If I Could Turn Back Time: On Bad Spending Habits

Scene: Steve and I are at a motel lobby and I spot a $1 off coupon for a wine tasting we just attended on a weekend getaway. So our $5 for seven wines would have been $4 each. I’m annoyed at myself - $2 I could have saved! I’ve been thinking about the Golden Girls episode where Rose’s already frugal boyfriend Miles becomes even more penny pinching, and Rose finds out it’s because his doctor told him he’ll live to be a very old age, and he’s not budgeted to live that long! With the idea of starting a family in the near future on our minds (we hope! I’m turning 37 in November), money is heavily on our minds. I always read in those Americans finding themselves in France type travel books and blogs how the French allegedly never discuss money. Well in the post Recession, I think we should talk about money, a lot, and that frugality shouldn't be something to be ashamed of, it should boasted about. How to save it (for rainy days, for family, for retirement), how to be more resourceful with what you have, what you enjoy spending on that it feels right for you to spend on (for us it’s travel, thrift shopping and eating out more than we should).

Scene: Steve and I are in a God’s Plan for a Love Filled Marriage session required by his church. The man running the session talks much about family planning (he has nine children!), but money was on my mind. He talks about hand-me-downs, whipping up a feast for a large family for $10, not participating in the media room obsession (how many tvs I see on the side of the road which I’m sure replaced perfectly good ones). I’m all on board with that part of the talk. I’m also looking around at the engagement rings on the women there and seeing the large stones that make my grandmother’s ring, purchased on my grandfather’s teacher’s salary in Switzerland many decades ago, look so very humble, but I wouldn’t trade my ring for one of those large stones any day. We kept hearing couples talk on lunch breaks of the pressures they felt to have so much food at the wedding and such, and we don’t understand the treadmill everyone remains on in the post Great Recession America in 2012. Not us. No way. Steve always says we work too hard for our money. Driving home, it was raining. I’m thinking of the rainstorm and the rainbow on my drive from Santa Fe to Taos. The Southwest lingers on my mind, but I think because the day was filled with all the religious talk I thought about something my colleague said who has roots in New Mexico and who had a family member doing a religious pilgrimage to Chimayo around Easter time. She talked of chili pepper seeds and said, “That’s my religion.” I feel that way too sometimes. Steve spots a picture on the roadside. We stop. We rescue it from the rain just in time. It was a Georgia O’Keeffe, Light Iris, 1924. We were at her museum in Santa Fe, and I still felt a pang of regret for not getting an O’Keeffe at the Goodwill for a price more than I wanted to pay at the time. The universe was smiling on me I think. Guess what, the O'Keeffe I passed on, I found at a garage sale over the weekend for $1.

We talked with the homeowner where we found the O’Keeffe who was leaving as we were getting it, and spoke about the housing market, how bad the job situation is. She mentions someone who just lost her house but bought a fancy car and shops for Coach bags.

I wish we would have more of a dialogue about our own spending habits and it’s not just blame Obama for all of our financial woes, or if Romney gets in, let’s blame him. Many of us continue to live way beyond our means.  I raise my hand first and say I've made a lot of bad spending choices which were my own fault.  Unlike the Edith Piaf song, I’m not one to say “Je ne regrette rien.” There are so many times now when I think, I wish I had the money in the bank for the future instead of what I spent it on. Some spending regrets (and how many relate to my vanity!)

Expensive haircuts and color. I started doing blonde highlights in my natural brown hair in high school, and this went on for a decade. I later switched to red hair. I’m back to my natural color and while I sometimes miss being a redhead, and I actually like my current color the best. I was paying $110 for the highlights touch up and $150 for the full head for blonde and then $60 for red hair at a pricey salon. Add to that haircuts of about $50. I completely cringe. While I enjoyed experimenting with colors and wouldn’t rule it out in the future, I so wish I had done at-home color treatments. I also strongly resent the price-gouging of women’s haircuts versus men. Why should we pay $50 for some “luxury” cut when men can spend $15 at the barber? Now: I go to Supercuts and pay $19 for a wash and trim. I skip the blowout. I doubt the cashier at Trader Joe’s cares what my hair looks like when I’m getting a cut on a Saturday and then running errands. While I’m normally a cheerleader for independents, I like the value of Supercuts (my next cut is free after eight cuts), and considering this a service where you’re not outsourcing to another country, I allow it. I have a simple cut (straight with bangs) and it takes 10 minutes. Pricey cuts, not again. I may look for a reasonably priced independent salon in the future (read, not $50!) Fake blondes may or may not have more fun, but true brunettes have a bigger bank account.

Manicures/pedicures. I know most women view this as a “treat” and I get it. But now, the smells of the polish and polish remover nauseate me, and I’m skeeved about by the communal tools and dipping your feet in questionably sanitized pools. In my twenties, I paid $11 for manicures with tip and $30 for manicures and pedicures regularly. My nails have never felt and looked healthier since I said goodbye to manis/pedis. My sister wants to take me to an organic spa before my wedding, but in general I wouldn’t do polish. If I did, at home would be the way to go.

