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By infmom, November 14, 2009 5:13 pm

My parents, and my husband’s parents, grew up during the Depression, but they had vastly different experiences with it. While my inlaws were carefully taught to be frugal, to take care of their things, to not waste food, and never to get rid of something that was still good, my parents were insulated from all that. My father’s parents were wealthy, and while my grandmother went through a lot of hardships, my mother was tucked away at boarding school where everything they felt she needed was supplied.

Thus, my inlaws lived frugally, were as self-sufficient as possible and taught their kids that wasting food and throwing things out that were still good was something akin to a capital offense.  My parents were lah-di-dah about it all, and if things broke, they had no idea how to fix them, and were more likely to just go buy another one.  They also threw other people’s stuff out without a second thought if it got in their way. And it never would have occured to them to buy anything second hand.

When my husband and I married, our parents’ styles didn’t affect us as much as one might think.  For one thing, I was tired of my parents’ needless helplessness and utter cluelessness about money, and there was never a chance in the world I would follow in their footsteps.  I always assumed I could fix things, and I did all the kitchen stuff my mother wasn’t interested in, like baking and making jelly and so forth.

However, the business of “still good” and “don’t waste food” was a bone of contention.  I was not a member of the Clean Plate Club, and I saw no harm in disposing of food that was past its prime.  I didn’t just pick the moldy part off the bread or the cheese and eat the rest.  And while I was as frugal as possible (our financial situation dictated nothing less) I was not a fan of cobbling things together and making do.  When you’re as broke as we were, you do a lot of that, but there’s nothing that says you have to like it.

As time has gone by, and our lives have gotten steadily better,  I’ve been more and more adamant about not cobbling-together, and doing things right the first time.  I saw a book title that was appropriate:  If You Haven’t Got the Time to Do It Right, When Will You Find the Time to Do It Over? And yes, I sometimes toss out, or give away, things that are still good.  We donate bags and bags of books to the library and clothing and household items to the Salvation Army every year.  This satisfies my husband, because it means the items have a chance to be useful for someone else.

What got me going on this today?  Well, one of the things I am taking time to do right is fixing a longstanding problem in our kitchen.  When we moved in here, there was a battered, broken, stained, rotten looking ceramic soap dish (or more properly what was left of it) set into the tile backsplash in the kitchen.  I talked for years about knocking it out and replacing it with decorative tiles.  Even bought the tiles when we were on vacation in Arizona two years ago.  A few weeks ago, my husband dealt with the remains of the soap dish, and I installed my decorative tiles.  The only thing left to do on that project was to remove the ghastly, crumbling caulk around the sink (something else we should have done years ago).

My husband brought home a tube of name brand kitchen/bath silicone sealant that he’d scrounged from somewhere a week or two ago, with the idea of using it to caulk the sink.  Today, since he’s away for a training meeting all weekend and I have the chance to do the work on the sink my way (let’s just say our repair-work styles are mutually incompatible; I’ll talk about that some other day) I got at it with a razor knife and a screwdriver and scraped the last of that godawful old caulk out of there and left it to dry for an hour or so.

And then I picked up the scrounged tube of sealant.  There was an expiration date stamped faintly into the crimp at the end of the tube.  USE BEFORE 04/03, it said.

I got some more at Home Depot.

photo credit: van swearingen

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By infmom, May 23, 2009 12:53 pm

I don’t remember exactly when I took my first ride on a city bus.  I do know I was in grade school at the time, and it’s just about 100% guaranteed that neither of my parents was with me.

My parents came from a society (bedroom communities of New York City) where men of substance rode public transit every day.  There was no social snobbery aimed at men whose wives dropped them off at the train station for their daily commute, nor those who rode the subway to their upper-crust office destinations.

However, despite my parents’ everyone-who-is-anyone-in-NYC pretensions, we didn’t live there.  We lived in central Virginia.  And in central Virginia, riding the bus was for, you know, THOSE people.  Even though there was a bus stop a block away, and a frequently-arriving bus that would transport him to a stop directly across from the front gate of the college where he taught, I can pretty much guarantee that the notion of riding that bus never once crossed my father’s mind.  Ever.  (If the car was out of order he’d get a ride with a colleague.)

Each morning, he’d pile us kids in the car, drop us off at school, and go merrily on his way to work, where he would park and leave the car for the rest of the day.  That’s what men did.  The fact that my mother therefore had no transportation didn’t enter into it, nor did the fact that we kids had to walk home from school, every day, regardless of the weather.  (No, this isn’t one of those “uphill both ways barefoot in the snow” stories–most of the time, we didn’t mind walking that mile.)  Needless to say, the idea of taking a bus anywhere didn’t occur to my mother, either.

