burning down the house

The re-kashering process was supposed to finish up last week. We lit the burners and ran off to Home Depot for a blech and Plexiglas for the countertops. I came back to the restive sound of my smoke detectors going off.

My boyfriend, who has been orchestrating this whole endeavor, is used to kashering kitchens with gas stoves. Apparently electric stoves get much hotter than gas ones. The first time I kashered my kitchen, I only heated the burners until they were red hot. I didn't turn them on high and leave them for two hours.

Yes, I know... never ever leave burners unattended. What can I say? Intelligence has never been my strong suit.

I have an old wine bottle collection sitting on the edge of my stove, against the backsplash. The heat from the burners caused the labels to blacken and melt. Stuff from the vent above the stove melted and dripped onto to the stove top and those red-hot burners.

I am very very lucky that I didn't come home to an open fire. We burnt our fingers turning off the knobs on the stove, but eventually everything cooled down. The unidenfiable something that dripped onto the area between the burners rendered it all unkosher, but at least three burners got done.

Home Depot doesn't cut Plexiglas, so I have to order it from elsewhere, but I am going to enjoy my $7 blech. And to think, I thought everything would be finished in a week. Silly me! Well, hopefully from this point on, the worst thing to worry about will be picking out my new dishes. I am a huge fan of the Colonial Williamsburg "Openwork Creamware" pattern, but as I this is something I actually plan to do and not some silly girlhood fantasy... I think I'll be looking at dishes from Target or Costco instead.

(For those who are interested, there are two new posts up at AnotherBT.)

rekashering the kitchen

I'm rekashering my kitchen. In a way, it's strangely therapeutic. When I first decided to have a kosher kitchen, I purchased the cheapest dishes and announced to myself that I was keeping "student-kosher," that this was a learning experience and eventually I'd throw it all out and start over "for real." I told my orthodox friends to consider my kitchen treif for all practical purposes. That confused some and amused others. It was a toss-up as to whether they'd appreciate my concern that I'd accidentally serve something that (through my own ignorance or clumsiness) wasn't up to their standards, or whether they'd be annoyed at my lack of confidence in my own abilities. Or, perhaps they worried I was just reserving the right to pick and choose my own rules, which was even worse.

I'm not sure why I decided that *right now* was the proper time to begin my "for real" kitchen. Perhaps it's because I'm spending more time with a man who loves to cook and knows how to kasher a kitchen properly. Perhaps it's because I'm trying to talk my orthodox cousins into staying with me during their summer vacations. Perhaps it's because I need a change in my life. I'm tired of treading water. It's time to start moving on. Then again, maybe it's simply that there is something soothing about packing up all my dishes and shipping them off to Goodwill.

(For those of who read AnotherBT, there's a new post there as well.)

meditation

I read a post a few weeks back on a meditation exercise to try while davening. It talked about holding your hands and envisioning your words forming a ball in your hands that you periodically release and send up to Hashem. I've been trying to find the post and can't. Does anyone have any idea what I'm talking about?

I don't think I did it right... My hands felt so heavy, like they were being forced apart. I spent far too much time thinking about the ball and my hands. I got so caught up in the mechanics of it all that it makes me think that I've missed the point entirely. I wish I could find that post again... Please drop me a note if you have any idea where I should look. Thanks!

This is the public face to AnotherBT, my invite only blog. I may start talking about non-dating issues here, but mostly this blog will be updated when a new post appears on AnotherBT.

I put a new post up on AnotherBT yesterday.

Thanks,
Ahuva