My favorite restaurant supply store find is my measuring scoops. I gave a set to Diana in the my favorite things swap - you can see a picture on that thread. Restaurant supply stores are good for getting substantial stainless steel measuring cups and spoons instead of the wimpy aluminum ones that bend or dent. Or the big thin spatulas that can be used for tasks like lifting a layer of cake after you have split it horizontally to add fillings. In addition to what others have mentioned, they often have the cake pans with straight sides instead of sloped which is nice when making layer cakes. Around here there are two kinds - the ones that sell mainly food with a bit of equipment and the ones that sell mainly equipment - everything from utensils to major appliances. Smart and Final and Cash and Carry are the food kind - they are under the same ownership but Cash and Carry is bigger with more specialized food. For example, our Smart and Final has a few kinds of Torani syrup but the Cash and Carry has the full line plus some other lines of flavoring syrups. The equipment ones aren't all equal either. The area that has Cash and Carry has about 3 of the non-food restaurant supply stores. One carries nicer more varied stuff than the other two. But all have at least the basics like the stainless steel sheet pans, good cooling racks and lots of utensils. All the ones around here are open to the public. You don't have to be a restaurant or have a tax ID. Here is a link that might be useful: Link to thread with picture of the scoops

Thank you all for your advice and pictures. I just LOVE them! After a weekend of being laid up again (fell off a machine at the gym and totally wrecked my back but am finally feeling a bit better now), I am hopingto get out there and prune this coming three day (can you say YEA!) weekend! Still on the fence about my climber as she is throwing out all sorts of laterals right now so this could be a good bloom year unlike prior years. She may have just had to have more time to come into her own. However, I am seeing that there are all sorts of little oak trees and other plants coming up through my rose bushes due to the mulch and birds. UGH! I may have lost my Sharifa Asma because of it if I can't pull them out. I have a feeling my garden is going to be very sparse this year due to a bunch of new roses going in to replace my old ones. Evelyn and Ambridge are reverting back to rootstock, so out they go. I have oak trees growing up in my Sharifa Asma as well as Evelyn, Mary Webb and now one of my Brother Cadfaels! I also have another unidentified bush growing up in my Peach Blossom. So it looks like I pretty much get to start from scratch all over again. Looks like an expensive year!

I'm the OP, thank you for all your responses! emma, I realized afterward that I could have phrased my question better. I was trying to ask if any others took part in anything that was racism, without being aware of it, in their childhood. It sounds like some of you (I'll use rob as an example) were fortunately raised during early childhood in an ethnically diverse community, so racism by means of words or acts was thankfully no longer tolerated, as it was in many other areas of the country. I grew up in Windsor Ontario, right across the river from Detroit. There were very few people of any 'colour' at the time, as most of us had white European heritage. However, we lived only 5 minutes across the border to Detroit, where we often shopped, went to Detroit Tiger baseball games, and enjoyed all the other great culture and entertainment that Detroit had to offer. My mother worked all her life for a law firm on Woodward Ave. in Detroit. So although Windsor was a mostly Caucasian demographic, we grew up seeing and interacting with many people of colour, due to our close proximity to Detroit. At age 5 when I started school, I had really only played with my own siblings, and maybe the kids next door. So I can't claim to know how things were in my whole neighbourhood, but only that I had never heard the 'N' word in my own home or from the neighbour's children either. But soon after starting school, I discovered the children chanted the words "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe, catch a ('N' word) by the toe, if he hollers let him go..." before they started any game, to determine who went first or who was 'it.' I did not know what the 'N' word was, as it was a new word to me, so I just assumed it was some kind of little animal, in my unfortunate ignorance. No one (teachers in the yard) ever came over to chastise/stop us, so I'll never know if they ever overheard us and didn't care, or simply never caught us. I can't recall the exact moment when I learned that 'N' word was actually referencing human beings, I just remember the guilt and shame I felt when I realized I had indeed spoken that very word in my first year or two at school, in the play yard. It was quite shocking to realize that even though we lived right across from Detroit and were so much a part of their culture, that word was still being said (and much worse, when the Detroit race riots occurred, when I was eleven.) That is what I meant when I say that I have 'memories of unintentional racism' because I certainly had no clue what we were saying in the schoolyard, as 5 and 6 year olds.

I'll get started on making a top, set the blocks aside and forget what I was even making! So, I've started labeling the blocks with the quilt name, where I found the pattern and put them in that safe place. Then in a couple years when I come across it again and Google the name, I might remember. lol When I finish a quilt top to send for donation, I'll pin a little note on it to make sure if something happens to me, the kids know where to send it and all to be donated tops go in the same container. Since I make mostly scrappy quilts, I don't need to keep track of fabric and designers, but I do keep track of where the quilts and quilt tops go. But, if the computer crashes, oops!