Those Things
We Think We Need
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At last, I have a working sink in the house.
No more carting all food preparation items plus dishes before and after meals
out to the outdoor sink on the patio. Josue has finished my kitchen cabinets.
I’m no stranger to roughing it. Back
in the early Sixties, when I was newly married and it seemed romantic, I had no
sink. Running water meant I carried buckets from the well out by the stock tank
and poured it into the water bucket on the wash stand (cold) and the copper
boiler on the wood stove (hot).
With no romance in my life these
days, I fully appreciate my new cabinets with a sink hooked up to hot and cold
running water. Thank you, Josue. Glory and Amen.
Somehow I lodged into my brain that
I needed a dish drainer, you know, to stack my plate and cup and knife and fork
to dry after I washed them in my newly functional sink. I’ll tell you more
about my sink later. Meanwhile, I wanted a dish drainer and went on the search.
Lani and I drove into town to a
tienda that stocks a lot of plastic kitchen items, sort of a mini-Mexican
Target, kitchen aisle. They had drainers all right. The plastic kind. I don’t
like the plastic kind. I wanted a wire drainer—wire coated with plastic. The
wide plastic drainers get dirty quickly and are hard to clean, in my opinion. I
live in dusty farm country. You know what that is like. And I wanted what I
wanted. You may know what that is like!
“Miercoles.” The clerk said they
would have them in Wednesday. No problem. I’m patient.
Thursday Ariel stopped by to see if
I needed anything in town. He said he’d check to see if my dish drainer had
arrived. No such luck.
Friday Leo took me to town to buy a
new stove. On the way we passed a different tienda which I knew had a small
array of kitchen plastics, Voila! On the top shelf, there sat a wire dish
drainer, a two tiered affair, like an ocean liner, coated in red plastic. I
like color. The price was displayed. (Often there are no prices displayed in
the tiendas. Then one gets to haggle. Sometimes I haggle even when the price is
marked. Sometimes it works.) The all-plastic drainers were 60 pesos. The red
yacht of dish drainers was nearly 400 pesos.
I stood three or four minutes in contemplation,
enough minutes to have an “ah-ha” moment. I visualized my sink, a lovely large
stainless sink with attached drain board on one side.
Sondra, what are you thinking? You have a built-in drainer. Sure
enough, you can’t stack your plates upright to dry. But if you add a dish
drainer to the drain board, an admittedly nice touch, you can’t swing your
kitchen window open. Is this Gucci drainer a necessity?
“I’m not paying 400 pesos for a dish
drainer I don’t need. Let’s go look at stoves.”
Now, I liked my old stove. I didn’t
want a new stove. The burners worked great. But, sadly, I “needed” a new stove
unless I wanted to never bake anything other than pottery.
At the furniture/appliance store, I
carefully examined each stove, all six models. One style had an electronic
starter and oven light. And the price was right. $3,071.00. That is about $170
USD. The store delivered it, Leo hooked it up, I baked bread. I’m a happy
woman.
What I want to know is why I so
easily confused my “wants” with my “needs”? When I pared down my life to be in
Mexico, I gave up every electric kitchen appliance known to cooks. Except for a
food processer, a nicety, which I seldom bother to use; after all, I’m
generally cooking for one. Oh, let me not forget the coffee grinder, a
necessity, which I use every day.
If my food processer broke down, I
wouldn’t bother to replace it. But my coffee grinder is a different matter.
Maybe I should start the search for a hand grinder, like our grandparents used
in the olden romantic days. I might need one.
Sondra
Ashton
HDN: Looking
out my back door
April 28,
2016
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