Clothing: I used to “splurge” on pieces at Anthropologie and Ann Taylor Loft. I’d think I was treating myself to a $100 skirt here or there. More cringing. Now, $25 is on the high side for a skirt (that’s from charitable thrift). The highest I spent was $35 on a DKNY skirt which I happened to like the cut of from Housing Works. Some fall wardrobe items I can’t wait to wear: a blue/white cape from the Goodwill ($5), a dress from a garage sale ($1), a tweed vintage coat ($10 or $15 from an estate sale), and a Goodwill dress ($5). I just scored vintage pieces from an estate sale that were about $1-$2 a piece. I'm so proud of Steve who is now a Goodwill enthusiast for clothes too. Heck, my wedding dress is from there!

Dry cleaning: Save for my vintage coats which I get at estate sales and thrift shops, and my thrifted wedding, I never dry clean anything. I hand wash everything on cold and hang dry it. I used to run up enormous dry cleaning bills and just didn't question the label, "Dry cleaning only." I've had a few items where the garment shrunk a bit but the lining didn't. With most of my clothes second hand, I'm willing to gamble any possible damage.

Cable: I blogged last year about how I cancelled cable, but when I moved in with Steve he insisted on cable and still does. It’s his one indulgence. While he likes to remind me how much I enjoy Mad Med (which I really do!) when it’s on, I don’t enjoy watching TV much at all anymore unless I’m watching a favorite film or having a movie night. When I had it on my own, I spent thousands of dollars on it when I did the math. Better off: getting a Netflix account, or using the library for DVDs.

Furniture: I furnished most of my first apartment from IKEA. Admittedly, I’m not proud of this, but I still enjoy browsing through their showrooms and yes, even dining in their cafeteria (their spinach and cheese crepes are surprisingly good!) I love homey stuff. I had a $100 gift card I spent at Home Goods, and totally get the appeal. I’m a sucker for almost anything that reminds me of the Southwest, or that has birds, butterflies or the Eiffel Tower on it! But when I moved and I looked at my U-Haul, I thought of my IKEA stuff, well, it’s kind of junk. Since Steve got a minivan, we’ve been able to move all kinds of furniture (hunter green couches from his brother he didn’t want, patio furniture from a garage sale for $30, etc.) I wish I had at least been better outfitting my two apartments from thrift shops and garage sales. It’s so much more fun and creative to find your own things secondhand than copying the IKEA showroom. Butterfly curtains from an estate sale in my bedroom - $2!

If I add these up and had spent instead the way I spend now, I would have thousands and thousands of dollars or more money in the bank. In my world, that's horrifying. Live and learn I know, but I wish I had learned earlier. I've always saved since I started working for my retirement and put into a savings account. One of my favorite four letter words lately - save.

So those are my financial regrets. What are yours? Ponder them in the comments section, or internally. 

May and June Storytellers: Two Months of Books

I've hit a wall. I have piles of inviting books waiting for me. I plan on getting to them, I do! More often lately, though, on my prime reading time on the bus ride back to New Jersey from New York City (going in I read the newspaper) I feel like listening to music, but those are storytellers in another form, right? I thought about an article on one of my favorite singers, Natalie Merchant, in The Seattle Times, "as teenager she studied folk music from the British Isles and Ireland, and learned to embrace song as storytelling."

..."When people give birth, when people get married, when they're ailing and when they die ... Our culture developed song," Merchant observed.

Do you ever hit a reading wall, despite your love of books? I watched a documentary on the French actor Maurice Chevalier. I had no idea he was an author, and it was noted that because he was such a reader, he was able to be a great writer. I always see the correlation between avid readers and great writers, whether they are bloggers, songwriters and novelists. The more I read, the more I want to write. The creative spark is infectious. Overall, my life feels better when I'm reading. I plan on hitting the books again.

So this is what it is, my tiny reading list for the past two months (I haven't had many blog entries lately either, probably related to a distracted mind). I have a lot to say though! My May and June storytellers: Let's discuss!

Confessions of a Prairie Bitch, by Alison Arngrim, 50 cents, garage sale. As an online reviewer put it, "At last, a Nellie Oleson tell all!" What a lucky find! You never know where your next storyteller will find you. Don't let the title put you off (I'm not a fan of curse words, never mind in the title!) I couldn't get over how much I enjoyed this book. Ms. Arngrim is an engaging, witty storyteller. I actually felt a void after reading this. You'll want to be at least a fan of the Little House on the Prairie series to enjoy her anecdotes. Above all, she is an inspiration as an AIDS advocate (best friend and former cast mate Steve Tracy who played Percival Dalton passed away of the disease). She also candidly shares her story of being molested by a family member starting at a very young age and her fight to get an incest exception law off the books (can you believe the laws in California were more lenient if a relative molested you?) This was my favorite storyteller.

