Today I Buttered Bread with a Pair of Scissors

in #palnet5 years ago

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My wife and I recently moved to France on a two year expat for her work. Aside from the work visa process being an absolute nightmare and the stress of bringing two pets across the ocean on a plane, the move went rather well overall.

However, one thing that has been a real challenge regarding this process has been not having any of our stuff with us at our new home. Though we bought quite a bit of furniture and odds and ends online from Ikea, we are nonetheless left without any of our personal things that we had previously shipped over by cargo plane and which are currently taking their sweet ass time going through customs.

These things include our dishes, cutlery, and kitchenware, our towels and clothes hangers and extra clothes and many other things that we all have in our homes and take for granted each day of our lives.

Not having any of these items and not wanting to buy new ones before ours arrive, has lead me to improvise in many different ways, especially when it comes time to eat.

For instance, not having cutlery had forced me to eat an entire rotisserie chicken all medeval style with nothing but my hands. Similarly, today I buttered a chunk of bread with a pair of scissors that I had in my travelling kit (washed of course) and spread some jam using a tiny delicate plastic spoon that I took from the hotel we stayed at 4 days ago.

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Funny enough, I actually consider that spoon to be one of the most precious tools that I have at the moment and which threatens to snap on me every time that I use it, despite me taking the utmost care in preserving it. You can't tell from the picture but that spoon is extremely thin and only about 3" long, the length of two keys laid end to end. It also already has two cracks in it so I really have to be selective in how I use it.

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The biggest challenge though has been coffee. For 3 days after leaving the hotel we had not had a kettle or coffee maker. As such, up until today I hadn't been able to have a cup of coffee and had suffered from caffeine withdrawals (i.e. a two day headache, lathargy and surprisingly a bout of feeling mildly depressed).

But last night we bought a kettle and some instant coffee and this morning I enthusiastically made some and drank it from one of the bowls we bought from Ikea. Maybe it was just the general lack of coffee previously, but I must say, that it was one of the best coffees that I've had in a long time.

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There really is nothing better than a bowl of instant coffee in the morning.

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This story is absolutely funny, but so real. Actually, in Korea, scissors are a main utensil in the kitchen, believe it or not. My mom had once had a cow after she saw me cutting some meat when I was back in the States. It's normal in Korea, Buuut, not for spreading butter, though.

This story kinda reminds me of that movie with Tom Hanks and his soccerball ⚽ Mr.Wilson. Sometimes we need to improvise when things are absent. I hope your pets are okay, and all your items pass through customs safely. Maybe you can record the lifespan of that little plastic spoon! What a memory that would make!

Yeah scissors are a handy utensil in the kitchen. It's not hard to make a pair of them dedicated kitchen scissors either. Unfortunately these ones were not though hahaha. Yeah I'm hoping that our stuff will arrive next week - early next week. My fingers are crossed.
We ended up buying some metal forks and a knife too so no more plastic ones. It was too hard to maintain it. I felt like a king though when we bought the metals ones along with mugs for coffee and tea.

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It's amazing how much we can be appreciative but only after it is gone.

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Actually wanted to reply this yesterday but something distracted me...

I really think I would do the same thing, and regarding eating chicken without anything - that's the easy part :)

During one of my last hikes in back in Serbia, my smarter&prettier half and I forgot the knife in the room - and the main thing we brought for that day was a block of air-dried bacon... with several additions to the side.... I ended up using teeth to chunkify it... since its really hard to anything else... anyways back to the topic

Definitely wouldn't buy any kitchenware - thou I would probably have some primitive tools in the backpack - but a bit more advanced than broken plastic spoon :D :)

It sucks that you forgot your knife but using your teeth makes for a a fun and interesting memory lol.

I've since upgraded for a broken plastic spoon to a wooden spoon, fork and knife - whoop whoop. Lol

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You need to get yourself to the hypermarché, they do sell cutlery in France and coffee makers too :D

Hahaha yeah. We ended up buying a coffee maker but we are trying to hold off on buying cutlery and dinnerware because we shipped that stuff from home and its supposedly ring delivered to us soon - once it gets through customs. If it doesnt come in by Friday though I will probably buy some

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Always worth having a rummage around a brocante too, you can pick up a lot of really interesting things for your home.

to eat an entire rotisserie chicken all medeval style with nothing but my hands

😂😂😂

I was just about to close my computer for an entire off-line Friday night. Then I decided to browse my Steemit feed one last time, and saw this post! My God @leaky20 I found it so funny. But only because I have moved from country to country three times! (Brasil ➝ England; England ➝ Chile; Chile ➝ Portugal).

So, I can relate to your plight! I have eaten chicken in the Medieval style, I have had tepid instant coffee in plastic bottles, and had several meals sitting on the floor. 😂 I have also treasured greatly a plastic fork. I feel I should warn you about the moment they break: it's devastating. Because it always happens right in the middle of some improvisations or something. Get ready @leaky20, get ready!

But, one thing I never did was to use a pair of scissors to butter a piece of bread. I would never 😛

I wish you guys (and your pets) a successful new life ahead.
All the best :)

Sounds like you have moved quite a lot so I guess you do know what I'm talking about. You probably have some good stories yourself. I'm impressed by the coffee out of a plastic water bottle. Thats ingenuity right there.

Yeah scissors as an eating utensil isnt for everyone lol.

Thanks for the well wishes. Take care :)

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Sounds like you're having to get creative! As frustrating as it might be right now, I tend to find times like that as great for brain growth and learning new things about myself and what I'm capable of. If you could learn to see it as a fun challenge or a game tjat might help, though hope you get your stuff back soon!

You are definitely right about that. It has forced me to get a lot more creative. It's also better for the environment as I'm finding all sorts of ways to reuse my recyclable materials. For instance these great little glass yogurt containers have become our drinking glasses, wine glasses, toothbrush holders and even a vase. They are actually super useful in so many ways. The picture below is one of them. It also feels super fancy drinking wine or anything really from a tiny glass hahaha.

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Love those glasses - I use the smaller ones for water pots when painting. We are now at the point where I think we may have too many glass crème brûlée dishes and I can't think of any more uses.

They are super handy. I'm still surprised that they sell yogurt in glass containers here though. In Canada everything is in plastic.

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