However, I had no problem with it.  If I could wheedle the money out of a parent, I could go all kinds of places.  Two bucks would finance a trip to the movies downtown, plus drinks and popcorn, for my oldest brother and me, and my mom started trusting me to manage that destination when I was nine or ten.  I got myself to school and back on the bus after I transferred out of the mile-away elementary school.

To be honest, I liked riding the bus then, and I like riding the bus now.  Granted, I don’t ride it anywhere near as often any more–public transit in Los Angeles sucks, and getting to most useful destinations via the MTA can most charitably be described as slow.  However, I take the local bus service to and from my class at the community college each week and I still feel the same about bus travel as I did as a kid.

There’s a great sense of equal community on the bus.  Here we all are, from our different spheres, having one very important thing in common.  We’re all on the bus.  I have noticed that the old rules don’t seem to apply any more, though–in my youth, any kid who didn’t break land speed records getting up to offer his/her seat to an older person would be ordered to do so in no uncertain terms.  Nowadays, I seem to be the only person who ever offers a seat to an older person, and for pity’s sake, I’m pushing 60 myself.

If you haven’t ridden a bus lately, give it a try.  Pick someplace you can get to easily and go.  You might be pleasantly surprised by the experience–if you can get some zoned-out kid to give you a seat.
photo credit: Xaragmata

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By infmom, May 4, 2009 12:40 pm

Lifehacker today did a story about storing coffee beans.  Which got me to thinking about coffee in general.

My parents were big coffee drinkers.  They had one of those old-fashioned stove-top percolator pots that was featured in the Maxwell House commercials that so many people of my generation remember. The pot has a basket inside, into which you put the coffee grounds, and you fill the pot with water and put it on the stove.  As the water comes to a boil, it shoots up the stem that the basket sits on, into the glass knob on top, and falls back down into the grounds.  That water steeps through, drops back into the pot and gets re-perked.  The down side of this is pretty obvious; you can end up with coffee thick enough to stand a spoon in in short order.  Plus, you have to keep an eye on the pot and turn it off after whatever the brewing time is.  That’s where my parents had problems.

My mom was prone to going off somewhere and zoning out and forgetting about the pot.  She boiled them dry on a regular basis and once even left it so long that the aluminum actually melted into the stove burner.  After paying for someone to fix the stove, my dad decreed that from then on they would drink instant coffee.  (My mom would then put water on to boil in a saucepan on the stove, zone out elsewhere, and…   well, you get the picture).

Regardless of how the coffee was brewed, my parents poured a lot of milk and sugar into it.  They would take the wet spoon out of the coffee, dip it in the sugar bowl, and leave chunks of coffee-congealed sugar behind.  My brothers and I raised major objections to this, since we didn’t want coffee lumps in our Sugar Coated Sugar Sprinkled Sugar Soggs cereal in the morning.

I always liked the smell of brewing coffee, but loathed the taste.  Every time I was offered a sip I’d try it and gag.  But I loved coffee ice cream, go figure!  I could never figure out what the difference was and why one would be nauseating and the other delicious.

Fast forward many years.  I was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes and thus had to revamp my entire set of common food choices, including beverages.  Since I thought diet soda tasted vile (something I have not really changed my opinion about over the years) and I got tired of drinking water, on one business trip I decided to try a cup of coffee with just some cream in it.

What a revelation.  It wasn’t the coffee I had loathed so much, it was all that milk and sugar!

Not long afterwards, my daughter got a part-time job at Starbucks to help pay her college expenses.  One of the benefits of being a Starbucks employee is a free pound of coffee per week.  And so I became a free-coffee beneficiary and got a coffee grinder and thus entered into the wide world of coffee culture.  I had never set foot in a Starbucks till my daughter started working there, and she had to write down for me what she thought I should order.  I’d never heard of “caramel macchiato” in my life.

My son worked at Starbucks for a time, too, and thus my supply of free bags of coffee continued.  I got lazy.  I’d take whatever was brought home.  But after he left Starbucks I had to start making my own decisions about my own coffee.  I tried Armenian coffee from the international market up the street.  I tried small-roaster brands from Whole Foods.  I tried the in-store-roasted coffee from Costco.  Then I started experimenting with cans of coffee from Trader Joe’s.  (All the while ignoring all those mailers from Gevalia.)

Well, gang, I think I have finally found a winner.  Scandinavian Blend from Trader Joe’s.  Best combination of taste and price I’ve found in all my travels.  It’s so good it tempts me to have more than my one cup of regular coffee per day (I’m sensitive to caffeine so I have to be careful how much I consume, and when).  With just a little half-and-half in it, brewed in my Aeropress, it’s as close to perfect as it gets.  At least for me.  (That’s an Aeropress on the left, and if you haven’t tried it you have missed out on some really extraordinary smooth rich coffee…  I’m convinced it’d make even Folgers taste good).