Lunch in Paris, by Elizabeth Bard, free, the library, about Bard's relocati. How did I find out about it? Searching for keyword "Paris" on Anthropologie's site. Embarrassing, but the truth. There's a suspicious number of 'Americans who go to France to find themselves' books, and an even more suspicious number willing to spend their leisure time reading this (me!) Some pet peeves: I don't want to know when you first slept with your husband (our too much information age), how she kept making fun of her husband's tap dancing classes (watch a Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film and see the appeal), and her attitude about things like American tourists wanting to eat early dinners and not late when the French dine. She also got very snippy about her mother's visits, even demeaning a gift her mom brought her. Often in this book, I wanted to scream out, "Get a job already!"

This was an easy read and engaging, but it will be one of my more forgettable books over time. The recipes do look mouthwatering. I did like how she debunked some of our envy over the French healthcare system. When her father in law gets sick, she writes frustratingly about the lack of second opinions and other treatments available to them. Seeing another doctor would be almost an insult to your current doctor. No flying to the Midwest for some experimental treatment.

And there's our national obsession with the French thin woman. She talks about being at a dinner party when she's asked if she wants a small or normal piece and she says normal, and she's asked again if she's sure. She takes the small and talks about the series of small decisions French women make like these. Point made, but American or French, our cultures seem to be overly fixated on weight.

I don't understand the wanting to be thin versus healthy, no more than I understand wanting to be wrinkle free in your 40s and older. Weight loss seems to me always associated with vanity issues. I hate weight loss compliments. I'm a size 14 and when I've lost weight in the past it's usually due to stress, but hey the most important thing was I was thinner, right?  The only time I did lose weight for dietary adjustments was when I was eating vegan vs. vegetarian (for ethical issues), since I was cutting out so much cheese and lots of sweets which were off limits. When I lose weight, I immediately get compliments, so I look so horrible before? Oh the horror stories, readers, the "when are you due?" comments, almost all from women who should know better. I've lost count and stopped crying in the car afterwards when people have asked me. After a fun happy hour sharing sangria with some friends after work, going home at Port Authority some woman was going to let me go because she thought I was expecting, and when I told her I wasn't, she said, "You're not?" Lovely! Then there was the time I saw a former neighbor who said, "Wow, you put on a lot of weight!" What discrimination and comments do others get, I can just imagine. Frankly put, I think people should think more about the factory farms their cheap meat comes from, the pesticides on their food, and how much a farmer earns before issues like my thighs or bloated stomach (or theirs). Do people like Ms. Bard or others spend as much energy wondering or caring how their foie gras was produced as they do about the secret to French women being thin? I had a great beach day this weekend and know that no one there cared how beach body ready I wasn't. I look at pictures of myself a decade ago at a size four and think - too thin, not enough curves. As Forrest Gump would say, that's all I've got to say about that.

The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett, 99 cents, the Goodwill in Paramus, NJ. This book sounded so me - gardens, England, a children's classic tale - but as an adult, I really was disappointed by this.  It was tough to follow Mandy by Julie Andrews, another book about an orphan in England and a secret garden that was one of my favorites from this year. I really disliked how overly focused the story became on Colin, and think the line "Master Colin!" is the worst ending for a book I've ever read. I agree with many online reviewers describing it as "boring." I just wish there had been more story here, or less pages. I do appreciate the message of children connecting with nature when now they are always connected to a device, which I'll never get. I always say politicians do not scare me, marketers do. They run our country. I don't even see kids coloring at restaurants, they're looking at some glowing screen. Is Crayola still in business? I hope so.

I've finally been spending time in my own garden doing my own "coloring" I guess you could say. I really went to town when the local garden center had their annual 40 percent off storewide sale earlier this month. A sampling below. Did you ever see the Keeping Up Appearances episode when Mrs. Bucket (Bouquet) has an indoor-outdoor luxury bbq for the garden center king and her car is loaded with plants and Richard can barely see? That's what I looked like driving on Route 17!

I've been a fan of Tori Amos, another favorite sonic storyteller, for years, but only really listened to and explored the lyrics of Datura, off of To Venus and Back, this year. Gardens have really been in my life this year, in the written page and in real life. Do you know many of the names of what resides in your garden? I know so very little about my own. The lyrics of Datura, according to Wikipedia, "are derived from the plants that were found in Amos' garden. A list of the plant names was handed to Amos by her gardener. Apparently most of the plants in her garden had died, except for Datura."

I hope you get out into a garden, your own or a public one, this weekend.

