Five Acres with a View

Jack was in a soup making mood yesterday. He put his first attempt (some sort of vegetable and tuna chowder) on the stove and we both forgot it about. I was in a room where the burning smell didn’t reach and Jack was downstairs. The pot was a mess, but I have manage to clean it using a trick my grandmother taught me: boiling water in the charred pot with a lot of baking soda in it. This loosens the burned gunk so you can get it off without a chisel. I’ve save a lot of pots over the years with this method, since Jack and I are both easily distracted. Curious, I looked up the chemical explanation using Google.

Since I don’t really care for vegetable and tuna chowder, I suggested he make potato soup for his second attempt and we found this recipe for Creamy Potato Soup. It was excellent.

unfortunately.

Saturday, Jack noted that cold air was blowing from the registers. He was able to arrange for a service call from the company from which we bought the furnace that morning, which resulted in the news that if we were lucky, they wouldn’t have to replace our whole furnace. As this is a relatively young furnace, bought seven years ago, we were quite bummed about it. Evidently, condensation had gotten into the works, and rusted out two major components. Our warranty was on shaky ground because we hadn’t been having yearly service calls that might have picked up the problem. The guy got the furnace working again with the warning that it was a temporary fix, but the furnace shut down again that evening.
Continue reading Keeping the Home Fires Burning….