Quilt Auction Winner and Recipe for Fresh-Smelling Towels--No, I Am Not Martha Stewart

Quilt auction update:  My friend Lin, who bid $450, won the quilt.   She's a high school pal I reconnected with on Facebook a few years ago, and I visit her in San Jose every few months, so I'll be able to visit the quilt.  Readers have now donated nearly $1200 to the Berkeley Food Pantry through quilt auctions!  Thank you!

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Oh, woe, my computer rebelled yesterday, so no pictures on the blog until I get it back from its pediatrician, the blunt-spoken, cruise-loving musician/computer-fixer,  Steve at Berkeley Back-up.  In the meantime, I'm using Jerry's computer when he peels his hands off the keyboard.

 

He was gone for four days to a meeting in Utah, and during that time I had a couple of friends over to eat cupcakes from Love at First Bite in Berkeley (I ate the most, disgraced myself with my sugar addiction); started another quilt to be auctioned off; and thrashed the hell out of my stinky (mildewy) bath and kitchen towels, a mountain of them.

 

A few months ago, I heard Terri Gross interview Jolie Kerr, author of My Boyfriend Barfed in My Handbag...and Other Things You Can't Ask Martha, a guide to getting out stains.  My ears perked up when I heard her Rx for towels that don't smell fresh, even when they're washed regularly.  Here it is, and it works!

 

1. Run the towels through the washer in hot water and one cup of white vinegar. No detergent.

2. At the end of the cycle, add detergent, and run the towels through another hot water cycle.

3. Toss the towels in the dryer and don't remove them until they're completely and utterly DRY.

 

My towels have a new lease on life.  They're fresh-smelling and feel fluffier and cleaner to the touch.  Kerr says the towels smell mildewy because we use too much laundry detergent, which is food to mildew, and because they're so often damp. 

 

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"News is hell," my sister wrote in e-mail last week. 

 

Between the plane that was shot down, the war in the Middle East, and the Central American refugee children, I needed an  kind of antidote to reality that didn't involve alcohol or carbs.   I loaded photos from our vacation in Inverness on to one of those electronic pictures frames, a gift from Jerry's son David and his wife, Michele, and sat and stared at the slide show of green trails, blue-blue water, and the view of Tomales Bay that we had from the deck of the house we rented.  A welcome escape.

 

Then I called a moratorium on news in any form, even NPR, which is my studio companion.  Enough.