Wanted: A Thriving American Reuse Market

Has your blogger been busy starting a store in the guest bedroom? No, this was just a sample of clothing, shoes, bags and other goods Steve and I rescued from a cruel and unusual fate in the landfill. Taking a Sunday drive to go to garage and estate sales to outfit our part of our new two family home, we happened upon a large pile of trash in River Edge, New Jersey, which we were drawn to because we saw a baker's rack and some other items. The woman saw us from her window and urged us to take anything. She needed to move in a hurry she said and was just getting rid of the items her and her three daughters (in their late teens and early twenties) accumulated. Luckily, Steve was driving a used minivan he bought this year, and we were able to take quite a bit. Later in the day, I told Steve, let's go back. I have a feeling there's a lot there and I can donate or give to my family and I can use some of it myself. We left with seven large contractor bags filled with goods. We saved so much, but it still haunts me what we didn't save here, and what's being thrown out every night in Anytown, USA.

A sampling of the bounty now NOT in the landfill:

For my mom: UGG boots (something she wouldn't buy new, but used, in good condition and free, yes!), several pairs of summer and winter shoes (she was actually shopping for the summer sandals and didn't have to spend a dime), some scarves and two tops.
For me: An Eiffel Tower decoration (what a lucky find for a Francophile!), a beautiful Irish wool sweater and matching scarf for winter, several tops, two handbags (I looked up one that said they retail for $1100, but I'm unclear if it's a copy), a beach towel, a blue throw blanket for our bedroom, brown suede boots, and more.
For my sister: A whole new summer wardrobe. I loved how she put it, "Who needs to shop when I have you?!"
My seasonal clothing swap: various sports shirts, Seven brand jeans, bags, other clothes. I co-organize four swaps a year at work, and much of what I brought was scooped up, the rest donated to one of our charities, including Housing Works Thrift Shops which helps out HIV positive and homeless New Yorkers.
Charity shops: The majority of it went to the Goodwill in Paramus, New Jersey, since they could handle the volume and it was convenient to drop-off, but some also went to CATS Resale Shop in Emerson, NJ and Cinema Verite in New York City.

Steve thought I was nuts, but I washed everything we found (except for some items that had tags on it, which gives them a higher resale value). I didn't know where it was stored or if it was clean, so in good faith all my clothing donations were freshly laundered. You don't want to go into the landfill Elmo, do you? No way, let's go to the Goodwill!

I felt bad for the woman. She was going through a divorce and had to move in a hurry. I think people don't declutter and this is what happens - they get overwhelmed and have to discard when moving. I spent a lot of time and energy on these items since I was distributing them to various places and people, but I can't believe there wasn't an hour in the day on the owner's part to run this stuff over to the Goodwill. Thousands of dollars spent, dozens of hours shopping, and then, I don't have an hour or two in my day? I'm really saddened that people are slaving away in other countries to feed the American appetite for cheap fashion and things go so readily into the landfill, some never even worn.

I don't understand all these little girls clutching logo bags (fake and real) around in one hand and their phone in the other. I don't even like logo bags for women. As for companies like Coach declaring their products are "handcrafted in China" I declare I will never give you a dime of my hard-earned money for your false status symbol bags you are conning American women and girls to buy. Katy Perry might be maxing out her credit cards in her song Last Friday Night, but I don't march in that army, and I don't have her bank account. What message our we sending about money when we are done using our latest trendy whatever, we throw it out when someone else could have gotten it for free at a clothing swap or from freecycle, or some great charities could have benefited.

It was a lot of work, but it was worth seeing my donations for sale at the Goodwill. These shoes were not my size or style (too bad they weren't 7 1/2 size ballet flat fans), but these were priced for $15 at Goodwill. Instead of the landfill, this shoe is giving an American a wage and keeping demand down for one more new pair of foreign made shoes.

Certain brand names always draw strong interest, but when I look at these Seven jeans, I just see another "Made in China" label and a clothing manufacturer charging a premium to the consumer.

There was a Dateline NBC piece recently about Americans who were now out of work and struggling financially, some having to go to food banks. Like anyone in hard times, cut backs were needed, but I found some of the items mentioned in the piece hard to swallow as struggling like cutting cable, eating meals at home and shopping at thrift shops. Each could warrant it's own blog post, but for our topic here, I'm tired of the media associated thrift shopping, like acts like hang drying laundry, as, "Oh, that's what poor people do." I don't understand the snobbery against second hand goods. There's a line in the Sonny and Cher song, "Baby Please Don't Go" where Cher sings in the character of a young struggling woman, "I never had no money. I shopped at the secondhand store." I shop at the secondhand store, and always will even though I have the means to shops at traditional stores. If people don't like my lifestyle, I'll compare credit card debt notes. I have none.

WalMart is running ads about their low-price guarantee. Why is it okay that we brag about low prices on some items (never mind no questions asked about how our food, clothes and other items are produced), but there's shame associated with getting something at a swap or from the Goodwill? Steve and I attend a black tie dinner each year with his chef's group, and this year I was thrilled to find a vintage dress at an estate sale for about $10. I got so many compliments that evening and he kept saying don't tell them where it's from, but I'm proud of who I am. I didn't go to Nordstrom and spend $200 for some Chinese made dress. I recycled and I got a huge savings.

Retail therapy, America needs it for sure. Just not what the traditional retailers want.

I always think back on the free shelf I saw in Telluride, Colorado. Why can't we have this in every community?

