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~ The Real and True Adventures of Remarriage at Life's Midpoint

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Viewpoints Product Review: The Panasonic Flash Xpress Toaster Oven

13 Thursday Dec 2012

Posted by themidlifesecondwife in Product Reviews

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Consumer products, Cooking, Home, Home appliance, Kitchen, Life, toaster ovens, Viewpoints

ToasterOven_TheMidlifeSecondWife_Viewpoints

The Panasonic Flash Xpress Toaster Oven, carefully positioned to do no harm.

Here’s how I roll: I use my traditional stove for cooking, my traditional oven for baking, and my microwave for reheating—usually mugs of coffee. When I want toast, I use my toaster. I never understood the point of a toaster oven just as I never understood the point of a rice cooker: both have always struck me as redundant kitchen appliances. (What? You can’t throw some water, rice, and salt in a covered saucepan and read the instructions on the label? Seriously?)

No, it’s just never made sense to me to dedicate valuable kitchen counter real estate for something that, to my mind, has little real utility. Don’t take away my blender or my mixer, and don’t you dare touch my coffee maker, but to a toaster oven I say, “Meh.”

Such is the preconceived bias with which I approached this product review as a member of the Viewpoints Blogger Panel. (You can read my review on the Viewpoints website, along with those of my colleagues on the panel.) I thought there might be a ghost of a chance that I could be convinced, thus becoming a zealous convert to the joys of toaster-oven-cooking. But after using the thing twice, I’m sorry to have to say no. That didn’t happen—the Panasonic Flash Xpress Toaster Oven has not made me see the light. (Although we’ll get to the oven’s light, and its potential hazards, in a moment.)

Let’s begin with first impressions.

The thing looks like a toy. The Kenner Easy-Bake Oven I played with as a child surely had more heft and substance. The toaster oven is ten-and-a-quarter inches high, thirteen inches deep, and twelve inches wide. It weighs a mere seven-and-a-half pounds. This is all fine if you’re short on space and upper body strength, but as I said in my first paragraph …

I must add that I found the oven’s numerous disclaimers slightly alarming, especially this one:

Do not use the toaster oven near wall or cabinet.…Keep the toaster oven away from flammable materials (wooden wall or cabinet) as follows: Rear: more than 10 cm (4 inches) Top: more than 15 cm (6 inches). Side: More than 10 cm (4 inches).

I carefully (and nervously) measured the area around the oven before I determined it was safe to proceed.

Infrared ray heating elements heat the surface and inside of the food efficiently. But the cautionary bullet points in the owner’s manual include this advice: “Do not stare at the near-infrarde [sic] ray heater for a long time. It could cause injury to your eyes.”

I felt like Carol Anne in The Poltergeist, being warned to STAY AWAY FROM THE LIGHT.

After regaining my composure, I began my test. I purchased all-natural frozen whole-wheat waffles, and decided upon a three-tiered experiment. First, I prepared the waffles in the toaster oven according to the package directions on the waffles. Ten minutes? Really? Okay, Van’s. If you say so.

ToastingWaffles_TheMidlifeSecondWife

The waffles are toasting. Don’t look at the light!

Ten minutes were clearly too long. And I cannot blame the toaster oven for this; I followed the package instructions. The waffles looked like hockey pucks and tasted like shredded twigs.

PreparedWaffles_TheMidlifeSecondWife

A couple of mornings later, I prepared the same breakfast, but this time I followed the toaster oven’s directions instead of relying upon the waffle’s cooking instructions. I placed the waffles on the rack, same as before. (I never did use the oven tray; perhaps one of my colleagues on the Viewpoints panel did.) This time, I pressed the button for “waffles,” stood back (not looking at the light), and let the product do its thing. I had waffles in about four minutes. Nothing could have been simpler. And I have to admit, they were nicely browned, with a nice exterior crispness. My eating experience was as pleasant as one could expect, considering I was eating frozen waffles. (I do own a waffle iron, by the way. Guess I’m old-school.)

