Gifts for the Trailer Kitchen

  I've been buying some items to replace pieces of trailer kitchen gear that were definitely sub-standard. It's one thing to use them for a couple of weeks and another thing to use them for an entire year.

Earlier this summer, I was tempted too strongly by a new pattern of Corelle dishes- yellow and blue! The truth is that I don't like eating off plastic, and doing it for a whole year, coupled with the lovely blue and yellow... so two of each came home with me.

Here's the array of recent purchases.

For one thing, I got an electric hotplate (top left). We'll be cooking inside a fair amount, and we'll almost always have electricity. I'll still take the propane camp stove, but this will be safer for inside.

Bottom- second from the left, and also under the pans, is a set of silicone hot pads. I needed more of these, and one definitely needs to be used under the hot plate.

Bottom right is two storage tubs. I guess these aren't technically kitchen. But Marie and I have found that it's nice to each have a bucket on the table to store small personal items. We have a tub that goes in the middle of the table, towards the wall, that holds trivets, condiments, napkins. Now there will be an official bin for each person.

Top right is two cheap salad bowls. When I want a dinner salad, or if we need to mix something, I didn't have any bowls large enough in the trailer. Dollar store to the rescue.

Now for the last items, which are all one item. The pans we'd been cooking on in the trailer were very cheap, thin and frankly, crappy ones. I do most of the cooking when Marie and I are together. I've gotten used to being really careful using the pans. But now, I'm going to ask someone else to do most of the cooking for the whole upcoming year. The pan situation seriously needed to be improved. But... it's a tiny trailer, right? I didn't want to take up too much space. If you count everything, there are three pans, three lids which can double as frying pans, and an interchangeable handle.

Look how they fit together. Nice, huh!

Now, I THINK there is just one more item to buy, and that is a can opener that works well. The one we've been using is a piece of junk. The problem is that many brand new ones are equally as poor. I'd like to get a winner on the first try.

In other news: I edited almost all day. It rained too much to work on the trailer, except that I'll do a bit of painting inside the house tonight. I worked on trail food a little bit. And I did more errands. I crossed off one BIG ITEM. However, I must have miscounted somewhere, because I still have 34 BIG ITEMS (27 done) and 23 small ones (11 done) to do. Sigh. 40 days to go.

See New Hiking Gear

How Much is This Blog Worth?

Remember the package? I promised to show you what arrived by UPS yesterday. And I will, but the whole thing is pretty strange.

Have you ever seen blogs with widgets like this one? The blogs that display them are usually valued at something ridiculous like $23,000. I have to wonder how that could be real. I just ran that program for this blog, and you can see where it ended up. Definitely not a big investment opportunity. Actually, it's hard for me to see how it's worth even that much in a monetary sense.

But now, we're getting to that package. About a month ago, I was contacted by Columbia Sportswear. As a result of seeing this blog, they wanted to send me a coat to test and give them feedback. Don't you find this a bit ironic? I hiked 4395 miles on a National Scenic Trail, without a single commercial sponsor. The two that I ever asked for anything turned me down cold. That hike wasn't interesting enough to provide gear for testing. But as a result of this silly blog, where I blabber about hiking and snowshoeing and whatever... I am being sent a coat to test.



And this is not just a "coat." That's where the value of this blog comes in. This is the Columbia Prism Ice Omni-heat Parka. That's a mouthful, and it should be. This is a $270 coat system. I think if you take all the winter coats I've owned in my life and add their cost together, it won't total $270. (And that counts the $75 dress coat my mother bought me in college.) So, I guess this blog really is worth at least that much money.

This is a highly technical garment. It has an outer and inner coat with a special lining. I suspect it's going to be too hot for me, since I tend to overheat quickly.

But it's quite good looking, don't you think? It's going to kill me to wear this for hard outside play, instead of as a dress coat for the next 20 years. Really! I can't believe how much coats like this cost. This goes against every shred of frugality I live by. But... a gift horse, er, coat, must be tested.

So I wore it for my walk this afternoon, knowing that it should be too warm. Indeed! I wasn't halfway around my loop before I had to take it apart, and just wear the shell, because I was sweating.

Prepare to see more of the Columbia Prism Ice Omni-heat Parka.