Grandma’s Bowls

Being up unexpectedly early, I thought I would play around with Python and Pulsar, but apparently I need more coffee for that. Instead, I’ll tell another equipment story…

First, this is a different grandmother: Rita not Erna (terminology aside, they were sisters). Throughout several years of grade school, Rita made bread for my peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which are all I wanted to eat at the time. As I recall, bread and lebkuchen cookies were the extent of her baking, but it was long ago and I was very young, so I could well be wrong. In any case, she had a set of beige-ish, ceramic mixing bowls with an apple on the them. I remember her mixing bread dough in the large one and, after kneading it, letting it rise with a damp towel over it on the heater in the dining room.

We went to Rapid City, SD last (2020) Fourth of July to see Mount Rushmore and perhaps get in to President Trump’s speech. We failed at the latter; the lottery did not pick us. The day after, we went to the mountain. Failing to get in the day before made much more sense: The infrastructure is amazing (perhaps too amazing, being paid for by tax dollars, but that’s getting off topic – and it was very nice, even the parking) but the venue is quite small – I’d guess fewer than 30,000 people when full. That’s about half the population of Rapid City, but for a national event, not all that large.

In any case, driving up a hill and looking at carvings (greatly minimizing the experience; it’s definitely worth seeing if you’re anywhere in the area), doesn’t take THAT much time out of a three day weekend, so we wandered around Rapid City. We spent some time browsing an antique store: St Joe Antiques Mall. [As if this story was not side-tracking enough, the search-result link to it reads properly (http://downtownrapidcity.com/….) but brings up a site that wants me to buy Cialis; found a working one.] What should I see but a set of my grandmother’s mixing bowls! Not needing mixing bowls – and most definitely not being impulsive [no laughing] – I commented on them and passed them by.

One reason that I don’t stress about being impulsive is that I far more often wish I had done something rather than wishing I had not. Who knew that buying antique mixing bowls would fall into that category? Back in Denver, I would occasionally recall those bowls and wish I had bought them. Also back in Denver, we contemplated moving to Rapid City – but the winters! So, why not a visit during the winter?

February worked out for several irrelevant reasons. I decided that, should the bowls still be there, which I considered doubtful, I would buy them. On our way out of town heading back to Denver – oh, who am I kidding? – the moment we drove into town, we stopped in. After some searching (it’s a large and disorganized store), I found the bowls, much to my surprise. Then I looked at the price and was no longer surprised: Who pays $90 for three old, used mixing bowls? [I hope that’s an obviously rhetorical question, at this point.] So, I bought them, in addition to a number of other things that we did not need. I still haven’t made candles with the taper mold.

Back in Denver, happy with my new-to-me mixing bowls, the obvious question that most people ask themselves before buying something reared its head: What am I going to DO with these things? “Mix in them,” is an obvious answer, but I already have mixing bowls, which are dishwasher safe, unlike these.

Having fond memories of grandmother’s bread making (I honestly don’t remember the taste of the bread at all, which means it was “fine” at the least, I suppose), that became the purpose of the large one:

But only for rising – bread is too much bother to make entirely by hand (sorry, grandma): That’s why we have KitchenAids. I’m using the two smaller ones as planters, which will probably destroy them as fast as putting them through the dishwasher, but I see them in the kitchen bay window every day:

The smallest one has parsley in it, but only three very small sprouts, so far. That’s dill growing in the medium one. I don’t care much for the seeds (and certainly not in pickles, which should be sweet), but growing inside provides nice fronds (known as “dill weed”, but really? that’s not very complimentary, so “fronds” it is). More parsley is growing in the planter behind that. There is basil planted in the larger box on the left, but nothing has come up, yet, so I don’ t think anything will. We’ll see.

In case you’re wondering, no, I’m not out of stories about kitchen equipment. Is that weird?