The results of test number two? I used less energy by cutting the cooking time in more than half, and I ended up with tastier waffles. So what did I do for my third test?

You guessed it!

I popped two frozen waffles in my toaster, set the dial to a medium setting (I referred to the package instructions for toaster cooking), and in two minutes—two minutes, people—I had delicious waffles. Warmth being a matter of personal preference, I put the plate of waffles in the microwave and zapped them for an additional 15 seconds. Perfection. Lightly crisp on the outside, moist and tender on the inside…

The prosecution rests.

I’m in the midst of preparing for our relocation to Ohio, so unfortunately I had to sit out the discussion with my colleagues on the panel. When Viewpoints posts it I’ll add a link so you can see if I’m all alone on this toaster oven limb. I’m donating the toaster oven (with reservations, given my less-than-stellar review) to the Safe Harbor Shelter of Richmond, Virginia, with the proviso that they give it to a deserving family without small children.

I give the Panasonic Flash Xpress Toaster Oven two gold rings.



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We Felt the Earth Move …

14 Tuesday Aug 2012

Posted by themidlifesecondwife in House and Garden

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

Home, Life, old houses, repair

Not exactly what you want to wake up to at 4 in the morning…

EDITOR’S NOTE: This essay was revised February 1, 2014, to include an after-photo of the living room, showcasing the great work of N. Chasen and Son. (Scroll to the end of the post to see the photo.) As regular readers of the blog know, John and I subsequently sold our beautiful townhouse in Richmond and moved back to Ohio. Look for future posts in the blog’s House and Garden section showing renovations to our new home in Northeast Ohio.

The picture pretty much tells the story, doesn’t it? But let’s get your questions out of the way first. Yes, our bedroom is directly above the living room. No, that’s not why our ceiling collapsed. (Wink wink, nudge nudge.) No, we weren’t in the room when it happened. Yes, the pets and we were safely asleep upstairs. No animals or humans were injured as a result of this catastrophe. Yes, it’s a real mess, isn’t it?

So what happened? Wish we knew. All we can do is surmise and engage in conjecture.

Several days before the collapse we noticed that a crack in our plaster ceiling had taken on an ominous appearance; it looked as though the ceiling could fall at any time. We arranged for a contractor to come out and evaluate the situation, and the following week (the day before his crew was scheduled to begin work) we prepared the area by removing all of our breakables and as much furniture as we could. Something told us to protect the remaining furniture, just in case. I’ve always been an “ounce of prevention” kinda gal, and those instincts didn’t fail us.

At 4:15 a.m., the next morning, we were awakened by what I thought was thunder. Imagine the loudest clap of thunder you’ve ever heard, intensify it ten-fold, and insert yourself smack in the middle of the din. We never expected our ceiling to give way, but we’re awfully grateful for the timing of our precautions.

And while we’re on the subject of timing, I should say a word or two about age.

We live in an English Tudor Revival townhouse that was built in 1927. It’s filled with the sort of charm you’d expect from the era, and as an added bonus, it’s on the National Register of Historic Places. But it’s 85 years-old. Stuff is going to happen.

According to documents filed with the National Registry, our enclave, known as English Village, was constructed as a multifamily planned community in what was once a tree-lined “streetcar suburb.” The trees still line our avenue, but the streetcars are long gone.

Designed by Richmond architect Bascom Rowlett, each of the 17 attached two-and-a-half story townhomes are formed in the shape of a U around a central courtyard. At the time, Rowlett’s plan was quite innovative for Richmond, indeed, for the entire country. English Village was designed as a cooperative planned community—one of the earliest such ventures in the United States, which is why it qualified for architecturally significant status. It is, in fact, considered a precursor of today’s condominiums, and  the concept was quite radical. (Most cooperative housing in America was built for the working class, with collective ownership of the property. English Village differed markedly in that it was built for the upper middle class, with each owner holding a clear title to his own property.)

