Something every RV cook needs

Old colander, new colander

I found something today that anyone who does any cooking in an RV or other small kitchen needs to have: a collapsible colander.

The regular size colander I have is great if you’re in a regular size home kitchen, but it takes up too much room in the limited cupboard space our travel trailer has. I didn’t want to toss it because I use it several times a week, but I was getting tired of moving it around in the cupboard as I looked for other utensils and dishes.

Collapsible colander

After an unsuccessful few hours of running around Yuma this morning for a tool Jon needed, we were on our way back to the RV park when we passed Wally’s World (no relation to Wal-Mart that I am aware of) on 32^nd Street in Yuma. Their street sign boasted tools for sale, and Jon found what he needed for his project.  The store has much more than tools. It has a wonderfully eclectic mish-mash of a little bit of everything, including this plastic collapsible colander.

While this colander isn’t as big as my other one, it will do the job. It is small enough to fit in a kitchen drawer. It collapses and expands easily. Though I’ve never seen something like this before, it should be found easily in other stores, since it bears the Pillsbury logo.

Disclaimer: The federal government requires me to tell you that neither Wally’s World nor Pillsbury provided any type of compensation for mentioning them in this article.

 

Staying connected on the road

View from Foothills library

We’ve been spending a lot of time at the Foothills library recently. Partly because it’s a lot cooler than our trailer and partly because of the free internet. It also has better views out the windows than our trailer does.

We have a mobile hotspot (Verizon Jetpack)  that allows us to get internet service wherever we can get Verizon cell phone service. It’s a handy little device to have, but expensive to use. The rate is based on the amount of data you use. Initially we signed up for 4 gigabytes of data usage per month. Go over that amount, and the cost zooms from $50 to $80 a month. I upped our plan to 6 GB a month for just $10 more total. Still expensive, but we can usually manage on that amount.

We were managing pretty well on 4 GB a month, but that was when I was in treatment five to seven days a week at the hospital. Jon used to bring his laptop and watch youtube videos for two to four hours a day on the hospital’s internet connection. Videos eat up so much data that I won’t let him watch them at home. Since we no longer make daily trips to the hospital, he needed another internet connection. Hence, the daily visits to the local branch of the Yuma County Library District, so he can watch videos to his heart’s content.

Like most libraries, this one limits internet time if you use their computers. Bring your own laptop and you can be online all day. The Foothills branch is a really nice library, and is bigger than the main branch of the Mid-Columbia Library back home in Kennewick, Washington. One side of the building is nothing but windows with a wonderful view of the mountains that surround Yuma. The library also sells snacks, such as sandwiches, bagels, chips, soft drinks and candy bars, so you can munch away while you’re online.

Staying connected on the road is important. We both do more than just email. I use the internet to research articles for the clients I write for, as well as for my own writing projects. Many RV parks offer internet service, but it’s usually not free. Plus, you have to sign up for each park’s service and that can get to be a hassle. We got our portable hotspot after one park’s service said my bank refused the credit card charges – this is after I’d spent an hour on the phone with a tech just trying to get to the web page where you sign up – while the bank said the ISP never submitted any charges, so how could they refuse them. Multiply this by a different park every night or every week, and it’s just not worth the trouble.

The convenience of not having to go through this every time we change RV parks is worth the extra money. We hope to be back on the road in the next few weeks, and I’m looking forward to researching campgrounds while Jon is driving. That’s something you can’t do with a standard modem.

Disclaimer: The federal government requires me to say that I did not receive any compensation from Verizon for mentioning their service in this article.

 

 

Doing laundry on the road: save those quarters!

Whether you live in a stick-built house or a recreational vehicle, doing laundry is a necessity unless, of course, you’re one of those people who wear clothes until they get so dirty they stand up by themselves and then you throw them away.

It just isn’t as much fun on the road. Few RVs have room for even a small washer and dryer, which means you’re going to be spending a lot of time in the RV park’s laundry room. Before we left home, I scoured the internet for manual washers. I found one that was hand cranked and used only two gallons of water. It could hold a couple of pairs of jeans and four t-shirts or a sheet. Unfortunately, it did not come with a wringer. I looked into getting the wringer off an old wringer washer, but those things are considered antique now, somewhat hard to find and not cheap if you do find one.

During the season, doing laundry is a social activity in that you get to meet other RVers doing their laundry. There’s also a good selection of magazines left by other RVers when they’ve finished with them, so if you’re the only one there, you’ve got lots of reading material to occupy your time.

