When Can Openers Can't

And the winner is: The Quick and the Dedd. I will be blogging about planning and writing this story now through the end of November at “Write Away” (www.samwriteaway.blogspot.com)

Now that we have that little story thing out the way, I want to invite you to take another poll. Remember how last February I did the Month of Soups, with a different soup recipe each day? I want this to be an annual affair, but what shall I do 28 recipes on? Take the poll at the bottom and vote for mini-desserts, chicken, or potato recipes. That’s different enough to get you thinking!

Today, however, let’s get to one of my current kitchen irritations.

I don’t get irritated often in the kitchen. It is my happy place. It’s where I go to get un-irritated. So, I’m ticked.

 We have an electric can opener, a One-Touch, that I can store away in a drawer when not in use. I have never been a fan of the stand electric can opener. I hate giving it prime real estate. Be that as it may--I have used my One-Touch for years, occasionally replacing batteries when it gets sluggish, but all in all, we’ve had a very satisfying relationship.

Until now.

Have I mentioned that our chunkymonkey Maudie is on the green bean diet? Half her meals are kibble (weight control) and the other half of the food in the dish is green beans. (She prefers unsalted, French-style, but, honestly? She’ll eat anything. She’s a lab after all.)

So, a while back, the can opener stopped and wouldn’t finish cutting the lid off. No prob. We replaced the batteries. (When I say “we”, that means “DH”.) Didn’t work. Uh-oh.

Pull everything out of drawers. Has to be a manual can opener in here, right? Every kitchen has at least one. Well, I did have one, but could we figure out how to open cans with it? Not without great difficulty and irregular success.

Did I mention that Maudie likes her meals? The sound of that electric can opener has signaled “FOOD COMING!” ever since we got her last January.

So here sits the dog, drooling, as we try to figure out how the daggone manual opener works, and we finally did. (Uh, remember what “we” means.)

So, Dh says we have to buy a new electric one, and we did. But we put the batteries in wrong, but when it finally worked, the darn thing didn’t! It stopped part way around, so maybe when I yanked the stuck lid out of it’s little mouth, maybe I did something to its inner workings--or maybe it just hates me.

Where we stand is, it sometimes works perfectly. And then it doesn’t, and it sees me approaching with pliers and it releases the can top. But is this frustrating or what???