Steve and I ponder this issue often and how we can make a difference. I do the swaps, I buy the vast majority of our clothes and household items second hand, we rescue things from the trash. We're not registering for our wedding so I can rip open overpriced foreign made goods in front of my friends and family when I'm getting things for a dime at garage sales and recycling in the process. But we want to do more. I'm sharing this post with you in hopes that some seed will be planted somewhere.

I tried to plant a seed with the woman throwing it out. She came up with excuses about hearing the Goodwill or other places shreds things for rags. Even if they do that with a minority of items, at least it's being reused. I just wore at our Independence Day bbq a cute Old Navy summer dress from the Goodwill I paid about $6.50 for. I assure you that wasn't shredded for rags, and I'm so glad its previous owner took the time to drop it off. When I don't want it anymore, I'll give it, not throw it, away. When I mentioned what a shame it was so much was made in China and other countries, she said there's no way around it. This consumer respectfully disagrees. This isn't about being perfect and making ideal choices all the time, but I largely don't give these companies my money. Yes, sometimes I do, but mostly I swap. I rescue from the curb. I thrift shop or go to garage sales. I vote using (and not using) my dollar.

Please share your thoughts in the comments section about the epidemic of waste going into American landfills, and how we can solve it.

Resources:
Find a charity shop near you at the TheThriftShopper.com.
Find a Freecycle. group near you
Shop estate sales (where the entire contents of a house are for sale). Find one near you.

April Storytellers: A Month of Books

One of the first pieces of furniture I brought into our new home was my bookshelf. Books are going to be in every room. Pioneer books in my Laura Ingalls Wilder-prairie themed guest bedroom, Native American and Southwest books in the Southwest office along with the bookshelf, cookbooks in the kitchen of course, nature books in the room that leads to the patio, a book on my nightstand. Before the unpacking was done and many things accomplished, I headed straight to my town library since I got the DMV change of address stickers for proof of residence. I felt like a kid in a candy store. But I also felt like I was part of a community: of seekers of knowledge, dreamers, adventurers.

These were my storytellers for April.

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By the Shores of Silver Lake, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, $6.99, Shaw's Book Shop, Westwood, New Jersey. I found most of the Little House books thrifted at Housing Works but this one was missing, so I wanted to support my local book shop. The Ingalls family has just battled scarlet fever and Mary has gone blind as a result. Laura is the eyes for her, and her descriptions of the West are as poetic as ever. Imagine if you had to be the eyes for a blind loved one and had to look at the world and note what you saw. Think of how honed your observation skills would be. They are now on the move to South Dakota. The railroads are being built just up ahead. The landscape and the country are changing. Laura quickly hones in on a difference here, not just in grasses and wildflowers, but, "There was something else here that was now anywhere else. It was an enormous stillness that made you feel still. And when you were still, you could feel great stillness coming closer. All the little sounds of the blowing grasses and the horses munching and whooshing in their feedbox at the back of the wagon, and even the sounds of eating and talking could not touch the enormous stillness of this prairie."

It's hard to imagine such stillness in modern life. No airplanes overhead or humming of cars in the distance. The closest I came to the stillness she describes was when Steve and I were in the parks in the Southwest, many in Utah when we were some of the last hikers about. There was a reason, though, for the some of the stillness Laura describes,

"Laura saw old Indian trails and buffalo paths worn deep in the ground and now grassed over. She saw strange large depressions, straight-sided and flat-bottomed, where now the grass was growing. Laura had never seen a buffalo, and Pa said it was not likely that she ever would see one. Only a little while before vast herds of thousands of buffalos had gazed over this country. They had been the Indians' cattle, and white men had slaughtered them all."

It's funny how books enter your life. My next storyteller was Louis Erdrich's The Birchbark House.

I bought a used copy for about $3.50 including shipping from Better World Books, an online bookseller my writer friend J.J. Brown told me about. I was excited to learn about an alternative to Amazon.com, which made headlines with questionable labor practices in Pennsylvania. Since the book has a recurring thread about respect for the environment, it's appropriate I got a recycled copy from an ethical retailer which takes many discarded library books and resells them. I discovered Louis Erdrich at Our Thrift Shop in Westwood, New Jersey, where her Love Medicine was waiting for me for 25 cents. Upon looking up online reviews for the book which I haven't read yet, I discovered she penned a series considered to be the Native American version of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Little House series. Erdrich's Birchbark House leapt to the top of my reading list. Omakayas is a girl of seven winters who, as a baby, was the only one to survive a small pox epidemic that wiped out her village. I love thinking of one's life of the winters one has survived, for winter at that time truly was about survival. No trips to ShopRite for stockpiling of food upon a weatherman's report of three inches of snow like here in New Jersey. This is a great book if you are reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder books with your children or even on your own since these are essentially the people who the Ingalls displaced. The attitude in the Little House books is very much this land is all ours for the taking. Not so in the Birchbark House. I love that when they need to use the birchbark tree for the house, the grandmother acknowledges the tree, "Old sister...we need your skin for our shelter." When Omakayas and her sister have to trap birds who threaten their corn she says, "Forgive us, forgive us, we have need, we have need." It's very much about need and reverence. I've mentioned before how if we are saying grace for meals, shouldn't we also thank the farmer, the animal and the land? From fracking to obtain natural gas (I've written about my opposition to it) to opposition to everything from solar panels to Mrs. Smith's towels hang drying both due to aesthetic reasons, it's still a little too much, this is my land for the taking attitude in 2012.

