You can get some very good quality wine in casks and much cheaper, if not quite as romantic, as bottled.
When you spray for cockroaches under the stove, you should extinguish all of the pilot lights including the ones for the burners on top. It is not good enough to put out only the pilot light for the oven, that only allows for a build up of explosive gas. When it went bad, I didn’t actually get burned because I had a really bushy beard but the smell orf burning hair lingered for a good while. :rolleyes:
By the way boric acid doesn’t explode at all and there are some decent water-based insecticides, also.
You shouldn’t put regular liquid dish soap in the dishwasher unless you like lots of foamy bubbles waist deep covering your entire kitchen floor.
Boric acid in a spoon over a burner can do interesting tricks. It will puff up and turn to fluffy powder.
BwaaaaHaHa! Great story. Did he give a physics lesson based on the experience?
My very smart Great Uncle did something like that. I am not sure on the details of what actually started the fire… but he was a real penny pincher and rather than throw away yesterday’s coffee he would put it in a pot on the stove to warm. He too was prone to sudden naps. The pot cooked down to nothing and something, maybe the handle on the pot caught fire. Pretty much burnt the kitchen down. That penny-pinching cost him dearly, as burning down my Great Aunt’s kitchen is about the worst thing I can think of anyone doing. The entire lower part of the house needed new everything because of the smoke damage (my Aunt had what we might call Very Refined Taste). She kept a melted screwdriver on the stove a memento.
I second this one. First-hand knowledge. :smack:
You obviously have a different idea of what “good quality” is, or the box wine where you are is much superior to where I am.
For the record, I have no problem with new-fangled delivery methods like boxes or screw tops. I very much prefer screw tops for wine, and I’ve noticed that many good wines now come with screw tops. But I’ve yet to see a drinkable wine in a box.
Nothing says I hope she gets hammered and I get lucky, better than a two gallon box of wine. 
An opened box of wine left over from a bithday party for my ma set in her refrigerator for two years before I started throwing out expired food. She offered it at every holiday. I make it my bussiness to look for unused expired food from last year before Thanksgiving and Christmas. She was going to serve Pilsberry Cresents from the last Thanksgiving on year.
Lessons I’ve learned:
*Never assist the freezer’s natural defrost mechanism by chipping away with a knife.
*Sniff the juice container in the fridge before taking a big drink out of it to make sure it’s not full of potato soup.
*Leaning a ladder against something incorrectly, thus creating a fulcrum point, is generally a bad idea.
*Dumping excessive brandy over cooking meat and then shoving into a hot oven is a mistake.
*Driving off in the RV before cranking up the stabilizers is expensive.
Never try to take a futon frame downstairs around some bendy stairs on your own, with nobody within shouting distance in case you manage to trap yourself in the basement with the futon frame stuck halfway up and halfway down. (I didn’t actually trap myself - through some more agile moves than I thought I was capable of, I made it back up the stairs.) I just run this stuff by my husband first to see if it’s a good idea before I try it. There is something missing in my brain that makes things like that seem like a good idea to me.
When removing the guard slats from your son’s top bunk bed, it may seem like it would be easier to carry it if you stuck your arm through past the elbow and then used your shoulder to carry it down.
You may not agree with your decision 20 minutes later as you walk to a neighbor’s house, in your pajamas, with a bunk bed guard rail attached to your arm, in the hopes that they can help you extricate yourself.
My son, btw, enthusiastically thirds the “don’t put dish soap in the dishwasher” statement. We were up until 11pm that night, cleaning up the mess… He’s more careful now.
Never reach behind the too heavy to move couch for the window crank that fell off. The couch in question has two sections that individually recline, and nobody uses it reclined so you forget it can. The section I was reaching behind popped into a reclined position pinning my arm just below the shoulder. My armpit is against the top of the back and all my weight is now being applied to the reclined back, through my biceps and against the wall. You can’t get out of that too easily. I could have eventually gotten out of the predicament without help, but it may have broken the couch or my arm trying. I had to have somebody push down on the recline mechanism to free up my arm. I had a purple bruise all the way around my biceps, and it took weeks to go away, after having changed dark yellow and brown after the first few days.
I always thought this wise “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.”
Put in some fabric softner the next time soap starts overflowing an apliance. It kills the bubbles almost instantly.
We don’t use fabric softener, so don’t own any. I may have a stray dryer sheet laying around somewhere, though…
I’ve found French Rabbit ($10 in a Tetrapak container) to be surprisingly drinkable. Not my favorite, but not bad at all.
If you throw out the baby with the bathwater, it will start to stink and draw flies after a few days. Then your neighbors’ dogs will all come over to roll on it.
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Yes, yes, I’m kidding. Nobody throws out the bathwater anymore.
When you put a glass casserole dish in the sink after removing it from the hot oven, it’s best to let the dish cool down before running cold water over it. I even knew this, and yet just wasn’t thinking one night and bam!- shattered casserole dish filled the sink and garbage disposal.
And there are some pretty good wine deals in bags and boxes out there (it is a superior package for ‘drink now’ wines, especially for people that won’t finish a bottle in a night or two, but it’s not meant for aging wines/fine wines.)
“Good quality”, yes. “Great quality”, not so much. At least not here in the US. But definitely great bargains, and perfectly drinkable. And you can’t beat the package for convenience, except when you try to stab it open with a knife I guess. 
There are lots of articles out there with brand and/or varietal recommendations as well as general info about the package:
Seattle P-I
SF Chronicle
AZ Central
Detroit News
Florida Today
Slate
OK, I think that horse is dead. 
In that case I sugest you put on Lawrence Welk and dance in the kitchen.
From what I’ve read, boxed wine is much more commonly done and accepted in Australia and other countries, and thus they do tend to have good quality wine available in boxes.
[drags the horse over to a tree and hangs it up for easier whuppin’]
Next time I go to a classy BYO restaurant, I will bring a cask. See how that goes. At least I wont have to pay corkage. 
[/dthotatahiufew]