Old Dogs, Too, Can Learn

The longer we live, the more tricks of living we learn, it seems. I have a fair repertoire of tricks, such as hot to easily remove burned on food from cooking pots*, but recently I’ve learned a couple of new ones.

While we were in Tucson last winter, visitors came from Italy – a three-year-old boy and his parents, both of whom are nurses. One evening, while we were sitting around the cimenea** in the back yard, the boy touched the hot metal and burned his hand. He wept with pain and his parents asked if we had a raw potato. I thought this odd, but supplied one. They cut off a small piece of potato and laid the cut side on the boy’s hand. After a few minutes he stopped crying and contentedly fell asleep in his mother’s lap. The next day I was amazed to see that his hand appeared perfectly normal. Not only was it not blistered, it also showed no sign of redness or swelling. He said it didn’t hurt any more.

Since then, I’ve had several occasions to use the potato cure (yes, I am clumsy) and it has worked like a miracle every time. I wouldn’t care to recommend it for a serious burn, but for minor ones it certainly does the trick.

My visit to Maine yielded another trick, this one for salvaging rusted dishwasher racks. Our dishwasher, which has been going since 1987, was showing severe rusted areas on both the upper and lower racks. In Maine, I noticed that Carol’s dishwasher’s white racks had numerous areas covered with blobs of bright pink and green. Carol said she thought the blobs were Play-Doh. That got me wondering if there might be a way to salvage my dishwasher racks back home.

Cruising the web I found Rerack, a product for that very purpose.  All we needed in addition was a metal brush with stiff bristles to remove all the loose rust. Applying Rerack was rather like putting on several coats of nail polish. After drying overnight the Rerack had hardened and I ran a test load. It proved to be very effective and a great way to avoid buying a new dishwasher just because of rusted racks.

So, old dogs can learn new tricks, and at this stage of life, I’m in great need of tricks to make things easier. Bring ’em on.

* Of course I’m not going to withhold this valuable information. When food burns onto a cooking pot, fill the pot with enough to cover the burned-on area plus a half-inch more and add a tablespoon of baking soda. Bring this to a boil, lower the heat ant let it simmer for half an hour. Turn off the heat and let it sit for a few hours. Most of the burned-on food will easily come off using a pot scrubber. Stubborn spots maybe re-treated for additional removal.

Copyright 2016 by Shirley Domer.