Buyer Beware> I have bought items from Goodwill off and on for the past few years. We didn't have a store close by. One thing you need to check is the outrageous shipping charges and handling charges. I saw a lovely metal vintage style tea pot I would love to have....bid 3.00 reasonable............shipping 10.00........handling.....2.00. Hmmmmmmmmmm tea pot not so attractive at 15.00 and that's if you get it for the 3.00 bid. I love looking thru all the items Goodwill has but some of their shipping rates are way out of line. All these items are donated and I know for a fact it doesn't cost 10.00 to ship one tea pot. Don't want to rain on your parade just want to make you aware. I also bounce between goodwill and ebay and yes I am a wicked sniper...............LOL Does anyone remember Andy's Warehouse Auction? It was run by Fingerhut no less..........oooooooooh the bargains I got there and their shipping was reasonable. How i miss them. There were a couple others but I don't remember the names. Sigh! Hmmmmmmmmm maybe I should google. Then there's freecycle.............I can't begin to tell you all the goodies I have gotten off there. Ok so I belong to 5 different ones.............:) I subscribe to all that are within a 50 mile radius and try to pick up two or more items on one trip if possible. Anybody watch the Junk Brothers? Boy would I like to find some of the loot they find. And that Workshop............ ChelCass

I have been cooking for years, at least since my first and last marriage forty years ago when I found out my wife did not want to cook and I still wanted to eat. A couple years ago I was talked into writing down some of my "recipes." I had never used a recipe. My method was to eat and find what I liked and then guess what it was made from and try to duplicate the dish. When I did look at a recipe it was no more than a guideline or starting point. So to put my dishes on paper I had to carefully measure, I even bought a measuring spoon set. Then I would test the recipe and do it over and over until I got the same result twice, which really never happened. My conclusion is that there are no bad or good recipe sights. Recipes are are no more than a guideline for the cook to follow. An example is tonight when I looked at the thread, "How long will this sauce last?" there was a recipe for Chairman Tsao Chicken. I read the ingredients and immediately thought I would take out that 1/2 cup of Soy sauce because it was too salty and replace it with oyster sauce and then be able to reduce the amount of white sugar which gives a starchy taste. There was no heat in the recipe so I would have added some pepper paste. Now the oyster sauce is thicker than the soy so I need to add some liquid without thinning the taste of the sauce so I'm going to increase the broth. Both of our sauces would taste pretty much the same but mine would please me more. If I want to eat the same thing every time I pull up my chair to the table I will go to McDonald's. Here is a link that might be useful: traveling and cooking with grandpa

So far PepperPlate is a winner. I like the simple format...easy to read and navigate. With the 'add to Pepperplate' on my bookmark bar, when i search for an ingredient recipe and see something worth saving i just hit that on my 'bar' and it automatically adds it without copy/paste. No longer have the adds popping up. customizing a grocery list seems to be handy for us. If i stumble across a wadded list in my dresser from a year ago, it is about the same list. Plugging in all our standard things we purchase and have them organized by isle/type, might save us from missing something. (just realized i was out of corn tortillas for tonights tacos)....I'll just make an arugula salad and croutons for the warm smoked pork...rather than run out and waste the shopping time. Once it is set up and DH has it on his phone, he can scan the list when he stops on his way home.

powermuffin, thanks for the caveat on the garbage disposal drain size. I'm not sure that I would put in a disposal, since we're on a septic and therefore quite rarely use the one I have now, though it's ~30 years old and perhaps just gumming anything I put down it anyhow. Since there are drains installed in the sink, I haven't figured out how to measure the diameter--oh no, sounds like real life math! ;) Definitely something to know *before* buying a new disposal! mtnrdredux, I have to take faucet concerns seriously from someone who put a pot filler in a rock wall... ;) Yes, the deck and drain hole sizes and what faucet will fit is now gnawing at me (heh, likely because the design questions don't have a finite answer like this does). the ledge above and behind the current sink (all along the counter and wood-covered in the other rooms) is actually open to the half-basement below with windows for solar gain. It's a hypocaust system where the south-facing windows heat the air and then there are fans that pump the air under the north side of the house. We also use a fireplace insert but the propane furnace runs quite rarely, set at 60, and we're at 8200' with an -18 degree night last winter! Well, that was a loooong answer to your comment! :) I *do* love having the ledge to set hot pans especially, which is why I really want to put tile/something heatproof there. I put all the pizza toppings on the ledge while taking up the whole counter handling the dough--feels like a real pizzaria that way lol! ptamom, I have read good reviews of reglazing for bathtubs but bad reviews for kitchen sinks. This sink is in good enough condition that I won't have to worry about that. Concrete counters sounds like they'd provide that contemporary/industrial edge, but I have concerns about the maintenance required. Also, the counters (well, everything...) has to be DIY which is why I've focused on laminate and lately soapstone if other concerns can be met. thanks for coming back to this thread with your thoughts! cheers