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Make Time for Change… in my kitchen!

As you may have heard, Jenny and I are participating in Frigidaire’s Make Time for Change campaign… and in the last few weeks my kitchen – and my cooking habits – have certainly changed!

Check out what I used to sort my mail on use:

It worked, and for how little I used it, it was fine (except for the fan/hood thing that I could never get clean. That was nasty). Needless to say, though, it didn’t really inspire me to cook.

However, this?

This inspires me to cook. (And they said it could never be done. Pfft.)

I love the look of the new range and microwave – it changes my entire kitchen! Except now I need a new refrigerator and dishwasher. And new floors, countertops and curtains. But anyway. If you just look at this part of my kitchen, it looks awesome.

Beyond how it looks, though, is how amazingly functional both appliances are. I have to admit, when I first got them, I was afraid to use them! I am not kidding when I say it was a week before I had the nerve to try them out, and that was only after I had read each owner’s manual very thoroughly (something I never, ever do!). Once I did, though, I couldn’t believe how easy it was to… well, cook!

I have really only begun to make use of all the features, but here are a few that I already love.

First… the microwave. So many types of food are pre-programmed. If I want to bake a potato, I hit the baked potato button. You know what’s brilliant about that? I don’t have to tell it how many potatoes are in there or how long to cook – the microwave senses (based on steam) when the potatoes are done. Is that crazy or what? Another thing I’ve noticed about the pre-programmed features are that the cook times are way different than what I would typically put in. For example, I was making Sam a hot dog the other day, so I hit the hot dog button and “start,” and I noticed the timer said something like a minute and 10 seconds. I thought for sure the hot dog was going to explode all over the place, but when I took it out it was perfectly cooked. The difference is the microwave uses different levels of power to cook different things, whereas I never use anything but full power. This makes for much more even cooking! I have also come to love the “soften” button (for cream cheese and ice cream) – who knew what a difference using softened cream cheese would make? (Ok, everyone but me, probably.) The “melt butter” feature works perfectly, too.

And have I mentioned that it’s pretty?

Ok, so onto the range. Like the microwave, it has buttons for everything. Rumor has it that I could cook 100 chicken nuggets in 10 minutes, but I’ve yet to have the occasion to try it out. I’ll keep you posted on that. The whole point of this line of products is to save time, and this range really makes that happen. It has “PowerPlus Boil,” which boils water in a fraction of the time my old stove did, and “PowerPlus Pre-Heat” that heats up the oven in no time. In fact, I am so used to starting the oven when I start to prepare whatever is going in it, that the oven is ready way before I am! I also like the warming drawer at the bottom, which I used to keep the perfectly-cooked baked potatoes warm when they came out of the microwave. Which now that I think about it, the microwave also has a “keep warm” feature. Oops. Also, see the red circle I drew up there? The front and the back burner are connected by a burner in between them, so you can have a large space for cooking if necessary. I really want to get one of those long pancake griddles and try it out!

So anyway, this new set-up has been a good reason for me to finally make an effort with this cooking thing. I am trying to get better. I can’t do it on my own, though, so I’ve enlisted the help of Casey from Moosh in Indy, who’s also on Team Range/Microwave, and she’s doing her best to teach me to cook via email. More on that later, but trust me, it’s going to be a classic! She’s already starting to pull out her hair – check out her post where she wonders what she’s gotten herself into.

Stay tuned for more of my adventures with my new appliances – I am cooking up some fun posts! (sorry, that was terrible.) In the meantime, click over to Make Time for Change, and play Jennifer Garner’s Spin & Win game for a chance win prizes, including a new time-saving Frigidaire Affinity washer/dryer. Plus every day you take a spin, Frigidaire donates $1 to Save the Children as part of their $250,000 commitment to this worthy cause.

I wrote this review while participating in a Test Drive Campaign by Mom Central on behalf of Frigidaire and received a Frigidaire Range/Microwave to facilitate my review.

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Sleepless in Cousinville

So last night, per usual, I woke up in the middle of ye olde night and couldn’t sleep.  Shocking, I know.  My sleep doctor told me when this happens I should get out of bed and not get back in until I’m really sleepy, so I shuffled wearily into my living room and turned on my laptop.

After chatting with my cousin Donovan, who was also awake at in the middle of the night, on Facebook for a few minutes at about 2:30-2:45,  I clicked over to TweetDeck and lo and behold, saw this tweet from my dear cousin Emily.

