Tropicalsenior

Ha, ha! At this point I have to disagree and also to agree. Right now, if I were going any slower I would be going backwards. So that really can't be my problem now. But you are right. If I had slowed down and had paid attention in the first place I would never have fallen and and I would not be in the shape I am today.

In case you haven't noticed, we have been merged with a much earlier thread. The earlier material is well worth reading. However none of the links work. But please, keep sending in new ideas for all us oldies. Thank you.

Famous last words!

That's what I usually do is grab a towel. And I like the fact that you emphasized dry. All it takes is once after you get a good steam burn from a wet one and you wind up in the 'I will never again' thread. That is one great gadget for opening jars. And the price is certainly right. Thank you.

Beautiful dish but I cringed because that red stuff kind of looks like blood.

Not to mention all the training that went into getting him the way you wanted him.

That is such an important idea. Too many times we keep living with something that really doesn't work for us because 'that's the way we've always done it'. With the help of my housemate oh, Carlos, I have started rearranging my house. My dining space was a mess. I have a table for four in the kitchen, a dining room table in the dining room that will seat 14, and two tables for 6 on my back patio. If I have just five for dinner I have two choices. The table for 14 or carry everything to the back patio. I also have a huge living room that nobody ever sits in. My solution? I got rid of some of the seating in the living room, moved one of the tables for 6 from the back patio and made half of it into a dining room. It's closer to my kitchen and I no longer feel that it's completely wasted space. I also purged my supply of serving pieces and dinnerware that could serve 40 and gave it to a friend of mine who still entertains a lot. It hurt to let a lot of it go but I sure like the extra space.

Yep, me too.

I forgot to mention one thing. On one of the other boards someone mentioned a Swiss or Swedish cutting board that has prongs on it to hold bread or other items that would slip. That might help you to hold things to cut but with your dad's wife there, it might be a big temptation to impale. It's a thought for later.

What a fantastic idea! I keep an old church key in my drawer just for that purpose but there are some lids that it just won't get under.

If you do decide to go that route maybe I can send you mine. I'll never use them again and just looking at them send chills up my spine.

Before you order them, talk to her about how she uses them. I have some and I don't feel that I have as much control with them. Since I dropped a beautiful glass casserole filled with some of the best scalloped potatoes I have ever made, they have been in the drawer.

Just had another thought. Down here I can buy coconut milk in bottles. Is that an option in your area? We also buy our tomato paste in the little plastic envelopes. Also something that you might consider is tomato paste in the tube. Then you would need no can opener. Since you are only cooking for one most of the time, the convection oven would be a really good investment. I talked a friend of mine into buying one for her and her husband and she knocked more than $10 off her electric bill the first month. In 10 months it had completely paid for itself.

At my age, if I married someone ten years younger he would also be older than dirt and that wouldn't help a bit.

If you buy an electric can opener, take a can with you and make them show you how it works. I have one and I hate but I only use it maybe twice a year and I'm damned if I'm going to buy a new one just for that. It takes a lot of dexterity just to get it to hold onto the can to cut it. I bought this years ago in a grocery store so I can't tell you where to find one but it has been a godsend. The round part opens bottle caps. I use the pointed end to pull the tabs on cans open. I lift the tap with a dinner knife, hook the opener in and just roll it back. I have oven issues, too. Because of back and strength issues, I was always burning myself. My lifesaver has been my countertop convection oven. I don't have to lean over to see what's going on or to take things out. Again, this is something that you want to choose carefully. If control is an issue you don't want just the big padded gloves. I've never found a pair that doesn't make you clumsy and more accident-prone. They have silicone ones now that would give you more grip and probably more flexibility.

Thank you. There is a lot of good information here. I would also like to hear about new ergonomic gadgets that are designed for those of us with arthritic hands. Also any shortcuts that you have come up with to make your time in the kitchen easier. I still like to eat the way that I used to but sometimes just the thought of putting that meal on the table makes my appetite go away.

Another little item that may sound trivial but it is so important. How do you wash your hands one handed. You can't hold on to the soap bottle to put soap in your hand so just to begin with you're dead in the water. I started putting a small bowl of water with soap in it beside the faucet. It worked so well that I still do it to this day.

I've done that too and all my heavier appliances have to be stored above waist-high because lifting them from under the counter is impossible. Unfortunately I have an old Costa Rican kitchen and I think that my kitchen space was designed by a blind plumber. Some things have to be carried quite a ways, hence the rolling cart. When I was almost completely one-armed, I had trouble gripping things to cut them. Things such as a hard loaf of bread or cabbage were almost beyond my ability. I solved the problem by using a small, clamp on, shop vise of my husband's. I cleaned it thoroughly, oiled it with non-toxic oil and clamped it to my kitchen counter. It wasn't very pretty but it did the job.

A couple of years ago I fell and injured my left arm badly and I became quite Adept at doing things with one arm. I've since recovered the use of it but my problem has been lifting things. I have tons of counter space but only one outlet that I can use for all of my kitchen appliances. Everything, my instant pot, KitchenAid mixer, food processor, electric skillet, all have to be carried from some storage place to that one outlet. I started using a rolling cart more in my kitchen because just one wrong lift can mean I'm out of commission for a couple days.

As we age we all find that we have to modify our cooking habits due to arthritis, tendonitis, failing eyesight and mobility issues as I do, being subject to all of the above plus just being older than dirt. What shortcuts or gimmicks have you come up with to help you in the kitchen? Host's note: this fine topic has been merged with a much older (and long lost) one, lest older ideas be lost.

I, too, seem to be looking for shortcuts to get around the effects of arthritis. I've gone to dictation just for that reason. I also realize that I underutilized the disks for my food processor. I just find it easier to struggle through with a knife than to clean the food processor. It just occurred to me that this would be a great idea for a topic.

There isn't one of us here that can't say been there done that. And the older you get the more careful you have to be. To me, the first and the most important thing that you have to learn in a kitchen is selection, care, and use of your knives. As I said, I'm scared to death of mandolins so I can do anything that a mandolin can do with a knife. Maybe not as fast, but a whole lot safer.

Oh my goodness! I cringe just thinking about it. I'm scared to death of those things. I've been given 2 as gifts and I've regifted them. Now that I think of it, they had to have been idiots to have given an instrument of torture like that to a klutz like me. I hope you buy a cut glove before you even look at that thing again.

Panko would probably be okay if that's all you have but I think this needs a bit more body and panko tends to get mushy. What I used was good homemade bread**, blitzed in the food processor, and then toasted in the oven to dry until it is just a pale brown and thoroughly dry. Then, as you would say, Robert is your mother's brother. ** now that I think of it, any of my 'not so good bread' goes into bread crumbs, too.

The last time that @liuzhou mentioned this I decided that I would like to make it and found a recipe on a site with Scottish food. I cut the recipe in half but still found that it was too much for us to use up in a reasonable amount of time. I cut the slices and laid them in a foiled pan and partially cooked them in a low oven (350f for 10 to 15 minutes). After that, I laid them on a plastic tray and froze them before packaging them in plastic bags. It sounds like more work but this sausage is delicious and it is well worth doing it to be able to just pull some out of the freezer (pop them in the microwave for one minute to thaw) and have it anytime you want. As for the Rusks, I used course, dried bread crumbs. Having never eaten them, I asked Mr. Google and he just said that they were twice-baked bread. Made sense to me.