Coming up with enough quarters to do our wash can be a hassle. We put every quarter we get into a special jar; if we’re lucky, we have enough quarters saved up by the time to do laundry again. If not, we have to leave the park to get more. However, not all RV laundry rooms take quarters. One park we stayed at required campers to buy tokens from them in $5 increments. In our case, $5 wasn’t enough to do one session of laundry, but $10 was too much. Unfortunately, park management won’t buy the unused tokens back. I’m told some parks require RVers to use their special pre-paid cards in amounts of their choosing. Supposedly, they also won’t buy the unused portion back. If you can’t sell the tokens or cards to other RVers, I guess you’ve just bought yourself some souvenirs.

Our first encounter with an RV park laundry room was in Redding, California, on New Year’s Day. The weather was sunny and balmy, and we enjoyed sitting by the pool while their machines did our work.

So far, we’ve only encountered immaculately clean laundry rooms, though I was distressed about finding “out of order” signs taped to half the washers and dryers at an older RV park. Of course, a lot of people wanted to do laundry at the same time I did, which meant a long wait for the machines. Just as I was putting my last load into a washer, a man carried eight laundry baskets in. I was so furious when I saw him rip off the out-of-order signs, put his quarters and laundry in and the machines miraculously worked.

What I’ve learned from doing laundry on the road is never to take a home washer and dryer for granted again.

 

 

Yuma, Arizona: Summertime and the livin' ain't easy!

Skies definitely are blue in Yuma.

To paraphrase that beautiful ballad from Porgy and Bess is almost  like ruining the song, but the words describe what a summer in Yuma is like for snowbirds who stay on after the season is over.

Sure, the lines at the Walmart prescription counters are a lot shorter. Instead of standing in line for an hour, at least, to drop off prescriptions and then another hour or more to pick them up, you can be in and out in mere minutes. I, however, would be willing to stand in these long lines if it meant lower temperatures outside. Temperatures have been in triple digits here since early April. I swear I’ll scream if I hear a permanent resident tell me one more time, “If you think it’s hot now, just wait until July.”

Keeping cool is paramount

 

Life in Yuma these days is a mad dash from an air-conditioned car to an air-conditioned building and back again. (Some Walmarts and the local mall have covered parking.)  I’m beginning to see why siestas are such an important part of Latin American culture, though I’m finding it too hot to sleep in the afternoon. Even running the air conditioning full time in our trailer, temperatures don’t get cool enough to sleep comfortably until about 4 a.m. By 6 a.m., the temperatures are moving from searing to scorching, and the day goes downhill from then, even though the temperatures are only going uphill.

We’ve taken to doing our laundry in the middle of the night because the laundry room isn’t air-conditioned. Plus, we used to do laundry every week, but now try to go at least two weeks between washing. A hose connects our trailer to the city water system. Cold showers have become the norm because water comes out of the cold tap warm enough that you don’t have to turn on the hot water tap.

Our awning would provide some shade if we could use it. High winds can come up at any time in Yuma and will bounce the awning around, damaging it. (There have been times I’ve put the awning down at 6 a.m., only to bring it in at 6:30 a.m.

 

Avoiding dehydration is important

 

Dehydration is always a risk in hot weather. Our bottled water bill has quadrupled since the temperatures started soaring. While we may leave our American Express card at home when we go out (well, we would if we had one), we never leave the trailer without cold bottled water, frequently in a small ice chest. A bottle of frozen water can go from ice to too hot to drink when left in my scooter's drink cup holder even for a few minutes.

There’s less to do in Yuma in the summer months. When we arrived here back in January, I was too sick to do many touristy things. Now that I’m better and can get around more, the attractions are closed until fall. That includes one of our favorite spots, Martha’s Gardens, an organic date farm that serves the most delicious date milk shakes.

So when will we be leaving Yuma? Who knows? Our intent was to be here only a few weeks, but my medical problems have kept us here longer. We’ve quit guesstimating when we might be able to leave; every time we think we might be out of here in a few weeks, I have a setback. Note to snowbirds: If you’re looking for excellent, senior-friendly health care, Yuma is the place to be. The main facility where I treat is considered one of the best in the country, and on the cutting edge of medicine.

The joys of RV cooking

At least these pancakes didn't get burned!

Cooking in an RV’s small kitchen is proving to be a challenge. Not only is there inadequate preparation space, storage space for pots, pans and ingredients is limited. No siree, cooking is not a lot of fun these days.