Like the Little House books, the Birchbark House focuses on seasonal challenges but also delights, namely two of my favorite things: food and stories. Little Omakayas so loved story time on cold winter nights and maple sugaring time. So did Laura. Laura talks always warmly of food often. After a New Year's feast at Mrs. Boast's of oyster soup, "When the last drop of soup was gone, and the last crackers were divided and crunched, there were hot biscuits with honey, and dried raspberry sauce. And then a big dishpan full of tender salty popcorn." I think I shall make biscuits with honey, and some raspberry jam and think of Laura.

The Courage of Sarah Noble by Alice Dalgliesh, 25 cents, garage sale.

I'm not ashamed at all to say I'm reading more children's books this year. This book was published in 1954 and tells the tale of young Sarah Noble, traveling with her father in the woods of New Milford, Connecticut to build their new home. She's on the journey to cook meals for her father, and remembers her mother's words, "Keep your courage, Sarah Noble." It's a simple and short story but one that will stay with me. Sarah father instills great respect for the Native Americans, and Sarah makes friends with them. She encounters briefly a mother and her children who have fear in their heart. When Sarah's mother arrives at the end, she's the same ignorant racist Ma Ingalls is. What's with these narrow-minded pioneer women?

Please share your thoughts on my storytellers or any great ones you'd like to share.

Retro Matinee Movie Feature: April in Paris

It's April 2012 and I'm in New York City, but I want to be with Doris Day in 1952 headed to Paris. I found a copy of April in Paris, with Day and Ray Bolger (the scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, a movie that frightened me as a child and still does, but I digress...) thrifting as I often do at New York City's Housing Works for $3. I often wonder if I go thrift shopping too much, but I fill my life with these wonderful gems that I discover at these shops. Day is more popularly known for her films with Rock Hudson, which I acquainted myself with this year (an aside, I'm obsessed with the fabulous pink kitchen she had in Pillow Talk!), but as a Francophile I'm partial to April in Paris, about Day as a show girl who gets an invitation mistakenly to go to Paris. We're probably in too cynical an age to make films like this anymore. The sets probably aren't fancy enough for some (no impressive computer graphics), or the plot too simple or campy. Since I take terms like "dated" often as favorable, April in Paris, J'adore! Steve and I were in Paris in September a few years ago, I still remember how it rained on our picnic of lentil salad, a baguette, and apple tarts in front of the Eiffel Tower, the even more pouring rain at Versailles which prevented us from seeing the grounds, and the loud, complaining child behind us on our sunset cruise along the Seine. Sometimes, the wind just blows and blows on your dream bistro meal. Very little takes place in Paris, but it's more that dream of Paris anyway: of romance, of long lunches at cafes, and oh the Eiffel Tower. "April in Paris, this is a feeling." And yes, the bill arrives at the end, but how it is still in my heart. Travel is something Steve and I agree to spend money on and don't do major gifts for birthdays, anniversaries and such so we can indulge in travel, but I do plenty of arm chair traveling too. Doris Day bonus points: she does animal advocacy work with her Doris Day Animal Foundation (a friend of animals is usually a friend of mine), and she released her first album in 17 years in December to benefit the group. Betty White (who I adore!) isn't the only Hollywood senior going strong.

On the Move, With the Ingalls on My Mind

If I was a pioneer crossing the trail, I would surely be one of those cluttering the landscape with my too-many possessions I'd be forced to dispose of along the way. Moving day occurred in our household on April 16, 2012, but with so many possessions to bring to our new "homestead" moving day will be more like moving month. But I've already slept in our lavender colored bedroom, sat in the start of my Southwestern themed library/office, even changed my address for my Vegetarian Times subscription (priorities!), had morning coffee in a royal blue mug on my lady bug table cloth overlooking the patio and garden, and lied on the bed in our prairie-inspired guest bedroom complete with a now cherished calico quilted wall hanging found at an estate sale. That room was my idea of course. I don't think Steve would have dreamt up a Laura Ingalls Wilder-inspired guest bedroom. I kept telling him on our Southwest trip he was "my Almanzo" to which he kept saying, "Who?"