So apparently, if you are a first cousin of mine, you may have had trouble sleeping last night!  Emily must have wandered back to her bed, though, cause I got nuttin’ in response to the tweet I sent her:

{crickets}

About 3:30, Sophie started fussing.  I SWEAR to you that girl has “mommy is awake” radar.  So I soothed her and then got back into bed myself, where I had both night sweats and nightmares for a couple hours, until Bobby’s alarm started going off around 5:45.  Apparently I also told him *twice* that he was snoring and to roll over…when he was awake and therefore not snoring.  So all in all, it was a night of delirium, cousinly bonding, and a sad, sad, lack of ice cream (for me).

What were YOU doing in the middle of the night last night?  Wait.  Don’t answer that!

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A Generation Passes


This is a picture of my and Emily’s great-grandparents, Florida and Ambrose Burns, with their five children.  In the back row on the left is their son Milton, whom I barely remember, and on the far right is my and Emily’s grandfather Laton, (who I’ve written about here and here) who died in 1970, years before we were born.  In the front row are our Reva, Polly, and Roy, the three siblings I remember well.  My grandfather’s sisters, Reva and Polly, I have especially fond memories of.

Uncle Roy died three or four years ago.  Aunt Polly died when I was a freshman in high school, after an awful battle with ALS.  And Aunt Reva passed away this weekend, on Saturday after a short battle with cancer, at age 77.

So a generation has passed.  My grandfather’s siblings are gone.  But not forgotten.

“Extended family” is something of an anomaly these days.  Something I remember and respect about my Aunt Polly is that extended family was very important to her.  Her brother Laton had passed many years ago, but she often had his children and grandchildren over to her house on Sundays and holidays.  She wanted to make sure his grandchildren knew her grandchildren.  She would come over to my grandma’s for Sunday lunch often, too.  Aunt Polly, like my grandmother, was widowed very young.  Unlike my grandmother, she was sociable and outgoing.  She got my grandma out, they took trips together, and they were great friends.  Aunt Reva was a great friend to my grandmother as well. They were more than sisters-in-law.  They were friends, and they took care to make sure my grandma didn’t sit at home by herself all the time, as was her inclination.

Another thing I really appreciated about Aunt Polly is that she always told us she loved us.  It became a joke as we got older, to do an imitation of her saying “Aunt Polly loves you!”  in the cheerful, sugary tone of voice she’d use with us.  It may have made me giggle as I got older, but looking back, I am so thankful for that.  That is something many children long to hear from any adult, and Aunt Polly always made sure we knew she loved us and that we were special to her.

When she fought ALS, she fought it with valor.  She came to every family event she could, even when she couldn’t talk, had to hold onto another person for balance, and had to wear a mask to cover her uncontrollable facial muscles.  It was more important to her to be with us than it was for her “keep up appearances” – so by not being afraid to lose her dignity she has cemented herself in my mind as one of the most dignified people I will ever know.

My Aunt Reva was the youngest of the bunch.  She was beautiful.  I always remember her as a blonde, even though her hair is quite dark in the picture above.  She had a great smile, as you can see, and was always very warm.  What I remember most about her is her hospitality.  It was also important for her to keep our extended family together so she and my Uncle Jim hosted family reunions at their home every year when I was growing up.  They lived about four hours away and we’d take the drive down to the Lake Cumberland area where they had a big house, with an attached pool house with an indoor pool.  To us kids, it was like heaven on earth!!  Aunt Reva was always the most gracious hostess, she and Uncle Jim housing and feeding and extra twenty or so people for an entire weekend.  Every association I have of them is fun, fun, fun.  Good food, swimming, relaxing, family, warmth, fun.  I have especially good memories of being with Emily and her sister Anna there.  Those are some wonderful memories, and I am thankful to my Aunt Reva for facilitating their making.

It makes me feel sad, but not just sad, that they are all gone now.  Reflective, I guess, about things I’ve never reflected on before.  Emily and I are close, and we’ve done a good job so far of making sure our children know each other.  Anna will have a child soon to add to our cousin-brood.  My brothers have children and my kids looove their cousins.  I am thankful for the example that was set for us about how important our extended family is, and I hope we will continue to be intentional about being a family who truly spends, loves, and values our time together as life gets busier and more complicated.  Because it will slow back down again, and I don’t want any of us to be alone when that happens.  When my brothers and I are gone, when Emily and Anna are gone, I want my children to have not just each other and their children but their cousins and their cousins’ children to live life with, to be friends with as well as family.  That’s what we’ve been given and what I hope we can give them.

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