Half-Assed Housewife

One of the items that narrowly escaped the garage sale purge last week was my 15-year-old Rival Crockpot. (Yeah, green and white, with little purple flowers on the side. One knob, three choices: “off,” “low,” “high.” I’m talking old school, here.) It was gamely simmering four quarts of Fifteen Bean Soup at the time, though, (Spouse’s idea) so it got a last-minute reprieve.

It’s not like it sits around gathering dust. I use it at least twice a week. It’s cooked in every home I’ve had since college, which includes two U.S. states and two continents. But it’s old, the plastic lid has a permanent filmy cloud, and instead of “low” and “high” the actual settings are more like “high” and “higher.” I had been secretly flirting online with younger fancier cookers, with their seductive ‘keep warm’ settings and timers.

But, in the end, it was there. It cooked the soup perfectly. And since then, I’ve found new appreciation (and uses) for Old Faithful.

Last Monday, I did a version of this Tom Kha Kai. I could eat this three meals a day for pretty much the rest of my life. The rest of my family liked it, though probably not that much.

Later in the week was this recipe for Charros Beans, soaking the beans the night before then cooking all day on high. They were awesome.

I just discovered Stephanie O’Dea’s blog A Year of Slow Cooking, and might not ever turn on my stove again. We’ve had this Salsa Chicken and Black Bean Soup, and I’m dying to try her recipes for Apricot Chicken and Chile Verde.

My other new favorite blog is Freeze Happy, which though not totally about crockpots, has a lot of crock-friendly recipes and great advice about preserving leftovers and cooking in bulk to use later.

I guess I’m saying what I’ve learned from these past few days is: Old doesn’t equal worthless (hello!!), and younger may have more tricks, bells, and whistles, but it’ll still take time to figure them all out. Sometimes it’s better to stay with what you know.

Just scheduled a Salvation Army pickup of the leftovers from our garage sale on Saturday. We sold more than half of it and still had four good-sized boxes to pack up. It’s pretty sobering to realize a small family could set up housekeeping just on the extra stuff in our attic. Along with bedding, dishes and cookware of almost every type, we had a small George Foreman grill and a griddle/wafflemaker. Run a tap up there and someone would be set.

Notice I am talking about just the attic. We didn’t even get around to the closets containing clothes I sorta kinda hope to fit into again, or the many books and CDs gathering dust on our shelves.

I think we have a problem with materialism — attachment to “stuff.” It’s not the kind of materialism that maxes out credit cards on designer clothes and fine china, but the more common kind. The kind where you keep every nicknack because it has some meaning you’ve assigned to it. Souvenir sports cups from when we were first dating, the pillow made that time you took up embroidery; the cute toy the cat once liked—and could like again (maybe). We also have the kind of materialism that doesn’t let you get rid of stuff you’re not using because “it’s perfectly good.” It works for it’s designed function, the thinking goes, we might need it one day.

I remember how embarrassed I was when friends helped us move into a new apartment in Seoul and watched as we brought in box after box after box of stuff. Most of it we certainly didn’t need to live and a good bit of it we’d forgotten we had. (A set of four tennis rackets springs to mind. In our five years together, these had never left the box we stored them in.) We occupied a huge apartment that would typically house two generations of people. An older couple, for example, and a grown child, his or her spouse and the grandchildren. We took all of that space—us, our infant daughter and two cats—-and our stuff.

Our friends in Korea weren’t necessarily more frugal than we were. They liked to get the latest electronics: flat-screen TVs (particularly popular because of the small size of most apartments); new cellphones; fashionable clothes and furnishings. The difference is you don’t see people putting the old TV set or cellphone or clothes that don’t fit into a box in the closet. They don’t have that closet, so they don’t accumulate stuff. (Disposal of the “old” TV set, cellphone, etc. is still a problem, although there are much more extensive and established recycling programs.)

I’m making it a priority to divest us of our “stuff.” Stuff defined as the group of perfectly good, usable items that we have taking up space in closets and on shelves that we never, ever use. Someone might need it. We can part with it. And, we will.