Are you a coffee drinker?  Do you go to great lengths to store and brew “properly” or do you just dip out of the can from the supermarket and enjoy the ease of use?  Have you signed up with Gevalia?  I’m still not convinced about those guys. 

photo credit: phlora

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By infmom, December 29, 2008 2:14 pm

Image by outlier* via Flickr

Years ago when my kids were in grade school, the annual vocal-music concerts used to have pretty much the same songs every year.  And one of them was “Happiness” from “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.”  (trivia fact o’ the day: F’zer and I saw that in its initial run in New York, with Gary Burghoff as Charlie Brown)

One year, the music director took pictures of various kids for a slideshow to accompany that song.  Vengeant was pictured with “two kinds of ice cream.”  I don’t remember if we were given a copy of that picture.  If we were, I can’t find it.  But it doesn’t matter because I remember it quite clearly.

My grandmother the medicine woman always used to ask people to count their blessings every day–especially people who were feeling blue and unloved.  Do you have a place to live?  Do you have food? Do you have enough clothes?  Do you have family and friends?  Are you healthy?  Did you learn new things this year?

Blessings don’t have to be tangible, and too often we forget how good life really is, in the face of Bad Things Happening.

Well, this year, a few Bad Things did happen.  My mom died.  But the blessing was that she never knew how sick she was.  And the outpouring of love and good memories at her memorial service was amazing.  People with only the most distant connection to the family took the time to show up and pay their respects.

Beyond that, though, I feel like I really do have “two kinds of ice cream” this year.  I’m healthier than I have been in years.  My blood pressure is normal for the first time in 20+ years, and my diabetes is finally under control.  F’zer and I celebrated our 36th anniversary in September.  My kids are happy and healthy and everyone in the family has a job.  We have our house and enough money to live on.  I got to spend time with all my brothers and their families this year for the first time in ages.  I went to my 40th high school reunion and had a great time with people with whom I’ve been friends for over 40 years.  Several of them asked me to move back to town.

F’zer and I are getting to spend more time together for the first time since I can’t remember when.  He can take days off and we can go do things, and as time goes by we’re finding more of those “things” to do.  I have a flexible schedule, so we don’t have to look too hard to find a time when we can be out and about together.  If you’ve ever lived in a situation where there was absolutely no flexibility about work, you know what a blessing this is.

I took some college classes and learned a lot of new skills that I had been interested in learning for a long time.  I have read an average of five books a week all year long, both fiction and nonfiction.  F’zer and I have gone places locally that I had never gone before, even after close to 25 years in the LA Megalopolis.

I recently got rid of the very last remnants of the last bad times in my life.  I burned some sage, as my grandmother had me do, to clear the last of the evil from the house.

From now I can only say, with joy, onward and upward!

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By infmom, September 27, 2008 10:20 am

My mother had the hots for Paul Newman from the get-go.  People used to tease her about it, we four kids included, but that bothered her not a whit.

I find it somewhat melancholy to reflect that Paul Newman died of lung cancer, just like my mother, and within a few months of each other.

I do hope Mom is getting to meet him in the afterlife and, um, express her appreciation for his talent.

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By infmom, September 14, 2008 10:00 am

My mother would have been 79 today.  She always told us she wouldn’t make it to 80 and we always told her she was being silly.  I guess she got the last laugh.

This poem always reminded me of her.  Don’t take it literally; Millay was referring to the Greek version of “hell,” not the Christian one.

Prayer to Persephone

by Edna St. Vincent Millay

Be to her, Persephone,
All the things I might not be:
Take her head upon your knee.
She that was so proud and wild,
Flippant, arrogant and free,
She that had no need of me,
Is a little lonely child
Lost in Hell,—Persephone,
Take her head upon your knee:
Say to her, “My dear, my dear,
It is not so dreadful here.”

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By infmom, August 12, 2008 11:04 am

My brothers and I are all baby boomers. So are all our spouses. Thus, we are a group of people whose parents grew up during the Depression.

That’s an era that produced lasting scars, in ways not always apparent. As most people realize, the deprivations of the Depression led to the excesses of the Fifties, because kids who grew up with nothing were now prosperous adults, the war was over and it was time, by golly, to enjoy not being deprived.

Why did I get to thinking about this today? Well, because one of the lasting effects of the Depression concerns food. Our parents were taught by their parents that Wasting Food was something akin to a capital crime. Why, those starving children in [name some exotic country halfway round the world] would be happy to finish what you ungrateful kids are refusing to finish! I/you put that food on your plate so you darn well better eat it! Clean your plate!

The result was that several generations of kids were trained from the get-go to keep eating till the plate was empty, regardless of whether their stomachs were full. And to Not Waste Food. Which might well be the reason why so many of us turned out to be fat adults.