I wish I had access to the actual sales prospectus. The document on file with the National Registry provides only this delicious snippet:

[Enjoy] the new lifestyle … While enjoying all the amenities, including [the] privacy of single house living with an atmosphere of social respectability.

An atmosphere of social respectability. A statement to do Downton Abbey’s Dowager Countess proud, what? Yes. Jolly good.

All of this history is interesting, but it doesn’t help much when you’re standing in the middle of your living room with what once was your ceiling clumped in dusty piles around your feet.

Luckily, we have an ace team on the job—Richmond’s own N. Chasen and Son. Here’s a picture of their head carpenter assessing the damage.

As I write this, we are into Day Seven of the calamity. Drywall has been installed and taped, and mud applied. Here’s how the ceiling looks right now:

The project should be completed in a few more days. And by the look of things, this new ceiling should last at least 85 years. We won’t be around to appreciate its longevity, but if anyone living in our English Village abode is reading this post in 2097, please do me a favor and post a comment. A picture would be nice, too!

Here’s the finished look of our living room, showing the beautiful work done by N. Chasen and Son. You’d never know the ceiling was once on the floor! They did a great job painting the room, too. We used Benjamin Moore’s “Ice Mist” on the walls—a lovely white with just a kiss of blue in the undertones. This color will be my default for future rooms that beg to be white.

LR_finished_POVentryIMG_1609

A note to the reader: No compensation or obligation by N. Chasen and Son was expected, and none has been extended, in conjunction with this blog post. I’m just a satisfied customer and glad to give them a shout-out.

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You Say Tomato, I Say Tabouli …

20 Wednesday Jun 2012

Posted by themidlifesecondwife in Food for Thought

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Cook, Food, Herbs, Home, Middle East, Olive oil, recipes, Salads, Tomato

… or Tabooley. Or Tabbouleh. No matter how you spell it, this Middle Eastern salad is an incredibly delicious and refreshing addition to any summer meal. Vine-ripened tomatoes are abundant in Central Virginia now, and I’m looking forward to making my first tabouli of the season to accompany baked kibbee, the recipe for which I’ve already published on the blog. I took this photo last summer, before I had any idea I’d be a blogger. I suppose I could postpone this until I make it again and can take new pictures, but I hate to keep you waiting. So, as I’ve been known to say in my kitchen, “please pardon the mess.”

This recipe is a hybrid of what I could decipher from my Lebanese grandmother’s handwriting and an old community cookbook from Ohio. My best advice to you as you plan your shopping list is to make sure you’re buying fresh, vine-ripened tomatoes. If you can get them from a local farm stand or farmer’s market, that’s even better. In my list of culinary sins, nothing is worse than serving up a bland, pale, pithy tomato that traveled thousands of miles to land on your plate. And that’s today’s sermonette from the MSW. Now go, shop, prepare, and enjoy!

Tabouli

2 cups bulgur wheat
3 cups boiling water
3 teaspoons Kosher salt
1/2 to 3/4 cup lemon juice (approximately 4 lemons)
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil
3 bunches (2 cups) fresh mint leaves, chopped (I prefer using spearmint)
3 bunches fresh, curly parsley, chopped
2 bunches green onions, including tops, chopped
8 large tomatoes, cut into chunks
additional salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

Pour boiling water over bulgur wheat, cover, and let rest for 30 minutes. Meanwhile, using a food processor, chop mint leaves. Remove from processor bowl with a scraper and place in a large bowl. Add parsley to the food processor and repeat the procedure, scraping the chopped parsley into the bowl with the mint. Using either the processor or a sharp knive, chop the green onions with tops and add them to the mint and parsley mixture. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

After the bulgur wheat has been soaking in the water for 30 minutes, squeeze handfuls of it over an empty bowl, until all the excess water has drained away. Next,  add the lemon juice, olive oil, and salt, stir well, and refrigerate the wheat/dressing mixture for two to three hours.

