Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Better Food, Cleaner Dishes and No Spiders

We sort of have this thing about appliances around here.  Way back at the very dawning of this blog I wrote a post about our hunt for, and purchase of, a washing machine.  It tells the tale of our complete ignorance and relative incompetence when it comes to making an educated purchase of such contraptions.

But it's not the issue of having to choose one that keeps us from buying a dishwasher or microwave.  Money isn't the problem, either (because we have bags of money in the basement waiting for us to decide what to spend it on)  (don't tell the neighbors).  No, we are just prejudiced against these appliances.

I don't like food out of the microwave.  As a little girl my best friend had a microwave WAY before the rest of the world did and we would stick a piece of Wonder bread in there and relish each bite of the steaming, rubbery, food-like substance that came out 15 seconds later.  But I seem to have outgrown rubbery food and become a disliker of slimy cheese.

I like my cheese crispy.  I like my hot-dogs browned (and un-exploded).  I like my frozen dinners -- I don't like my frozen dinners.  Everything a microwave can do, a stove-top or oven can do better, in my opinion (except soften butter).  So we haven't had a microwave for 11 years.

Greg is strongly averse to dishwashers.  "They don't work well", he says.  "They're not worth the trouble" he says.  And I take his word for it about not being worth the trouble because he's something of an expert, since he washes about !% of the dirty dishes around here.  So, we don't have a dishwasher (actually we do in the downstairs kitchen but we've never used it).

We also don't have a drier, but that's more for reasons of nobody-in-Europe-has-a-drier.  Plus 11 years of not using one has made me a little afraid of them (although I miss them dearly at the same time).

In conclusion, the other morning Evie came into my room and told me there was a spider.  I stepped out of my bedroom and found this waiting to jump down on the next person who dared descend the stairs below him:

For comparison, the light underneath is about as long as my humerus.  (I always give measurements in bone lengths)  (especially while talking about spider size around Halloween)  This guy was definitely bigger than my patella.  (glad he never got anywhere near my patella, though, let me tell you!)

It was no problem though, because Greg came out and sucked him up with the vacuum.  Because we HAVE a vacuum.  We are, in fact, firm believers in the vacuum cleaner.

8 comments:

Barbaloot said...

I don't know which is more disgusting---the microwaved wonder bread or the patella sized spider!

Erin said...

Dishwashers work a lot better then they used to. The one we have here is awesome. I don't rinse stuff out at all and it always has come out so clean. But if you had one of those super small ones, I agree that it may not be worth the hassle.

Glad you could have a little bit of Halloween cheer in your house! That spider is amazing!

Unknown said...

You are so right about microwaves--though they do boil water rather well also. And the vacuum cleaner was really the only way to dispose of that spider. though it may be spinning a web in the vacuum bag right now.

melissabastow said...

I don't know if I'm more emotionally scarred from that super creepy spider picture or the fact that you have to wash all your dishes by hand. I think washing dishes by hand is considered torture in some cultures. And by some cultures I mean at my house.

Laura said...

I'm glad that you have a brave husband to kill spiders for you. I'm afraid I'd be on my own with one that big, especially on the ceiling, that just freaks my husband out (don't let him know I told anyone though). And the dishwasher? Yeah, we couldn't do without it or our marriage would be in serious danger.
And maybe you don't eat leftovers, but how do you reheat things? or warm up baby food? I'm afraid I could never live without a microwave either; (although I did when I was in Poland) I mean, I agree that cooking things in the microwave is gross --like quesadillas, or corn dogs, or chicken nuggets, and I would never do that, but still, it's so nice (not to mention quicker) to not have to turn on the oven in the middle of the summer just to warm a single portion of lasagna (wait, maybe you don't eat lasagna) ..I mean, a small bowl of... bigos? Okay, actually I couldn't think of any Polish foods that you would want to reheat that couldn't be done on the stove. Basically, I'm just spoiled.
Kudos to you for doing without. You'll do much better than the rest of us in a post-apocalyptic society where there is no electricity.

Melanie Jacobson said...

That is seriously gnarly.

Lara Neves said...

Bigger than your patella? Yikers! We get some big spiders, but thankfully we haven't had too many yet this year. I'm hoping they all freeze to death before they find their way in. Blech.

TheOneTrueSue said...

HEEBIE JEEBIE!

I will not sleep tonight now. Yikes.