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The audacity of cloth napkins

March 21, 2011 by shaggerty

When we moved to Huntsville several years ago, one of the items I sent to the thrift store was a tabletop napkin holder. The reason? We hadn’t used paper napkins for years.

I was perusing a clearance area in Target one day in the late-’90s (old habits die hard) when I spotted a stack of cloth napkins. At the time, I associated cloth napkins with weddings and expensive dinners; my grandmother had a stack of them that I can only recall seeing neatly folded in her china cabinet, despite her penchant for spreading out white, hard-to-clean tablecloths for Sunday dinners.

Serendipitously, my shopping list included napkins that day, and a four-pack of marked-down cloth napkins cost just about exactly what a package of paper napkins would have cost. I tossed them in my cart, skipped the paper goods aisle and never bought paper napkins again. Those faded, solid blue napkins you see in the picture above? The original Haggerty cloth napkins, circa 1997.

Some argue that laundering cloth napkins actually makes them less environmentally friendly than paper napkins, which often can be composted or recycled. While this may be true for restaurants or other institutions that have entire laundry loads dedicated to cloth napkins, I would argue that most smaller families can simply toss a few cloth napkins in with an existing load of laundry, leading to little or no extra water use.

Also, cloth napkins last forever. I mean, not literally forever, but I’ve got a few that are going on 14 years. They’d probably last even longer if I line-dried them instead of tossing them in the dryer.

I imagine some people will complain about how difficult it is to remove other kinds of stains from cloth napkins; I certainly remember my grandmother spending untold amounts of time laboring to remove gravy stains from her white tablecloths. My answer to that argument: Don’t buy light-colored cloth napkins, and calm down about stains. If you’ve washed your cloth napkins, they’re clean enough to use again. A lingering stain doesn’t equal lingering germs. Just keep a special, extra-clean stack on hand to impress your guests.

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Indoor cats are much more difficult to lose

March 20, 2011 by shaggerty

Another week, another lost cat in my neighborhood. Seriously, if your cat has gotten shut in other people’s garages several times, or has a tendency to jump into vehicles, don’t you think you should keep him inside instead of letting him run around loose? Especially given our neighborhood’s tendency to attract the occasional coyote?

Inside cats rock. They live longer, healthier lives.

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Kickstart my heart

March 19, 2011 by shaggerty

Confession time: I saw more heavy metal/pop metal concerts in my youth than anyone could possibly imagine. So I couldn’t work up any amount of disappointment when the husband announced he had purchased Motley Crue tickets.

The last time I saw the Crue, Tommy Lee played the drums wearing only a tiny pair of underwear in a spinning drum cage. Fingers crossed.

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Why bigger cities beckon

March 18, 2011 by shaggerty

I want to see this stage adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, but of course I’m nowhere near said stage or the numerous U.S. venues featuring a live broadcast of the production.

Insert dramatic sigh.

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Do One Thing: Clearing space

March 17, 2011 by shaggerty

The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.

Day 75: Decision-making time on electronics boxes. Having the original boxes for things like televisions and computer monitors is handy when you move, but not so awesome when you have to live with closets full of boxes. I moved a few into the attic — there’s room since I don’t store anything else in the attic. I still have a few more boxes scattered under the guest bed and in my office closet, but at least some of them are out of sight.

Day 76: I needed to make room in the cabinet for my awesome new OXO angled measuring cup. I could have probably just squeezed it in, but I found it much more satisfying to toss out a few old jars and other miscellany.

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Do One Thing: Cat fur and kitchen emergencies

March 16, 2011 by shaggerty

The “Do One Thing” series chronicles my yearlong effort to tackle one project every day to organize my life and home.

Day 70: Vacuumed the living room furniture. Even though I’ve discovered that Yin, who died back in September, was responsible for approximately 75 percent of the cat hair in the house despite his smaller stature, Yang’s still doing a great job of dusting the house with light gray fur.

Saturday, Day 71: I finalized my ScanCafe order online. Thus ends to saga of the latest box of photos cleared out of the closet for digitization.

Day 72: Sometimes, minor household emergencies lead unexpected organizational advances. I noticed a weird dark stain on the bottom of one of the pantry shelves; upon further investigation, I found that a can of Pam cooking spray had let loose and dribbled for no telling how long, leaving an oblong puddle on the shelf.

I cleared everything off of the shelf, sopped up the puddle and sprinkled baking soda all over the stain to try to soak up some of the spray. After I vacuumed up the baking soda a few hours later and started putting things back, I rediscovered a dirty little secret of closet and cabinet organization: Once you’ve completely cleared out a space, it’s hard to fill it back up. I tossed a couple of bottles of miscellaneous spice blends that I had been gifted with a couple of years ago, along with some bouillon cubes that had expired in 2007 (although, you might ask yourself, can bouillon cubes ever really expire?) and a few other items.