Once the wheat mixture has chilled, add—in batches—the mint, parsley, and green onions. Cut up the tomatoes and add those to the mix. By this point I’ve abandoned all decorum and use my bare (very clean) hands to mix the salad. Adjust the flavor to your taste—additional salt, some freshly ground pepper, and perhaps more lemon juice.

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Pure Light Candles are ‘Naturally Elegant’

21 Wednesday Dec 2011

Posted by themidlifesecondwife in House and Garden, Indulgences

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Candle, Decor, Environment, Fragrance oil, Home, Life, Shopping, Soy candle, Sustainability

A few of John Erikson's handmade soy wax candles, with their reindeer friends

John Erikson of Richmond, Virginia, has been burning the candle at both ends lately. As the one-man operation behind Pure Light Candles, that’s understandable; December is his busy season. But if burning the candle at both ends could be construed as exhibiting a flagrant disregard for the environment, then we have to find him another metaphor. Erikson strives to leave behind the smallest carbon footprint imaginable in the production of his soy wax candles—he is as concerned with the environmental impact of his work—and the “butterfly economics” of his cottage industry—as he is with the candles’ visual and olfactory aesthetics. His philosophy, he says, is “naturally elegant.”

My husband John and I met him this fall at the South of the James Farmers’ Market, where candlemaker John’s display—and the fragrance emanating therefrom—immediately caught my attention.

Pure Light Candles, on display at the South of the James Farmers' Market in Richmond

Some months later, I visited Erikson’s kitchen “workshop” to observe his process and examine his products. The former is exemplary; the latter, exquisite.

What makes Erikson’s candles unique is their green aspect, despite the fact that white is the only color they come in. (“There is no such thing as a natural candle dye,” says Erikson, which is why he lets the natural color of the wax shine through.)

As he explained it to me, most commercially purchased candles are made from petroleum-based paraffin. “You’ll never find an environmentally-friendly product with the word petroleum in it.” Erikson told me that the first time he ever made a candle, he used paraffin. A cloud of sooty dust emerged, staining the wall of his kitchen. That experience, along with his daughter’s environmental activism (she’s an actress living in California), was a critical turning point in the development of his philosophy. He established Pure Light Candles in 2005.

Erikson crafts his candles from 100-percent natural soy wax, a product that is biodegradable, non-toxic, and burns at a lower temperature than paraffin, thus providing longer burn times and therefore greater value to the consumer. Soy wax also burns cleanly, leaving minimal wax residue on the sides of the jars, and none of the black sooty residue, known as “ghosting,” that John experienced during his fledgling attempt. Nor do soy wax candles release noxious petroleum wax pollutants. And, since the soy wax he uses comes from homegrown soybeans, the enterprise supports American farmers while minimizing transport offsets; he obtains his soy wax from a distributor in Durham, North Carolina, which ships via UPS and offers carbon credits.

I asked him if nationally-known candle companies use soy wax. Erikson says that soy doesn’t lend itself well to mass-production; it’s “a small-batch wax,” and his production line is minimal; he makes only four to six candles at a time. So if you see a national brand marketing a soy candle, be aware, says Erikson, that a candle can be marketed as soy if it contains 30-percent of the product; the remainder is paraffin, which is a byproduct of refined diesel fuel.

I then asked him why he doesn’t make his candles out of beeswax, another environmentally friendly material.

“There are problems with beeswax,” says Erikson. “We have a huge shortage of candle beeswax here in the U.S., so a lot of it is imported from Asia,” a practice that runs counter to his “think globally, buy locally philosophy.” Everything that goes into a Pure Light candle is made in America.

“Beeswax also does not accept fragrance well,” he adds. “It’s good to be natural, but people buy a candle for the fragrance. When you burn a beeswax candle, you can smell the beeswax. It’s also expensive, and I have to keep my eye on the bottom line.”