Fortunately, my brothers and I weren’t treated to the extremes of Not Wasting Food Mania that some of our friends were, because my dad was an Olympic gold medal picky eater and we were a bunch of sharp, wiseass kids who weren’t shy about asking why we had to clean our plates when Dad didn’t. But my husband’s father would brook no such backtalk and by golly if you put it on your plate you had to eat it, period.

Thus, my husband, from long conditioning, believes at a visceral level (no pun intended) in Not Wasting Food. It pains him to toss out an unopened jar or can that’s past its expiration date. Even though he studied organic chemistry all the way through grad school, he refuses to believe that organic substances in sealed containers deteriorate in any way. And any cooked food that is placed in a storage container in the fridge is Still Good until it starts growing green and purple alien life.

Even though I do my best to put dates on the various zip-lock bags and containers in the fridge, if the stuff still “looks good” he is going to eat it, period. He likes taking leftovers to work for his lunches and for the most part that works out fine. Not always, though. Apparently he deemed something “still good” a couple days ago that wasn’t… and came home sick from work today.

Putting dates on stuff is not enough. I’m going to have to be the Fridge Police and throw things away myself. While he’s not looking, of course, lest he suffer gastric distress of a different kind.

photo credit: Jill – Glossy Veneer

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By infmom, August 6, 2008 11:33 am

My father would have been 86 today.  He always made sure that people knew that when the bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, it was August 6 in Japan but only August 5 in the USA, and therefore the bomb was NOT dropped on his birthday.  He was pretty adamant about that. 

He went his own way in life, from the very beginning (although I don’t think his parents appreciated the fact that he was a world class picky eater–certainly my mom didn’t).  He chose his own profession, teaching, and was a genuine star.  There are still people who took his classes decades ago who tell me and my brothers how good he was.

He handled the inevitable slings and arrows of life and even though he faded out through the last decade of his life with Alzheimers he never stopped being Dad.  For that, my brothers and I are forever grateful.

Happy birthday, Dad.  You’re still the greatest.

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By infmom, June 27, 2008 11:26 am

My parents were devoted coffee drinkers. When I was little, Mom would brew coffee on the stove in one of those percolator pots (if you’ve never seen one, I bet you could find one of the old Maxwell House commercials somewhere online and see coffee perking in action with catchy music). Both parents liked plenty of cream and sugar, and it was a constant battle between kids who were grossed out by little clumps of coffee-fused sugar in the sugar bowl and parents who didn’t think before they spooned.

When instant coffee came on the market, my dad was all for it. And not just because it meant he didn’t actually have to perk the coffee (we are talking about typical 50s kitchen-helpless male here). My mom was prone to zoning out somewhere else in the house and forgetting she had the percolator on the stove, and she had already melted two pots into the electric stove burners. You can imagine how long you have to leave an aluminum coffee pot on an electric burner for that to happen.

So from that day forward, my parents drank instant coffee. And the freeze-dried stuff when that became available. Always with plenty of sugar and cream. That was what “coffee” was in our household.

Any wonder I hated the stuff?

In fact, I was a dedicated non-coffee-drinker till I was diagnosed with diabetes and had to give up sugary beverages. On a business trip, I decided to try a cup of coffee with just a little cream in it. Whoa! I still didn’t brew it for myself at home, but at least I had something to drink at restaurants.

Then my daughter started working at Starbucks to help pay her way through college. Needless to say, I had never set foot in a Starbucks at that point. She very carefuly wrote down the name of a drink she though I would like (tall sugar-free-vanilla caramel macchiato) and I dutifully went in and ordered it. And I liked it.

One of the perks of Starbucks employment is one free pound of coffee per week. So my daughter got some for me and I acquired a coffee grinder, and from then on I happily ground and brewed my own. This continued in later years when my son worked at Starbucks in turn.

But after he left Starbucks, I realized there would be no more free (otherwise expensive) Starbucks coffee, and my favorite online source Cup of Heaven was really just for the occasional special treat, so for the first time I had to really think about what was available at the supermarket. I decided my best chance of good coffee at reasonable prices was at Trader Joe’s.

After sampling several different varieties, I have found a winner: Costa Rican Tarrazu.

Now let’s just hope Trader Joes’ doesn’t discontinue it.

photo credit: slimninja

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By infmom, June 15, 2008 1:24 pm

My dad died in 2002, a few months before his 80th birthday. He’d been in declining health for several years and had Alzheimers, so it wasn’t unexpected. In fact, my brothers and I were amazed he hung on as long as he did.

In the years since then I’ve found that events like his birthday and what would have been my parents’ anniversary if they hadn’t gotten divorced don’t really impinge on my consciousness the way Father’s Day does.

My son put it best, the first Father’s Day I had without my dad. He said “You still have a father. It’s just that he’s not interested in material things any more.”

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I miss you.

photo credit: RobW_

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