Ticka-ticka Update

My hypothetical wife reports that her parents didn't have a ticka-ticka toaster when she was a kid. The first time she saw one of those was in the old rented trailer where we lived when we first got married. That trailer came equipped with all the cooking utensils we needed, and we never bought any of our own until we moved out of there into a proper house. I know that my parents had a ticka-
ticka toaster when I lived with them, but they switched to a silent toaster some time after I moved out. The more I think of it, I haven't seen a ticka-ticka  toaster since we moved out of that old trailer, so they must have stopped making them a long time ago. It was likely part of the "planned obsolescence" movement. The idea was that you didn't repair anything anymore, you just threw it away and bought another one when it broke down, which was shortly after the warrantee expired. This provided job security for the manufacturers, but it put a lot of skilled repair people out of work.

We still have a couple of those aluminum coffee percolators. We have never made coffee in them, just tea. We had to buy them decades ago because we couldn't find a decent tea pot anymore. We threw the percolator parts away because you don't need them to make tea, and they would just be in the way. Both of them have a crack by the handle, and they will leak if you overfill them. One of these days, I'm going to pick one of them up by the handle and the pot will fall right off. My hypothetical wife resolved to buy a new one before that happens, but she was unable to find any kind of tea or coffee pot in this town. I guess I'll have to check on Amazon, if they don't have them nobody does. If they don't make them anymore, I don't know what I'm going to use to make my tea. I don't like those kettles that can only be used to boil the water, which you are supposed to then pour into another crockery pot with your tea bags in it. I like to put the bags right in with the cold water, bring it almost to the boiling point, but not quite, and then turn the heat off and let it steep for at least ten minutes. I prefer aluminum tea pots, but I suppose I could live with a glass one, except my hypothetical wife can't find one of those either.

While we're in the kitchen, if you keep your bread in the refrigerator, it won't dry out, and the last slice will taste as good as the first. I have heard that you're not supposed to do that, but my experience
is that it works just fine. Keep the unused portion in the plastic bag it came in, rolling up the open end to minimize exposure to the air. I make my own bread, and I store it in zip lock freezer bags. I make three loaves at a time, which fits into four one gallon freezer bags. Three of them go into the freezer, and one into the refrigerator. When I take a bag out of the freezer, I open it and dump out the ice crystals that have formed in storage. Then I let it sit open on the kitchen table for a half hour or so, and any remaining ice crystals evaporate. Then I close it up and put in the fridge. You can usually skip that step with store bought bread. I suppose they put some kind of chemical in there to prevent the ice crystal from forming in the first place.

They are learning new stuff about the human brain all the time, but I think they are still a long way from completely understanding it. It is generally believed that plants are not sentient because they don't have anything resembling a brain. I saw something on PBS once that said plants do appear to communicate with one another by exuding certain chemicals, but that doesn't mean they know what they're doing.