A few postings ago I wrote about how I bought a stainless steel mandoline that did not live up to my expectations. Well, I did email the company and explained my dismay. A week later, customer service wrote back and said that I could take the mandoline back to the store for a store credit.
DH had me try the mandoline again by making wavy french fries. It was quite good apparently because I didn't get eat a single chip! So, I managed to make the mandoline work for me a bit. However, I was still disappointed at how uneasy it was to make the small julienne match sticks. So, thinking that a store credit of about $50 could get me a lot of other useful kitchen equipment, I decided to take the mandoline back the next day.
That night Little S kept crying and keeping me up most of the night. Perhaps I got to sleep about 1 or even 2 hours in total. I also had to get up round 6 AM (before Little R would get up) to make bread (I make slow rise bread, so I have a schedule to follow). Despite being up most of the night with Little S, I did get up to make bread. Well, a few minutes into the bread-making, Little R drummed his little heavy feet into the kitchen and had me hold him and make bread at the same time. Little R is round 44 pounds and I was making a large batch (4 loaves, each loaf round 2.5 pounds) of bread!
In any case, I somehow managed to get that stage of the bread-making done then I dressed the children, put them in the car and drove to Pickering Town Centre. Although it was getting to be bitterly cold, I still managed to put the children in the tandem stroller, walked through Sears, into the mall and into Stokes to get my store credit. The saleslady was very helpful, but asked me why I was returning it. I told her that one blade did not go in, and in general I wasn't able to make julienne sticks easily. She told me that her husband used it all the time, and that the model I had was top-of-the-line. Was I the problem? As she was processing the return and store credit, I asked her out of curiosity what they were going to do to the mandoline. She told me that it was going to be thrown out! They were not allowed to sell nor donate anything that had been use.
Well, that just made me reconsider. I really didn't want the piece of equipment to be part of landfill! After all, it did satisfy DH's chip craving. Okay, I apologised (the kids were also grabbing things and moving the stroller by themselves) for the inconvenience and told her I was going to try the mandoline again.
By the end of this non-transaction, it was lunch time. The children had to eat. Well, I forgot the spork again! I ordered pad thai thinking that they would eat it (and also so I could use chopsticks instead of plastic cutlery). How stressful this event of lunch was. Little R decided to regurgitate the stringy meal as did Little S. Little R kept drinking his mango Julius tilting it back like sippycup and got his pants and shirt all soaked in yellow muck! With one baby in arm and the other hand handling the chopsticks, I tried as fast as I could to eat the pad thai before the kids would lose patience.
I managed to finish the plate, but before I could dispose of the tray, Little R had drop his shoe off his foot. He wanted me to put it back on. He kept whining (no words) and shoving the shoe at me while I was trying to put the baby on my back. Well, he lost it and started running away in the food court. So, there I was running after him with one arm holding the baby on my back and one hand reaching for him as he reached a garbage station... he was so upset that he was trying to throw his shoe in the trash!!! Luckily, other women came to my aid, stopped Little R in his would-have-been-regretful action, and helped me put the baby properly on my back with my BabyTrekker. Alas, how embarrassing.
I mentioned in my last posting that I was phasing out plastics in my kitchen and home. Yes, and it's going well. May I also add that DH is happy that I won't be saving any more plastic containers. So, while I was at the Pickering Town Centre, I wanted to buy a glass or stainless steel spritz bottle (for steaming up the oven for bread-making). After that lunch time fiasco I still ended up walking around the mall about 7 times without finding what I was looking for. In the end, I bought a plastic (number 1 or 5 - can't seem to recall) spritz bottle and 3 aluminium bread pans from Dollarama!
So, I thought that that was that. I took the kids to the mall in order to return a mandoline that I didn't end up returned, walked around the mall 7 times before settling for two items from the dollar store, and now I was going to take them home. Or was I? At the Sears exit, I started getting dressed and getting the kids dressed when I discovered that Little R had wet through his diaper (more on diapering and toileting another time). Luckily there was a Sears washroom not too far away... and luckily it didn't off-gas as much of that horrible strong chemical "cleaning" solution that makes me sick.
What a day... and my head was hurting, but I still had to finish baking the bread before the end of the night. In short, I managed with some help from DH... oh, and he loves the bread! Thank goodness for our daily bread :)