About those fragrances: Erikson makes candles in as many as 50 different scents; several are designed with the season in mind. The week before Christmas, when I stopped by, he was preparing a batch of candles for a holiday shipment. I watched him create several “Pomegranate” candles, and the scent was exquisite. The Internet can do many things, but I’ve yet to see a software program that can recreate the sensory experience of fragrances. Too bad. I would love to share that with you here. The closest I can come is to list a few of his fragrances:

Blue Ridge Rain
Cashmere
Chesapeake Bay Breeze
Clean Cotton
Cranberry Marmalade
English Gardens
Holidays by the Hearth
James River Storm Watch
Raspberry Sangria
White Tea and Ginger (I’m burning this now as I write…ahhhh….)
Williamsburg Lavender

A candle’s fragrance is its essence. Here too, Erikson adheres to his environmentally friendly philosophy by using only botanical oils, which he obtains from a U.S. distributor in Kentucky.

Erikson tells me that there are two types of botanical oils: essential oils, which derive from a singular substance (lavender, for example, is cold-pressed to yield lavender oil), and fragrance oils, which do have some chemical additives. “No fragrance oil is 100-percent natural,” says Erikson. “But that’s not all bad. I avoid the ones that are—phthalates, for example, are known carcinogenics and banned in California. Manufacturers are not required to disclose that a fragrance oil contains phthalates, but they are if you ask them. You have to know to ask. I’m trying to create as natural a product as possible, so I ask.”

As for the rest of his materials, he uses only 100-percent cotton wicks. Some manufacturers add other substances, such as zinc, to stiffen a wick. Erikson doesn’t do business with them. Moreover, all wicks, he tells me, have to be primed with wax; most are primed with—you guessed it—paraffin. Erikson has his wicks specially made by a soy-wick manufacturer.

His glass apothecary jars are made in the U.S. by the Libbey Glass Company. He chose their glass for several reasons, with safety being at the forefront. “An enclosed candle is the safest you can buy,” he says, “but all glassware is not the same. Most of the imported glassware, if you look at thickness, is half as thick as what I use. I also found that this had a substantial base, which is where glassware usually fails. I’m buying a local product that I feel is safe, and that looks good, too.”

He keeps labeling to a minimum, for aesthetic as well as environmental reasons, and employs an ingenious recycling incentive program: when your candle has given you all it’s got to give, wash it out with soap and water and return the empty container to him. He’ll pay you a dollar, and he’ll re-use it in a future production cycle.

Now that, my friends, is a lovely light.

If you would like to purchase something beautiful for your home and do something beautiful for the environment at the same time, Pure Light Candles are available for order by phone or e-mail, and will ship outside the Commonwealth of Virginia. You may contact John Erikson at 804-934-9171 or erikson_john@yahoo.com. Pure Light Candles doesn’t have a website, but can be found on Facebook.

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Where’s Home for the Holidays When You’re Divorced?

21 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by themidlifesecondwife in Food for Thought, Relationships and Family Life

≈ 102 Comments

Tags

Christmas, Divorce, Family, Holidays, Home, Life, Remarriage, Thanksgiving

The turkey I prepared in 2010, when my stepsons celebrated an early Christmas with us.

When my first marriage ended, the day before Thanksgiving in 2003, I took a deep breath upon returning from court and began meal preparations for my first major holiday on my own. I set myself (and my raw nerves) to the comforting task of marinating pears for a compote, then started on the bread-sage stuffing. Why? Because for as long as I can recall, I’ve cooked elaborate dinners for the holidays.

During my first marriage, our family shared hosting duties for the holidays, but the times when it wasn’t my turn didn’t mean I was off the hook. I contributed side dishes and desserts to the groaning board so the burden of cooking an entire meal wasn’t borne by the host. That, however, was all in the past. My son would join me, and my cousin, for my first post-divorce Thanksgiving. That was it. Taking the smallest turkey I’d ever roasted out of the oven, I marveled at its lightness. And cried.

