ROBYN?
2006: Playing with tigers.
2005: No entry.
2004: No entry.
2003: How to kick a sock’s ass. If it had an ass.
2002: “What’s your name?” he asked.
2001: No entry.
2000: Leave it to me to have sex dreams about the gay guy, huh?