REMEMBERING WHAT HAS TO BE DONE TO CHANGE SEASONS - JUST NOT IN TIME

 Changing seasons -

Well fall came in – and rather quickly around here, though we are to have a burst of warm weather to come this week, before it leaves again.

Of course every year for the two big seasonal changes – to cold weather and to warm weather, of course – we plan to be ready to make the change, but never do.  

Our house has a hot air furnace, something neither of us grew up.  We both grew up in houses that had hot water heater – furnace heated water which then ran through thin pipes throughout the house and the  hot water doing so would heat the air in the rooms, finally returning back to the furnace to be heated again and return to heating the air in the room again…  With the furnace we have in our house hot air is blown through vents to the various rooms in the house and then after it cooled it is sucked back down to the furnace to be reheated…  Seems the same, but it is not.  

Both kinds of furnaces need to be cleaned for the heating season.  When husband was still working I would remember to call the company which delivers our fuel oil (same as diesel) to run the furnace to come and do the annual cleaning of the system.  In the most recent years (even before the pandemic) I seem to keep putting it off until when I call they are all booked and we get it cleaned late.  So, it has not yet been cleaned this heating season and by the time it is – April – the heating season will be either mostly or completely over – unless they have a cancellation (or actually enough cancellations) as we are on the wait list.  I put a reminder in my computer calendar to remember to call them in June starting next year (though if they don't service it until April, I will just skip next year's cleaning.  

Husband has some tall sticks (made for this purpose) which he sticks in the ground around our two driveway entrances to mark where they are so he can see where the ramps are when there is snow and it has to be cleared.  Last year – a terrible year for snow with many storms of deep snows – he had forgotten to put them in the ground – before it froze.  They never did go in deep enough to stand up properly.  So for this year I made a notation in my calendar in early September to remind him to put them in the ground.  I have put back the date by 2 weeks 4 times now as the weather is far from cold enough for the stakes not to go into the ground or to have snow (at least no snow of any sizable amount).  

And now the big problem that causes me to post about my lack of preparing for winter.  Our humidifier.  Since the house is heated by hot air the air in the house gets extremely dry which is not good for me (nose bleeds from dry nose) and not good for the house or furniture.  In the past we had a humidifier in our furnace, well at least in it's outgoing vent, to deal with this.  But several years ago we changed oil companies and the new one told us that a humidifier in the furnace system is NOT a good thing as it helps rust it.  I should mention that our furnace is original to our house which was built in 1949 so, depending on when the former owners (there were several of them) had the furnace humidifier put in – it has worked well and not, apparently rusted.  

So now we only have a humidifier in our bedroom as nighttime while sleeping is the major problem – at other times we can just put out some water if we find the air too dry.  This humidifier only runs while we are going to sleep, sleeping, and waking up.  It needs to be refilled from the kitchen sink about once, maybe twice a week.  We had the sink spout setup with a piece on the end of it that allowed us to snap a hose on it to fill the tank of the humidifier.  It is not a huge tank, but it is not small either – I can lift it when full much easier than husband so it tended to be my job to do so.  At the end of last winter the end of the sink spout cracked – so, due to the pandemic – the sink has tape around the spout, which means we can no longer snap the hose on it.  

In addition there comes the problem which I am in the midst of dealing with and caused me to write about it.  Gunk builds up in the tank, the filter and the plastic holder of the filter from minerals in the water.  It is suppose to be cleaned on a regular basis during the heating season as well as at the end of the season.  Not something we do.  Normally I clean it once a year as the heating season starts and I remember it needs to be done.  To clean it a mixture of water and vinegar has to be put in the tank and swirled around – then it sits in same.  Then the tank is rinsed out several times and hopefully both the gunk and the smell of vinegar are gone.  The base also needs to soaked in the same manner (without the swirling).  The filter – a web of very easily breakable thin metal – also needs to be soaked in the same manner.  As I started to write this post I was going to tell you that I know we bought vinegar for this and something else (in another season) which needs to be similarly cleaned – but I have searched my kitchen pantry closet, as well as my work table in our studio which is being used during the pandemic to hold cans, bottles, cleaning supplies, and paper goods in excess of what we normally have so it does not all fit where it should.  I looked through everything several times – I then gave up and just put in water in hopes that it would it at least loosen the “gunk” I can see.

We are looking for a replacement unit that will be easier to deal with and clean since we can not refill it from the bathroom sink until we can replace the sink spout.  Of course this process of finding a new humidifier has just started – a bit late in the season.  Husband is looking online on his computer (upstairs in our office) and came down to ask what model our unit is – perhaps he can at least find a new filter for it.  I mentioned to him that I am just soaking it all in plain water and have put vinegar on the list to buy tomorrow (shopping run – especially for Thanksgiving items).  He reminded me (that is the polite to say what he did) that we had bought a half gallon of it.  OH!  That means it is on the floor of the pantry closet – did not think to look there as looking for a quart or so bottle!  There is was.  So I paused mid writing this post to redo the soaking of all the parts in a proper mixture of 1 gallon water to 1 cup of vinegar.  Hopefully this will get rid of the gunk – though I doubt it.  