It’s pretty fulfilling, overall, to know exactly what’s on a pantry shelf.

Day 73: Repeated Day 72’s pantry clean-out protocol with another pantry shelf. This take-no-prisoners organizational strategy is totally working for me.

Day 74: Started prepping for the mother-in-law’s upcoming visit by purchasing duvet clips for the new duvet and duvet cover I found for the guest room last week.

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Foolproof (so far) pecan pie

March 15, 2011 by shaggerty

So I’m told by people who know such things that I’m actually getting the most difficult part of pecan pie right. Apparently it can be quite a feat to get the filling to set up correctly.

Who knew?

I got my recipe for the filling from Baking Illustrated, a book published by the editors of Cook’s Illustrated. I don’t know what part of the recipe holds the mojo, but it’s been foolproof so far.

Here’s the recipe, complete with my notes. I would have posted it last night, but my 14-year-old, somewhat standoffish cat decided to dole out some affection, and you just don’t turn that kind of thing down.

Toast the pecans while you’re waiting for the oven to reach the baking temperature to partially bake the pie crust. This should take about seven to 10 minutes; watch the pecans carefully and stir a couple of times to prevent burning. Wait until they cool off before you chop them up or they’ll crumble. (Toasting nuts is nerve-wracking; I’ve found it’s best to undertoast rather than risk overtoasting.

You’ll want to have the pie filling mixture ready to go the minute the partially baked shell comes out of the oven. (This bit of timing might be the secret to the recipe.)

Pecan Pie

1 unbaked pie shell
6 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1 cup packed dark brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
3 large eggs
3/4 cup light corn syrup
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 cups pecans, toasted and chopped into small pieces

Follow the directions for partially baking the pie crust until it’s light golden brown.

In the meantime, melt the butter in a double boiler or in a heatproof bowl set over a saucepan of simmering water. Remove the bowl from the heat and stir in the sugar and salt with a wooden spoon. Beat in the eggs, then the corn syrup and vanilla. Return the bowl to the heat. Stir and cook until the mixture is shiny and registers about 130 degrees on an instant-read thermometer. Remove from heat and stir in the pecans.

Remove the prebaked pie shell from the oven and immediately turn the temperature down to 275 degrees. Pour the pie mixture into the hot pie shell.

Bake on the middle rack for 50 to 60 minutes, or until the pie looks set but still soft, like gelatin, when gently pressed with the back of a spoon. Place the pie on a rack and let it cool completely, for about four hours.

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Delicious Pi Day celebration

March 14, 2011 by shaggerty

Editor’s note: Here’s the link to the post outlining the filling recipe for this pie.

Here’s my official contribution to Mrs Dragon’s Pi Day celebration: pecan pie.

I used a Cook’s Country recipe for the pie crust this time. It made a “pat-in-the-pan” dough that allowed me to skip trying to roll dough into a circle.

I’m not good at making pretty foods, like perfectly rolled pie crusts.

The new recipe worked out well, although I didn’t get it patted down into the pan as evenly as I would have liked, and therefore ended up with a few underbaked spots.

Still delicious, however. The husband walked in and, smelling pie, looked puzzled. I said, “It’s Pi Day. 3-14. Get it?” He noted that he loves math, yet never knows the date. So it goes.

If I really wanted to impress you, I’d wait until the pie had been refrigerated overnight to shoot this photo, but here it is in all its crumbly glory.

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Lessons in bad customer service

March 13, 2011 by shaggerty

I completely forgot to complain about my seamstress experience in Friday’s post on my second-floor wall hanging.

Several weeks ago, I took the hanging to a local seamstress to see if she had any recommendations for the hanging process. I was thinking I should get the fraying sides hemmed and have the top sewn into a loop that I could slide a dowel through.

I’ve always been terrible at sewing projects, despite having a mother with mad sewing skills. I was willing to pay good money for help.

The seamstress for hire? Not helpful at all. And not very nicely unhelpful, either. She was so unpleasant that I determined there would be NO professional seamstresses involved in this project, even if I had to drag the hanging to Biloxi and get my mom to sew it for me.

At some point, however, the Internet reminded me that clip-on curtain hangers existed, and I determined that the hanging’s frayed edges would be safe in their relatively static position on the wall. No sewing, no dowels.

The lesson: Unpleasant customer service isn’t always going to work out for business, large or small, especially when alternatives are everywhere.

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Experimental drink WIN

March 12, 2011 by shaggerty

Framboise and ginger ale … I’m probably not the first to put together this concoction, but I’m feeling pretty innovative, nonetheless.

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