The stove has a cover you can put down and sink covers that are supposed to provide additional counter space, since the counter space is in inches, not feet, like a house’s kitchen. In theory this sounds good, but in reality it’s not. If you’re cooking one dish while preparing another, you can’t have the stove cover down. Not to mention that I hate this stove; it runs on propane, and only one of the three burners has an adjustable temperature. When I have to use more than that one burner, I frequently end up burning a lot of food. (My apartment at China Daily had a gas stove, and I never burned so much food in my life. It probably didn’t help any that the temperature dial notations were in Chinese!)

I suppose I could cook one dish at a time, but that means the first-cooked dishes would be served cold. I suppose I could warm them up in the microwave, but running the microwave at the same time the air conditioner is on trips a breaker in the fuse box and we have a trailer-wide power outage. It’s such a hassle to go back and reset clocks, computers, etc. We have the AC running most of the time because of Yuma’s triple-digit temperatures. (109-degrees in April? You better believe it!)

I also don’t do as much baking as I used to, mainly because you have to get down on your knees, stick your head in the oven, and wave a lighter around to ignite the pilot light. I can usually sweet talk Jon into doing this, but that means I can’t surprise him with treats.

As I was packing up my kitchen in Kennewick, I organized my spices, herbs, flavorings and other ingredients into plastic boxes by the frequency with which I used them. I then placed them in the trailer cupboards in that same order. This turned out to be another thing that sounded good in theory, but in reality doesn’t work out. It is such a hassle to get the boxes out of cupboards I can barely reach unless I stand on a shaky step stool.

Even if the ingredients were more easily reachable, I don’t have the necessary pots and pans for cooking like I used to. At home in Kennewick, I had two woks and six frying pans, each used for a different purpose, and the same amount of sauce pans. Due to limited storage space in the trailer, I was only able to bring three frying pans (two small and one medium-sized) and two sauce pans. It just isn’t enough to do the type of cooking I want to do.

We eat a lot of sandwiches for dinner.

The snowbirds are migrating

An emptying RV park

With days getting warmer all the time in southern Arizona, the snowbirds are going home. Yuma, where we’re at, has been in triple digit temps for several days now, though locals say these temps are unseasonably warm for this time of year. The temps are so warm that news reports say rattlesnakes are coming out of hibernation early.

Many of Yuma’s 90,000 snowbirds started going home in mid-March, and more are pulling out every day. It’s hard to get a handle on how many are left in the RV park we’re at, because some people leave their RVs here year ’round or else have park model homes. We pass about a dozen RV parks on the way to the hospital every day, and they also are turning into ghost towns. We recently drove through Quartszite, where we spent a week in January, and saw many of the city’s 28 RV parks totally empty.

 

Another sign the snowbirds are migrating is the lines at the Walmart pharmacy department. Back in February, lines to drop off prescriptions wound down the aisle, almost to the door. Lines to pick up prescriptions were equally long the other way. People easily stood in either line for an hour or more to be helped. Now there are no lines and prescriptions are ready in 15 minutes or less, instead of a day or two.

Our first house-hunting adventure

One of the things Jon and I hope to accomplish on our excellent adventure is to find a new place to settle down. One of the places I was interested in living was Las Vegas, so we made a quick trip up there to check out the housing market.

Prior to leaving, Jon searched the Internet and compiled a list of properties he thought we should look at. They were mostly fixer-uppers. When we got to Vegas, we started calling real estate agents, which turned out to be a waste of time.

Jon gave the addresses to two different agents, both of whom said they’d map out a route and call us back with a meeting place. They never did. A third agent said he didn’t show any properties to buyers who weren’t pre-qualified. Since this was just a scouting trip, we didn’t see any need to get pre-qualified. A fourth agent said he considered showing properties valued at less than $100,000 a complete waste of his time.

We ended up just driving around neighborhoods to get a feel for the city, but found very few for-sale signs up. Which was OK, because we quickly decided we didn’t want to live there because of unsafe driving conditions. Check out this post on Cheryl’s China for more details.

We took a drive north of Vegas to look over a couple of towns, but they didn’t appeal to us. On the way back, we detoured to Bullhead City, Arizona, and were impressed with the town. We even found some properties we might make a return trip to look at. I’m still not convinced I can live in the desert, because I do like my green forests and blue water. Bullhead City is on the Colorado River, across from Laughlin, Nevada, so that at least met some of my requirements.

 

We anticipate getting to leave Yuma, Arizona, where we've been since mid-January, in late May or June, so we'll have plenty more opportunity to house-hunt. Jon is also keen on checking out Missouri and northcentral Florida.