When chatting with strangers...

[Mick_VT]

Note: Housekeeping split off the appliance morph on this thread into it's own topic in the appliance area

[nhguy]

I was in my old town for a Historical Society Christmas Party. I talked to to a few folks about our new house project, they asked how it was going which broke the ice. I ran into the new owners of the two houses I restored there, this time I introduced them to one another which was fun. Out of the 300 members only two others do any amount of their own restoration. Most just hire it our for big money with various local craftsmen.

[Texas_Ranger]

on to a free king size mattress this guy found on craig's list (yuck!)

Come to think of it, this isn't any different from sleeping in a hotel bed, is it? Yet it still feels strange.

[phil]

here they charge 50 bucks for a mattress or box spring to be dumped. It's not really a good law. now they appear in all sorts of places like parks or a back alley near you, because it's a lot for some to pay. It would work better if they did it like pop bottles where you pay a deposit and redeem the deposit when you take it for recycling. I wish they could do that with plastic. make it a buck a pound to produce, put a false value on it like a pop can, then it would get recycled and even if it gets dumped in a foolish place it would have value so people would collect it for the refund. also excessive packaging would become more sensible as it would add to the product cost so to be competitive a company would shy away from bubble packs and use cardboard boxes instead.

[Lily left the valley]

As we were leaving spouse's last meetup with the FTHB program here, I casually asked if anyone who worked there might be an old home lover, and the look of near horror on the young lady's face made me sad. She managed to utter a polite "Not that I know of," and I promptly dropped the subject. I should have realized when I was talking earlier about being so happy to find a home with all original wood windows that she was eyeing me as if trying to decide I was a loon. At the time I thought it was curiosity about restoration.

Phil, one thing you'll often see in homes for sale around here (especially REOs) is a pile of mattresses in the attic for the very same reason, except I heard they recently boosted it to $75 or $100 now, depending on the size.

Recycling is a love hate thing for me. I recycle as much as I have to, refuse when I can so there's less I have to, and now that we're back in a state with returnable fees, we always turn them back in so we don't lose a single nickel, even though it eats up time standing at the machine we could spend elsewhere.

Having said that, I agree that businesses need to be pressured more about excessive packaging, or at least taking up your notion of making every last bit have a redeemable to it. As more and more "disposable" packaging was introduced, all the businesses did was shove the burden on the consumer. Mostly in the name of "freshness" and "convenience".

When I was a kid, Charlie Chips were still available, and when the delivery guy came around with your new order, you'd give him back the tins from before. I have one tin we wound up with when the deliveries stopped, breaking the cycle. It's the perfect size for pizelles.

[nhguy]

The company we buy packing peanuts from switched to making them with potato starch a few years ago. I think they realized eventually they would be responsible for recycling the styrofoam ones. These new ones just dissolve when wetted down. Our town here in northern NH recycles all plastics except styrofoam, there's company in Groveton NH that turns the plastics into heating oil. My grandmother put pizelles in 5 pound coffee cans, we have her pizelle maker and the recipe in her handwriting.

[JacquieJet]

The company we buy packing peanuts from switched to making them with potato starch a few years ago. I think they realized eventually they would be responsible for recycling the styrofoam ones. These new ones just dissolve when wetted down. Our town here in northern NH recycles all plastics except styrofoam, there's company in Groveton NH that turns the plastics into heating oil. My grandmother put pizelles in 5 pound coffee cans, we have her pizelle maker and the recipe in her handwriting.

Those starch packing peanuts are so fun... whenever we get something packed with them, my son loves to dissolve them in water! Great idea!

And I have a huge love for manuscript cookbooks and handwritten recipes... how wonderful that you have that piece of your grandmother's legacy. I have a habit of picking up the odd old "church lady" cookbook... there are some wonderful recipes and notes in the margins of those pages that I treasure. Although my favourite of them is kind of, well, controversial... it was printed in Dickinson, N. Dakota by the Women's Guild of the First Congressional Church in 1950, and on the cover is a cartoon of a "Black Mammy"... yikes! I just tell myself that it was a different time and I just enjoy what is in the pages in between!

[nhguy]

There's website I have bookmarked on my other computer that has hundreds of historic cookbooks going back hundreds of years. I made one called Birds Nest Pudding this week, we had lots of extra milk to use up. I miss cooking in our brick oven in the last two houses. The Indian Pudding never tastes the same in a conventional oven. I'll post the link to those cookbooks when I am back home and not in the office. My sister in law took all the handwritten recipes from their family and over a couple of years turned it into a cook book for the family member one Christmas.

[JacquieJet]

There's website I have bookmarked on my other computer that has hundreds of historic cookbooks going back hundreds of years. I made one called Birds Nest Pudding this week, we had lots of extra milk to use up. I miss cooking in our brick oven in the last two houses. The Indian Pudding never tastes the same in a conventional oven. I'll post the link to those cookbooks when I am back home and not in the office. My sister in law took all the handwritten recipes from their family and over a couple of years turned it into a cook book for the family member one Christmas.

Oh wow, I don't think I've ever even seen a brick oven! Must have been something!!
If you don't mind, I would LOVE that link! Thank you!

[Lily left the valley]

I have some hand written recipes from my Nana, and I think I still have one that's actually handwritten from my mom somewhere. I also have hand scribbled recipes in margins in one of my cookbooks, and have a few written from an ex years ago. I also went through a stage where I tried every cookie recipe in my Fannie Farmer cookbook one at a time each Sunday, then made notes about them after.

JacquieJet, I'll see your Mammy and raise you my Scandinavian cookbook with recipes for whale meat (From the index: in brown sauce, cooked like venison, other uses).

That same book has directions as to how to freeze a bottle of Akvavit in ice.