Loving Life – I am so sorry to hear about your cousin’s apparent theft of your heirloom cookware and tools! I would contact him by text or email again and tell him that if he must return all the items immediately or, if he has already sold them, must immediately turn over to you all the $$ he made from selling them (so you can try to replace at least some of them!) or you will report the theft to the police. Cousin or no cousin, he shouldn’t be able to get away with this! In addition to checking on Craig’s List to see if you can find any current (or past, if it’s possible to see those) listings of your items for sale, I would also check EBay to see if he has sold any of them there in the past several months, or is currently listing any of them for sale. If nothing else, that could provide proof of who took them! Of course, the sentimental value of many of the stolen items is priceless – but perhaps you could at least recover or replace some of them if he returns them or coughs up the $$ he made from selling them. Needless to say, I don’t think you should ever allow him to enter your home again – he can leave any items he’s bringing back at your front door (with you there to receive them). As far as looking in thrift stores for a replacement manual pasta maker, if you are talking about a metal, pasta roller (such as an Atlas machine), you may already be aware of this but I heard awhile back that people need to be careful about buying such machines in thrift stores because sometimes folks have used them to make craft items out of a plastic-type clay, and those machines might not be safe to use for pasta-making any more. So, you need to be extra careful that any used one you may buy is still “food safe”.
Yesterday (January 2nd) I finished keying in my November grocery purchases into my master pantry inventory list in my computer. I also started checking my OTC medicines and other medical preparedness supplies. I threw out some items I was certain had really expired and put them on my shopping list to buy replacements later this month.