All posts by GretchenJoanna

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About GretchenJoanna

Orthodox Christian, widowed in 2015; mother, grandmother. Love to read, garden, cook, write letters and a hundred other home-making activities.

Steel and Magnets

home, science,

I had been debating about whether to load up my new refrigerator with art held on by magnets. I didn’t want to risk scratching the stainless steel surface, so I had halfway decided not to decorate it. Then when sorting through all the stuff I’ve stashed here and there over the last few months, I found the darling butterfly magnets that Herm gave me for my birthday, in anticipation of my new kitchen. They have a soft backing, so I ran downstairs to put them on. But they wouldn’t stick at all!

Mr. Glad had just come home from work, and we puzzled together as he saw me try to attach them to the microwave instead. Nope. They don’t hold on there, either. Isn’t steel magnetic? Made of iron? Is this really stainless steel, or some knock-off? The magnets do stick to my powerful range fan hood, so there they sit, brightening up the back of the stove.

When I googled this subject the first article I found was written on a blog of stories by journalism grad students at Columbia University, and stated that some stainless steel appliances are not magnetic because they “are made of high-grade stainless steel and don’t contain iron.” What?? I don’t know very much, but I always thought steel was made of iron. So I went on searching.

From what I read here, it appears that various metals can be added to the steel (that is, yes, mostly iron) in small amounts, to make it rust-free. One of the metals that often goes into the alloy is nickel, which also alters the steel in a way that negates the magnetic quality. I’m guessing that my range hood doesn’t have nickel. But it does have butterflies.

 

Nicknames

family

This blog is not primarily about my family. It must be hard enough for my children to have a mother who makes herself as public as I already do, without me writing about them to the world. But they do frequently fill my thoughts and appear in my stories of travels or homeschooling, so I need to call them something. I’ve never been good at coming up with nicknames, but this week I made a huge effort so that I could get away from the annoying initials and still tell about our summer reunions.

I hereby announce the updated (all grownup) children’s nicknames: the boys, Pathfinder and Soldier; the girls Pearl, Pippin and [later update] Kate. Perhaps I’ll need to update them again in the future, but I like these one-word names. My beloved husband [I have been calling Mr. Glad for some time]. Some nicknames for the children’s spouses are at the ready when needed.

The photo is of Pippin’s back yard where we enjoyed dinner last month on our way to join up with the rest of the clan in Oregon. Oregon Part 2 post is in the works, but blogging has been set aside a bit while I have my post-busyness crash, in the wake of Pearl and her tribe departing. I’m having my R&R by cleaning drawers, washing dishes, and ironing. Only after I get some real energy back can I do the kind of work that requires serious decision-making, the kind that is needed when thinking about where to hang the pictures on the walls, or how to write a book review.

Next week I get to have Pippin and her baby here for a few days. The little guy is scooting around on the floor nowadays, so I better add sweeping to my list of happy homemaking chores.

Oregon – Part 1

family, mountains, nature, travel, wildflowers

The aroma of corn tortillas fresh off the griddle filled the air around the warm rocks that rose jaggedly above the Crooked River. No brown-skinned woman was bending over a fire anywhere in the vicinity, but my grandchildren were wading in the shallows, above which billows of lacy white flowers swayed in the wind that puffed through the canyon. I put my nose in the flower clouds and sniffed; the delicious smell was coming from them, pictured here with wild roses.

It was just one of many richly faceted scenes from the last week, which Mr. Glad and I spent with several of our children and grandchildren in ever-changing groupings as individuals came and went as they were able. Oldest daughter whom I will nickname Pearl, and her husband and four frisky kids (who often are also lambs) flew from the East and rented a house big enough for a passel of kin, in central Oregon.

During the week at any given moment you might have found two or three, or nine or eleven, GJ relations lying on couches or in beds reading, or learning from Grandpa how to play cribbage, flipping pancakes for the whole hungry tribe, or bicycling around the neighborhood that was vast and strangely accessible for being strange. The older children could ride to the store for a gallon of milk and take the opportunity to pick up a bag of candy, too.

blue flax

This is a high and dry country, so our vacation house sat at around 4500 feet elevation. The spectacular Smith Rock was not far away, where I enjoyed the flowers like this blue flax, and white yarrow, while several of our boy-and-menfolk hiked a figure 8 up and around the rocks and got views of a string of long-spent volcanic peaks, usually with lots of snow still frosting at least the tops, up and down the Cascade Range.

I’m pretty certain that the aromatic flowers were of Poison Hemlock, Conium maculatum, in the carrot family, of which the Oregon Dept. of Agriculture says, “Several deaths of livestock and humans are attributed each year to this species.”

To be continued. 

Spices and Summer

family, food and cooking, home, travel

This summer is very busy:

1) We are pretty much finished with the actual remodel work on the kitchen and downstairs, so now we have to move everything back into place.  We knew there were some young men in a family down the street, so B. and I went to see about hiring one to help move furniture, and they invited us in for a visit. Their house has the same floor plan as ours, and their kitchen still has the old dark brown laminated particle board cabinets! Coming back home to the light and cheery changes here made me very thankful.

My newly revised kitchen has some pull-out trays in one cabinet, perfect for storing my undisciplined collection of spices and other seasonings. Now I can see clearly what I have, without having to stoop or kneel on the floor to look in the back of a low cabinet. Just in time for old age! Many of my odds and ends of containers of spices and herbs already had labels on the top, so I only had to add a few more to complete that convenient aspect of the display. It seems to be the only thing all the bottles have in common. You know you can click on the photo and make it larger if you want to see my weird library of flavors.

The upper tray is shallower so I put the shorter containers there, alongside my box of teabags that I bring out for guests to choose from. On both trays I tried to have the spices on the left and the herbs on the right, but I wasn’t very strict about it. Since I don’t make gallons of soup every week anymore, the large containers of seasonings aren’t necessary, and I will convert to smaller ones gradually as I use them up. It was buying these ingredients in one-pound packages through our food co-op that led to keeping generous quantities. Two or three times kind friends have given me collections of spices as gifts, which only encourages happy expansion.

2) We are going on the second extended-family vacation of the summer, leaving this weekend, this time to an area near Bend, Oregon called Sunriver, where daughter Pearl’s family from the East are renting a house for as many of us as can make it. We’ll stay most of a week, and have plans for visiting Crater Lake, hiking, river rafting, swimming and fishing–though not all of us want to do all those things.

3) After the Oregon fun, Pearl and some of those grandchildren are staying at our house for a few more days. Just in time we are getting boxes and downstairs furniture out of the bedrooms upstairs so they won’t have to camp midst the chaos. They won’t care if the pictures aren’t back on the walls; the swimming pool is still in its place.

4) I have been reading a lot, since I discovered that some books actually do stay open on the treadmill shelf at the gym, and do not fall off. The Cairo Trilogy was like that, all three volumes just the right size and shape, and old enough that the binding wasn’t too tight. If only I could write reviews while walking fast uphill, but just underlining passages is risky enough. If I’m lucky I just end up with very wiggly lines all through the book, but occasionally I drop the pencil or the book and make an embarrassing ruckus.

There is so much I want to muse about while writing blogs on these books. I hope the summer isn’t too busy for that.

5) Son P. is getting married this summer! He is the 4th child, and the 4th to get married. I started to say they have gone down in order, but I should say that they have gone up to the altar in order. I think this couple won’t have an altar, though, as their wedding will be outdoors. We are as thrilled as can be about our soon-to-be daughter-in-law, whom we have known since she was a darling baby. Glory to God!