A new thrifty tradition

Last year, a little before Thanksgiving, my aunt sent around an e-mail to the family asking what everyone wanted for Hanukkah/Christmas. For herself, she requested gift cards to Macy's and Ann Taylor, since she had recently lost some weight and needed new clothes. I was nonplussed by this idea, since I'd just finished my article on sustainable clothing, which talked how today's "fast fashion" industry harms both the environment and the workers who create the garments. And I also knew, from a CNN article I'd read while working on another piece, that thrift shops have far more merchandise than they can sell. According to the article, roughly 90% of all the clothes donated to thrift shops eventually end up in the landfill. (This was the factoid that inspired my 2016 Thrift Week series on local thrift shops.)

So I proposed an alternative to my aunt: Over Thanksgiving weekend, I would take her to a local consignment shop (called Greene Street Consignment, though it's actually on Nassau Street) and buy her any item of her choice. Not only was she receptive to this idea, she enjoyed the trip so much that she bought herself three new dresses (ranging from a formal black number to a casual one in bright orange) in addition to the one I got her. She even went so far as to suggest we make this thrift-shop trip an annual event.

This year, when Thanksgiving rolled around, my aunt said that not only would she like to make the trip to the consignment shop again, my uncle would like to get in on it as well. So I proposed hitting a second thrift shop, called Nearly New, which has a larger selection of casual clothing. I thought this store would offer more options for the gents in the party, and possibly some for my sister's kids as well. (Greene Street has a limited selection of menswear, but nothing for children.) However, my aunt said she was "partial to" Greene Street, since she'd had such good luck there last year, so I suggested hitting them both.

So our little outing to Princeton turned out to be a much bigger outing, involving me and Brian, my sister, her kids, my uncle and aunt, and my (male) cousin, who popped in for the first thrift shop trip and then headed home. Unfortunately, I hadn't reckoned on just how busy the thrift stores were going to be on Black Friday. (Perhaps, subconsciously, I'd been hoping that the really big crowds wouldn't show up until Small Business Saturday.) Nearly New didn't seem overly crowded, but the few shoppers in the store were very enthusiastic, taking dozens of items into the fitting rooms—so we ended up waiting around half an hour just for my aunt to try on her items.

However, once she finally managed to get into a fitting room, she found several things she liked, including a comfy pair of shoes, a tailored blouse, a nightgown, and a crazy black sweater with feather trim around the neckline, which ended up being my holiday gift to her. Unfortunately, I neglected to bring my camera on the trip, so I didn't get a picture of it.

Luckily, I can give you a picture of what she bought for me. No, this isn't something I would normally wear, but let me explain: Brian and I will soon be starting a game of "Spirit of 77," which is a role-playing game with a 1970s theme. (You play over-the-top characters straight out of '70s films and TV shows, from "Shaft" to "The Dukes of Hazzard.") I thought it would be fun to dress in flamboyant '70s-style garb for this campaign, but I didn't have anything suitable in my closet. So I kept my eyes peeled at the thrift shop and managed to find a tunic in a vivid, flamboyant print, which I can pair with my widest-legged black trousers. To round out the outfit, I picked up a little knitted vest with crazy tufts that resemble fur (but aren't). Just $9 for both pieces, and I will be all ready to rock my new, funky look for our first game session.

We had a few other hits at the first thrift shop as well—a pair of pants for my uncle and a pink pashmina for my sister—before heading off to the second one. We had a little less luck there, as my uncle looked for a tuxedo shirt without success, and Brian tried on a green Henley shirt that proved to be too tight—but my aunt found a fabulous dress for only $42 to wear to a black-tie New Year's party she has coming up. So that part of the trip was a success as well.

All in all, I'd say this thrift shop excursion is shaping up to be an enjoyable—and ecofrugal—part of our family's Thanksgiving traditions. It's a bit disappointing that it has to cut into our time for hanging out and playing games, but then again, you can't really do that all weekend. Devoting a couple of hours to thrift-shopping on Friday afternoon makes for a nice break, after which we can get back to Boggle and Apples to Apples.