THOUGHT OF THE WEEK -

Try to remember to get needed seasonal things done on time.  Holiday decorating we remember to do, but this sort of grunge stuff we don't want to do and forget it has to be done until the last minute.

Most thing such as this I have a reminder in my computer calendar – set to repeat for 5 or 10 years at time – so I don't forget, but as everyone else I tend to use the “snooze” on the reminder – and not for minutes or hours.

ALMOST A FIRE

I was taught to be very careful when cooking, My mom’s stove (an electric one) had 1 2 3 heat settings on the dial.  I was taught never to walk out of the room if a burner was set at 2 or 3 and never to walk out of house when the stove was on (unless in either case someone else was in the room to watch the stove).  After we married, in our apartment we had a (natural) gas stove/oven combination which scared the heck out of me as I was always afraid that it would blow up.  I had to light the oven with a match to use it and was always sure that would be the last thing I did. (I actually once smelled gas outside the apartment as we were going out, called the gas company and when we got home later we had no stove.  I telephoned to have it turned back on per the note left.  When I asked, I was told that this all stemmed from a woman who had smelled the gas leak in the street and called them - hey, that was me.) 

When we bought this house there was a gas stove/range combination also.  I was not happy about that.  I was even more upset when I was sure I smelled gas when we were in the house for later visits before we bought it.  I was again right.  Rather than get the unit repaired, we bought an electric stove/oven unit and had the kitchen wired for it. 

Last night I made for dinner a pot pie we had bought on sale (we bought a few of them on sale - these are small production ones, not the major brands ones). I, of course, had forgotten to go down and put it in the oven to bake and therefore did so an hour late.  Husband really likes these pies so he did not complain. I bake it in an oven which sits on the counter (uses 1/3 of the counter space we have).  I carefully pulled the oven away from the wall and the stove and removed some plastic storage items sitting next to the oven to the other side of the kitchen.  I lined the pan with foil to keep it clean. 

In the interim while it was cooking I set the table, laid out our pills for dinner, etc. I would have thought nothing of walking out of the kitchen while the baking was going on, but in this case I stayed in the kitchen.

I made a can of soup for us to share as a first course.  I split the can of soup before cooking it and use two small pots to cook it.  It is worth cleaning the extra pot as it is much easier to split the soup as it comes out of the can and husband likes more water added to his soup than I do.  As the pie went into its last ½ hour of cooking, we sat down and had the soup.  After I poured the soup into our bowls, I put the pots on the stove.  The burners for the soup had been shut off and I also made sure not to put the pots on the burners they had been on as the burners were still hot (electric burners take a short while to cool down after they shut off).  As I said, I am very careful.

When the pie was done cooking, the countertop oven beeped and I took it out and put the pan on the stove - on the larger burner in the front on one side which was cold.  We had the very nice pot pie for dinner. 

After dinner I normally have a cup of tea for dinner. I normally cook it on the rear smaller burner, but I had moved the pots onto the baking pan and had put it on that rear burner, so I put the pot of water on the front, larger, burner to boil it and turned on the burner.  I went back to the kitchen table - 5-6 feet away - and started reading the newspaper (TV was on for husband) while I waited to hear the water boiling. 

It dawned on me that it was a bit long for the water to take to boil and something smelled wrong and notices small bits of black floating around the room.  I had turned on the wrong burner!!  I had turned on the burner with the pots and baking pan!  I shut it off and using pot holders moved the burner with the pots still on it to another burner that was cold.     

Luckily I caught it before we had an actual fire.  The stove was covered in soot and the pots looked burned.  The foil I had put in the baking pan was what seemed to be the black wisps flying around the room and the pan had a mark that went through it.  I never did have tea.  Husband suggested checking inside the oven to make sure all was okay there - I carefully put my hand on the front of it first to check that it was not hot before I opened it. 

When they cooled a tiny bit, I put the pots and the pan into a dish pan of cold water to finish cooling them off.  I was surprise that the pots and the pan (even the foil stuck to the pan) cleaned so easily.  The pan though rocked when I put it on a flat surface, distorted by the heat.  After I was done with pots and the pan, I started on the stove.  It cleaned up much quicker and easier than I thought it would.  I took apart the burner that all this happened on to clean it and found when I took out the drip pan that the foil liner in the drip pan had mostly melted.  This had been the source of the black wisps floating about.  I immediately pulled the liners in the other 3 pans - too dangerous (despite this not happening in the past 30 years) - and threw them out also. 

Today husband was able to mostly get the baking pan to stop rocking by leaning on it.  The kitchen no longer has a burning smell.  Unrelated to all of this, we took in Chinese food for dinner tonight (easy way to deal with Ash Wednesday for husband).

Something we realized later in the evening when I boiled water - with the same pot I started to do so to make tea - later in the evening for some hot cereal before bed. The smoke detector had not gone off.  (For a reminder of a past cooking incident that did set off the smoke detector see - http://wheredidileavethat.blogspot.com/2018/07/not-in-pennsylvania.html    )   

THOUGHT FOR THE WEEK -

Well two of them actually.  Be careful when cooking - even if you think that you are being careful - be more careful.

If you have foil drip pans in your stove - TAKE THEM OUT.