Thank goodness for Wendy McClure for getting me hooked on these Little House books after penning The Wilder Life: My Adventures in the Lost World of Little House on the Prairie. While I'm sad I did not read the series as a child even though I was an avid fan of the show, reading them as an adult has been just as pleasurable. I've been thinking a lot about the Ingalls family, not just because I recently read Laura Ingalls Wilder's marvelous By the Shores of Silver Lake, which documents their journey to South Dakota, but because the Ingalls family moved so often in their lifetime and as Laura has said the Little House books appeal is that they are about "home, that dream of home we all share."

I've moved very little and across few frontiers in comparison. No childhood displacements and having commuted to my local college, I moved to my first apartment in my early twenties, then moved to another apartment around 30 (both times living alone), then in with Steve (and his roommate! - why I've been extremely eager to move out for privacy and more than one bathroom!) in September when my lease was up until we could find another two family. What was supposed to be a very temporary situation was drawn out for months by the bank. Roommate (thankfully) is staying put at the old homestead, and we have a nice couple living above us and Steve and I have privacy at last with the first floor all to ourselves.

Wherever she went, Ma took out her coveted china shepherdess. You can buy your own china shepherdess on the online gift shop of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Memorial Society (and even a Charlotte doll!) You can also get a tin cup just like they got on Christmas from the Ingalls Homestead. I can spend (waste?) as much time on these Little House gift sites as I do looking up retro-inspired goods on the Vermont Country Store or looking up key words like, "butterfly," "calico" or "birds" on Etsy.com. I've never even purchased anything, I'm just fascinated by beautiful things that make a house a home. I like things that make it all "snug" and "cozy" like Laura always described.

It got me to thinking what is my china shepherdess, and I'm not sure that I have one. I definitely have a host of cherished items: books, wardrobe (much loved vintage), artwork, tea things. I think the calico wall hanging will be a favorite item. Do you have your own version of a china shepherdess?

Laura felt unsettled in the town and longed for the wide open prairie fields. I feel frequently unsettled by the crowded roads in New Jersey, the crowds of people in New York City and the pace of modern life. I do share a bit of Pa's and Laura's urge to wander. Never having lived outside of New Jersey, I long for the Western frontiers. I've talked to Steve about relocating eventually elsewhere (we've talked about upstate New York, Vermont and even somewhere in the West). Ma didn't want to go further west in the books because she wanted a formal school (although with Ma being teacher I always wondered why home schooling wasn't an option). We worry about schools too when the time comes to start a family. I could write a lengthy blog post (possibly an entire blog!) about things I never learned in my public school education.

I think of how different Laura's worries are than mine. She sure never had to ponder things like, when they married, did she or Almanzo have the better healthcare plan? Would she be able to afford to stay home with baby Rose?

Pa enjoyed many aspect of modernizing life, like how train travel could transport the family in one morning what would take a week by wagon. I love how we can communicate across a medium the Ingalls could have never dreamed of, but also want to take my time admiring my prairie, even if that's our humble backyard that looks out into woods. With all the unsettledness of the year, my blog has taken on a slower pace, but I'm enjoying being online less. I will definitely continue blogging, but I'll be puttering around in the garden, cooking more, writing letters (I'm the worst pen pal ever, sorry you know who!) and spending time with Laura and other great writers like her.

"The dishes were done. Laura carried the dishpan some distance from the back door and flung waste water over the grass where tomorrow's sun would dry it. The first stars were pricking through the pale sky. A few lights twinkled yellow in the little town, but the whole great plain of the earth was shadowy. There was hardly a wind, but the air moved and whispered to itself in the grasses. Laura almost knew what it said. Lonely and wild and eternal were land and water and sky and the air blowing."

Lonely and wild and eternal a life I often long for.

Retro Classic Cooking Show: The French Chef

I want to jump into this old food photograph in The New York Times. The scene is a church picnic in Georgia in 1951. People are bowing their heads giving thanks for the food they are about to receive at a potluck feast. No sheet cake from Costco with a mile long list of ingredients (many you can't pronounce) in sight. The author lamented how little home baking there is for bake sales anymore. Interestingly, she notes,

"I have witnessed....the more upscale the community for the bake sale, the fancier the store-bought cookies. (Sprinkles Cupcakes may be the single biggest supplier of bake-sale goods in West Los Angeles.) Lower-income parents, especially first-generation immigrants, often turn up at school parties with the best-tasting homemade treats."

My own lack of cooking has weighed on my mind a lot lately. For someone who once dreamed of culinary school, I now don't cook at all, I simply reheat. Due to personal events I've documented as of late (moving limbo, dog passing away, family illness), I simply can't cope and just do what too many Americans do: throw something mindless in the microwave or stovetop. When we are in our new home and settled, which we hope is really soon, a goal is to cook much more, even if that means frozen food sales at my local Trader Joe's will plummet. Sorry Trader Joe's.

