Product Review Monday

This week's book review is entitled "Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things" by Charles Panati.

This is a wonderful volume combining trivia and history with the fun of a treasure hunt. If you're curious about the origins of such varied things as Kleenex, Little Red Riding Hood, the bikini, or cologne, this is the book for you. Each entry ranges from one to two pages, and makes (ahem) wonderful bathroom reading. "Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things" is highly recommended.

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This week's product review is something Don and I use, literally, every day.

To back up ... over the years, we've each had favorite coffee/tea mugs that have come and gone. The biggest issue for me was keeping my tea hot enough for my taste, so as it cooled I often turned to the microwave to zap it hotter. I like BIG MUGS, so finding something big enough that was also zapable in the microwave was a challenge. I didn't especially like zapping my tea (or Don his coffee), but we couldn't think of any better alternative.

Don's not a tea drinker and I'm not a coffee drinker, so it makes no sense to have either a coffee pot or a tea pot in the house. So, for years, we just zapped our way through the mornings.

Then one day about eight years ago, a friend came to visit and he spent the night. In the morning he poured his coffee into something we'd never seen before: A French-press travel mug made by the incomparable Stanley.

Instantly Don and I knew this was the solution to our zapping woes. Stanleys are famously durable (Don still has a thermos from the 1970s in perfect condition), and here was something likely to keep our beverages piping hot far, far longer than our ceramic or plastic mugs. We each ordered one.

And. Oh. My. These mugs have surpassed every expectation and we've never looked back. Neither of us has had to zap our beverages in the microwave ever since (which is good, since the mugs are metal!).

While the mugs come with screw-on lids with a flip top for traveling, we seldom use them because we seldom travel. Don uses his French press every day...

...but over time I graduated to a tea strainer for mine, which fits just inside the mug and which I remove once the tea is steeped.

Without the lids, these mugs keep our beverages piping hot for about an hour, which is about how long it takes us to slowly drink them. With the lid on, the coffee or tea is effectively in a thermos, and so will stay hot for hours.

Folks, these French-press Stanleys were some of our best buys ever. For $36, these sturdy mugs are likely to last us the rest of our lives. Can't beat that!

(Obligatory disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Affiliate, if you purchase through those links, we earn a small commission.)

(Don't forget: A complete list of all our book and product recommendations are linked here and at the upper-right column of the blog.)

Prepping the wood cookstove for winter

As we prepare for winter, one vital task was to clean out the wood cookstove. As our primary heat source, it's essential to make sure it's operating at peak efficiency and peak safety. (We don't want any chimney fires!)

So this morning, we detached the pipe from the stove inside the house. Then Don gathered up the chimney brush and handle pieces...

...and climbed onto the roof. He removed the pipe cap and scrubbed the inside of the pipe, while I held a plastic bag at the bottom of the pipe inside the house to catch falling ash.

(Before climbing down from the roof, Don also went around and cleaned out all the gutters.)

After reconnecting the pipe to the stove, I got busy cleaning out the stove. Ash tends to build up on the various surfaces inside the unit, so that's what I was removing.

The stove comes with a cleanout hatch under the oven, secured by wingnuts.

The stove manufacturers include a custom-made long-handled tool to scrape the ash from the farthest corners of the stove guts and pull it out the hatch.

I catch the ash in a metal bucket. I'm operating blind during this procedure, groping around the interior of the stove with the scraper, so periodically I stop, shine a flashlight into the depths, and see what pockets of ash I might have missed. After about 20 minutes of scraping, however, I've removed about 95 percent.

Then I turn my attention to the wood box, where the actual firewood is placed when the stove is lit.

It's through the wood box that I can access the top of the oven box, and scrape off the ash.

Once that's done, I clean out the wood box, which all falls into the ash bucket in the compartment below. I carefully pour the ash into the metal bucket (carefully, so fine ash doesn't poof up and coat everything around me). Once that's done, I clean out the compartment that holds the ash bucket.

Dirty work!

Then I gave everything around the stove a good vacuuming, and used a damp cloth to wipe down the stove itself (top and sides). All pretty!

I ended up dumping the ash into one of our 30-gallon tubs for easier transport to the compost pile. You can see how much ash I cleaned out. (It goes without saying that I would never dump hot ash into a plastic tub. This ash is left over from last spring, so obviously it's stone-cold.)

Now the stove is all set for cold weather, though we'll repeat this cleaning process a few more times over the course of the winter.

I absolutely stinkin' love this wood cookstove. After some mid-winter power outages during the early days in our new home, when we were forced to huddle around a propane heater, we knew installing a non-electric heat source was a priority.

Besides, the wood cookstove bakes a mean pie.

Brave new flowers

It is indubitably fall around here.

The rose hips are abundant.

We're supposed to dip to juuuust above freezing for one morning next week, though it's an outlier and may not get that cold.

But despite the cooler temps, the garden is having a last gasp of optimism.

In fact, things are still blooming with flowers. Brave new flowers. The tomatoes are loaded with blossoms:

So are the nuclear strawberries:

The spaghetti squash are like the Energizer Bunny. They keep going and going and going...

The single volunteer cantaloupe is still putting out flowers.

Even the potatoes look cheery.

Yes, these are all brave new flowers. I don't know how long they'll last.

Jane Goodall: Rest in peace

Over the years, readers have known my admiration for Jane Goodall (here and here). My hero-worship dates back to high school (late 1970s) when I first knew I wanted to be a field biologist.

Dr. Goodall passed away today. Needless to say, accolades are pouring in from around the world.

The autographed book and two personal letters from her I have in my possession are that much more treasured now.

Rest in peace, Dr. Goodall. You'll never know the impact you had on this young high schooler.