One month later, at Christmas, I said goodbye to all that and performed a variation on the theme. My cousin brought her nephew, my son came with his girlfriend at the time, and I rounded out the rest of the table with a young violinist from the Ukraine, who was studying at the conservatory where I worked. She brought her mother along. And, for the first time in my entire life, turkey was not featured on the table. Instead I prepared a standing rib roast from one of Ina Garten‘s Barefoot Contessa cookbooks.

This was my new family dynamic, and the start of a new tradition.

It can’t have been easy for my son, who at the time was in his early 20s. He was now required to divide all of his holidays in two; the first half of the day was spent with his father, the latter half with me. Those mornings and early afternoons dragged on so! It seemed strange to be alone in the house on a holiday. I probably hugged him far too long and far too tightly when he arrived. But so it went, each year, until the year I remarried.

My new husband had taken a job in Virginia, and I was now living nearly 500 miles from where I grew up and lived my entire life—and 500 miles from my son. Whereas holidays had presented a mere logistical inconvenience, now the geographical stakes were raised to challenging heights. Would I be able to spend at least one holiday with him? And what of my husband’s sons? How and when would we see them? The oldest is in graduate school in Illinois; the youngest had just started college in Ohio.

As it turned out, I wasn’t able to see my son at all that first year after our move. His work schedule simply didn’t allow him enough time off to make the trip. I cannot tell you how that rocked me. Things fared a bit better with the other boys; they drove to Virginia the second week of December to have an early Christmas with us. But again, what orbits they had to navigate! The eldest and his girlfriend drove from Illinois to Ohio to spend time with his mother and brother. Then, with his brother in tow, he drove from Ohio to Virginia. Then it was back around and up to Ohio to drop his brother off, and westward to St. Louis, so his girlfriend could see her family. And back to Illinois. It was like a 1930s movie, where a map of the United States with moving, dotted arrows illustrated a character’s travel progression from Point A to Point Whatever. The mind reels.

Last year, John and I decided that it was our turn to give the kids a break and do the driving. We left for Ohio early in the morning the day before Thanksgiving. Once there, we stayed with my son and his girlfriend. John’s sons joined us the next day, and we all enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner together in a suburb of Cleveland. In a restaurant. For Thanksgiving.

That took some getting used to. Never in my life had I set foot in a restaurant on a major holiday; it went against every cooking and baking gene in my body. I had always felt nothing but sadness for Ralphie and his family in A Christmas Story, forced to eat Christmas dinner at a Chinese restaurant after the Bumpus hounds devoured their turkey.

The meal was traditional enough and tasty enough, I suppose. But that was hardly the point. The goal was to be together: one scattered family gathered for a few brief hours around a table laden with food that might (or might not) allow us (allow me?) to pretend we were in the old homestead, however new that homestead might be.

It was more than enough that we were together and healthy.

It’s true, as the old song says, that there’s no place like home for the holidays. But when you create a new family, and circumstances toss your family hither and yon with no viable base of operations, it helps to remember another song—one that can serve to brighten your thoughts with a clarity that allows comfort and joy to shine through:

Home is where the heart is.

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Latitude Adjustments

29 Monday Aug 2011

Posted by themidlifesecondwife in Remarriage, Transitions

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

Family, Home, Life, Love, Marriage, Oberlin Ohio, Relationships and Family Life, Romance, Transitions, Women

Here it is—the essay that started the blog. This originally appeared as “Latitude Change Brings Attitude Change” in the Richmond Times-Dispatch on April 3, 2011.

Geographically speaking, 10 degrees separate Oberlin, Ohio (82˚) from Richmond (72˚), at least on the longitudinal scale. In 54 years—my entire life—I never lived anywhere other than northeast Ohio. Then, last September, I moved to Richmond. On the life-experience scale, the degrees separating my old life from this new one might as well be 10,000.

Here’s what happened: I fell in love.

But wait, there’s more

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