House Creature #3

Stir fry sauces, a house creature fail, and classic audiobooks

Apr 07, 2023

Alert! Alert! I have to leave my house!

We’re getting ready for a trip to Mexico to see some dear friends get married, and while I’m so excited, I’m also so nervous.

For a house creature, travel can be difficult. We’re getting a house/pet sitter for the first time, and I’ve basically written an encyclopedia for her - deepest apologies to Megan at Metro Pet Care, I mostly wrote all of it to make myself feel better. It’s hard to trust a new person with so many of the things you love most in the world!

I’ll be hunting for all the most house creature-ie things I can find in Mexico, but until then, I’m diving deep into all my favorite house creature comforts to ease some of my worries. So this week, we’re talking stir fry, shelves (some good and some bad), cleaning music, cozy audiobooks, and more!

3 Go-To Stir Fry Sauces

Picture this: It’s a Thursday night and you haven’t been grocery shopping in a while. You open your fridge to find: a quarter of a cabbage, a semi-sad-looking bell pepper, a few mushrooms, and some wilted green onions. Can it dinner?! YES, IT CAN!

Add some rice or noodles, and one of these sauces and you’re good to go. Here are my three most versatile stir fry sauces for when your refrigerator is 100% bits and bobs:

*** For all of these recipes the process is the same - put all the ingredients in a mason jar and shake the heck out of it. Once your veggies and proteins are cooked, add the sauce over medium heat and stir until thickened or veggies are coated. Store extra sauce in the fridge for up to a week.

This is a great all-around option for any protein or veg. Remember to give it a good shake or stir before pouring it to make sure the cornstarch isn’t sitting at the bottom.

Your coconut milk will thin out once it hits the heat! If you want a thicker sauce, add the cornstarch.

This is my personal favorite! Don’t overdo the Szechuan peppercorns - they tend to have a numbing effect. One teaspoon, or less if you like, is a great way to get the spicy floral notes without numbing your mouth.

A House Creature Fail

I got a gift card to the beautiful local Swedish home decor shop The Foundry and purchased this lovely little wall-mounted soap dish. I’ve gotten really into bar soap, and I love enamel things, so this seemed like the perfect fit. It would look really nice if we never used it! But we tend to use all the stuff in our house, so it just didn’t hold up. Main issues:

Soap residue on the white enamel makes it look immediately yuck.
There is a little perforated plate that keeps the soap from sitting in water while a puddle forms underneath, but because it is attached to the wall, how do you dump out the water? HOW?! Into another vessel that you then have to clean too? No thanks.
The soap dries, sticks to the dish, and then you end up picking up the whole dish while it’s attached to the wall. Our bathroom wall looks a little beaten up.

Solution? Not sure. Mounting a more permanent shelf, I suppose (see my deep love for shelves below.) But since this is the tiniest bathroom ever with no storage, options are limited. What would you do? What home purchases have you made that didn’t work out?

The mantel

A place for my favorite things.

The magic of a well-placed shelf - It took 5 years, but I’m finally noticing some habits in the way we use our house and brainstorming ways to change them. We use our patio door as our entryway most days, but there isn’t a closet nearby. My bags and purses always ended up slung over the backs of chairs, and my sunglasses got banged up in our “junk” drawer. So I found this pretty (and customizable) shelf/hook situation on Etsy, and it has been a game changer. Where is your clutter? Put a shelf nearby and see what happens!
One line a day (or seven per week) - This week I started my third year writing in my line-a-day journal. When I started this journal, I tried to do it daily, but it just didn’t take. I switched to weekly - on Tuesdays around 10:30 am! - and I love it. I look at my calendar and my to-do lists from the past week and just write the highlights. It’s a nice low-pressure way to reflect and see patterns in my emotions and activities throughout the year. I have this one, which is a 5-year journal, but they make 10-year options too.
Music for cleaning - Why this playlist works for me: 1) It’s a mix of Spanish and English-speaking artists. 2) There is enough older stuff to keep me tuned in, but some good new music to keep me “in the know.” And 3) Most of the songs are the perfect cleaning tempo - fast enough to keep you moving, but not so fast that it just turns into a dance party (yes, this has happened, and it is why the perfect cleaning playlist is key.)
Stop! In the name of liquid! - GIR (pronounced “gear”) is one of my absolute favorite kitchen brands. I gave out a bunch of their spoonulas at Christmas this year (I know some of you reading this received them!) and I couldn’t resist getting some things for myself… On a whim, I got these bottle stoppers, and now I can’t live without them. We use them for a bottle of vegetable oil by our stove and for open bottles of wine and hot sauce. They’re easy to put in and remove, they wash up perfectly, and they won’t leave little bits of cork in your wine.
Listen to a classic - Sometimes I get really wrapped up in reading the next big buzzy book or trying to get through my TBR list, but then we had a rainy spring day, and I suddenly needed to listen to Pride & Prejudice. Am I really following the story line? Probably not. Do I love how the narration makes me feel like I’m far far away in a different time and place? Absolutely. I’m listening to the version from my public library narrated by Katherine Kellgren. I’m excited to continue this deep dive into the classics - what should I listen to next?! What are YOU listening to?
Roundup of the most expensive and cheapest grocery stores in the U.S. - I loved reading about the most expensive stores - with $25 loaves of bread, dragon mascots, and open-air-inspired decor. But economic inflation calls for that list of the cheapest grocery stores too!

Art update

A very fun “Critters in the Kitchen” challenge on Instagram inspired these three recent pieces:

Cockatoo Cockatail -- Snake Birthday Party - Buffin

A very House Creature-ie video

Take 5 minutes to enjoy this extremely calming flower arranging video. Everything on this channel will get you excited for spring but in a totally chill way. Maybe I’ll try actually arranging some flowers this year rather than just plopping them in a mason jar?

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