I love having a closet full of clothes, hats, bags (almost all of it secondhand) to play dress-up if I want to be inspired by everyone from Laura Ingalls Wilder to Ginger Rogers to Peggy Olson. But I also want to cook prairie foods like Ma would have made, and great French meals. On my pile to go to the new home: The Little House Cookbook: Frontier Foods from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Classic Stories, which I asked for from my mother as a birthday gift in November and haven't made anything from yet, and my mom's copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which I suddenly coveted after rewatching one of my favorite food films, Julie and Julia (my others are Babette's Feast and Ratatouille). The "Julie" part follows Julie Powell, a food-obsessed, bored cubicle worker wondering what's more who starts a blog (can't relate to that at all, ahem), and cooks her way through MTAFC in a year, while the "Julia" portion comes from the fantastic memoir Child penned with Alex Prudhomme, My Life in France. I still remember the scene when Julie whips up a raspberry Bavarian cream, and says braised cucumbers are a revelation. I want to do that at home!

While I had a like-hate relationship with Julie Powell's book (the hate from the excessive unneeded cursing and oversharing of her friends' bedroom exploits), I loved this passage the most which she had written from her blog:

"Wealthy Victorians served Strawberries Romanaff in December; now we demonstrate our superiority by serving dewy organic berries only during the two-week period when they can be picked ripe off the vine at the boutique farm down the road from our Hamptons bungalow. People speak of gleaning the green markets for the freshest this, the thinnest that, the greenest or firmest or softest whatever, as if what they're doing is a selfless act of consummate care and good taste, rather than the privileged activity of someone who doesn't have to work for a living.

But Julia Child isn't about that. Julia Child wants you - that's right, you, the one living in the tract house in sprawling suburbia with a dead-end middle management job and nothing but a Stop and Shop for miles around - to know how to make good pastry, and also how to make those canned green beans taste alright. She wants you to remember that you are human, and as such are entitled to that most basic of human rights, the right to eat well and enjoy life."

Eating the amount of canned bean soup and frozen vegetable burritos I have been, even if they are organic, is not really eating well and enjoying life. I recently discovered the cooking show the Jazzy Vegetarian on public television. Really, Laura Theodore's Quick Lasagna Rolls are more my speed than much of Julia Child's fare. Still, I was curious about The French Chef, which aired on public television from 1963 to 1973, and had never seen. Netflix, the library and Youtube are all good options for your Julia fix.

In her show about potatoes, which she gives some interesting food history, she also noted her surprise that people think potatoes are unhealthy since they are only about 70 calories for a cup, but then goes on to use liberal amounts of butter and cheese. This is the same woman who quipped the key to weight management is to choose your grandparents wisely, although there may be some part truth there.

Just the name "Julia Child" invokes fear in many people's heart. Some are intimidated by her recipes, but more often it's the fear of butter. I considered what Child said about our fear relationship with food,

"That's a very dangerous situation that we're in, very dangerous for the state of gastronomy, because people keep being afraid of food and they're not taking food as a pleasure part of civilized life but of medicine...

I think it's been useful that we're much more conscious of sensible eating. It all gets back to moderation and great variety of food and the main thing is knowing what you're doing.

I hope it will steer itself toward good sense and the realization how important food and dining are in our lives because it's the simple pleasures as also being the most nourishing pleasures. I hope we come into a new era of great food and good sense."

Talking point: How many people do I know, especially women, think they are making a "good" food choice by heating up a factory farmed animal and pesticide laden veggies nuked in plastic (with the chemicals from the plastic seeping into the food) cooked in a dirty microwave simply because the package says "Lean Cuisine" or "Weight Watchers." How about bottled water? The public doesn't think much about drinking something that's been lingering in plastic. Isn't it all about fear? Should we believe something is healthy just because a corporation trying to sell us something says it is? This time of year many people begin to fixate on their physical appearance with swimsuit season coming up. Considering factory farms, pesticides and the plastics that seep into our food supply and clutter our landfills, the state of our thighs seem pretty irrelevant. I don't fear Julia's butter. I fear an unquestioning society.



While I can't eat a great deal of what's in Child's cookbooks since I don't eat meat, and don't subscribe to everything she says, I appreciate the doors she broke down for women professional chefs. My boyfriend is part of a French chef's association and it's very much filled with mostly white, older men, but I look around at the young chefs at the culinary program they are involved in and it's a sea of diversity.

I also think dining should be a more civilized affair. At a recent dinner at a restaurant, the younger generation all had their devices in their laps and they were rudely typing away. It clearly sent a message the conversation was unappealing to them and they needed to be entertained elsewhere.

"For me, dinner at a fine restaurant was the ultimate luxury. It was the very height of civilization. For what was civilization but the intellect's ascendancy out of the doldrums of necessity (shelter, sustenance and survival) into the ether of the finely superfluous (poetry, handbags and haute cuisine)? So removed from my daily life was the whole experience that when all was rotten to the core, a fine dinner could revive the spirits. If and when I had twenty dollars left to my name, I was going to invest it right here in an elegant hour that couldn't be hocked." – Katy Kontent in Amor Towels novel Rules of Civility set in New York City in 1938.

Did you watch the French Chef? Have any memories of you or your loved ones cooking anything from MTAFC?