Quite Like, Rather Dislike: Round 5

Quite Like: The Hot Water Bottle

When Hannah first told me about this, I was a little skeptical.  A plastic bottle filled with hot water to sleep with?  It sounds like something I would have if I was camping in sub-zero temperatures.  People, this is the best marriage saver since the GPS.  It's amazing.  This one came with a fur lining to prevent burns, but I don't use it because it keeps some of the heat from getting onto my toesies.  This little love is going to get me through many, many cold nights.  Nathan prepares it for me before bed while I brush my teeth.  He still doesn't know how to make my tea properly (1/2 a teaspoon of Splenda, splash of milk, tea bag out before serving), but he does a bang up job getting this baby ready for me.  He's officially been relieved of his warming-my-icy-feet-at-night duties, and he couldn't be happier.

Quite Dislike: No garlic in a jar (and other such conveniences)

I spend so much more time now doing food preparation than I used to.  Peeling and mincing garlic is one of my least favorite new activities.  I used to by the monster jar of the stuff and just get a spoonful out any time I wanted to jazz up a meal.  Yeah.  They don't have that here.

I made my neighbor Katie's onion casserole when we first moved into our new house because I found all of the ingredients on my first trip to the store alone: onions (they were the size of golf balls, but an onion is an onion), bacon (good stuff), Parmesan cheese (which I had to grate because the prepackaged stuff was expensive and looked old), and Ritz crackers (just haphazardly thrown in a small box, not in sleeves).  I originally planned to make this as an appetizer, but I quickly decided to make it the main meal because it took so long to make!  Basically you just layer sautéed onions, chopped cooked bacon, cheese, and crushed crackers to your liking and then bake it at 350 until it's heated through.  It's easy peasy and really fast in an American kitchen.  

Not in my old barn kitchen.  First of all, I had very little counter space.  Like maybe three square feet.  Second of all, I had one frying pan.  Third of all, the golf ball onions took forever to chop.  I think I did about 20.  Fourth of all, there wasn't enough room in the pan for all of them at once, so I had to cook them in three batches.  Fifth of all, I only had one mixing bowl to keep the cooked onions in, which took up half the counter space.  Sixth of all, I had only one decently sized cutting board, so I had to rotate using it for chopping onions, slicing bacon, and grating cheese, washing it between each use.  Seventh of all, there wasn't enough room on the counter for me to keep the chopped onions and grate the cheese and slice the bacon simultaneously, so I balanced the cutting board over the sink.  Eighth of all, the bacon took two turns in the pan.  Ninth of all, I feel like I made the recipe three times instead of just once.  Tenth of all, after almost two hours of work, it was tasty anyway.

I'm hoping I don't have to prepare a Thanksgiving meal in there anytime soon, but if I do, it'll be turkey soup in the crock pot.  I sure as heck won't be making an onion casserole.  On the plus side, such obstacles are bringing forth some ingenuity I didn't know I had. Necessity is the mother of invention.  Is that how the saying goes?