Recipe of the Month: Savory Spinach Pancakes

A week or so ago, while researching a new article on dorm-room cooking for college students, I happened upon this recipe for spinach pancakes from Snack Girl. It struck me as a good one to try for several reasons:

1. It looked pretty healthful, with plenty of veggies and whole grain and not too much of anything it's better to avoid.
2. It was reasonably quick and easy to make. Thawing and draining the spinach added one extra step, but after that it would be no more difficult than any other kind of pancakes.
3. There was nothing in it that we didn't like.
4. It didn't call for any ingredients we don't normally have around the house.
5. Finally, it was a veggie-centric recipe, which meant that at the very least, I could get a Recipe of the Month Post out of it.

The only difficulty was figuring out what to serve with it. Pancakes normally go with some kind of sweet syrup, but that didn't seem suitable for a savory pancake recipe like this. The only other type of savory pancake I could think of was latkes, a.k.a. potato pancakes, which are normally served with applesauce or sour cream. Since I don't care for sour cream, and since we had plenty of apples in the fridge, which Brian has mastered the art of turning into applesauce in the pressure cooker, we decided to go with that.

So Brian whipped up a batch of these, which proved to be plenty for the two of us. Although Snack Girl says her recipe makes only "7 small cakes," Brian was able to get more than twice that number out of a single batch of batter, so I assume his cakes were quite a bit smaller than hers. They looked more appetizing than the picture on her site, as well—small, golden-brown cakes with just a hint of green color from the spinach.

As for the taste, they were pretty good. Not extraordinary, but not at all bad either. One thing we noticed was that the flavor of the cumin was particularly pronounced, which made the cakes vaguely reminiscent of falafel. Perhaps a tahini sauce would actually have been the best accompaniment for them, but they went reasonably well with the applesauce. We also found that the flavor of spinach was not particularly noticeable. In fact, if I hadn't been able to see it, I would hardly have known it was there at all. This led me to suspect that if you left out the cumin and scallions, these would actually work just fine as a traditional breakfast pancake with syrup. So perhaps some time, we'll try Snack Girl's alternative idea to "add some raisins and nuts for a sweeter pancake with more texture" and see how that goes.

But even with no modifications, this recipe looks like a very useful addition to our repertoire. Since we normally have spinach in the freezer and scallions growing either in the garden or on the windowsill, we can always pull it out on those nights when we the veggie drawer is empty and we don't know what to cook. That's enough to make it a successful Recipe of the Month as far as I'm concerned.

Settling in for winter

Although there are still plenty of leaves left on the trees, the weather for the last few days has been decidedly wintry. Yesterday, when heading out to the farmers' market for some local apples and cranberries (because it's just silly to make Thanksgiving cranberry sauce from Wisconsin-grown cranberries when the plant is native to New Jersey), I actually set aside my lightweight fall coat in favor of the bulky winter one—and all the parts of me it didn't cover were still freezing. And even though we've already fired up the heating system for the winter, I also had to haul out my wearable blanket a couple of days last week to stay warm while working.

This change in the weather signaled that it was time for us to take care of a few seasonal chores. We'd already taken care of stashing away the window air conditioner and changing our sheets from their summer percale to warmer flannel, signaling that the warm weather was definitively over for the year; now it was time for those tasks that mark the transition from fall into winter. First, Brian went out into the garden and harvested all the remaining tomatoes and peppers: several more of the big Pineapples, a few Black Princes (which are actually Green Princes at the moment), a smattering of little Sun Golds, and about four green Jimmy Nardello frying peppers. All the ones that have started to "blush," even slightly, got set out on the kitchen counter, where they are now ripening up nicely; the completely green ones got stowed in a newspaper-lined box in the basement, together with an apple to accelerate the ripening process. This hasn't always worked so well in the past, but there's not much we can do with the green tomatoes otherwise (and it won't hurt the apple), so we have nothing to lose by trying.

Then, today, Brian went out to deal with the job of stowing away our rain barrel for the winter. Yesterday morning, he'd opened up the spigot at the bottom to let the water empty out, which it did, but very slowly; when he got home from work, there was still water dripping from the spout. But by morning, the drip had stopped, and he just had to open it up to get out the remaining water near the bottom. In fact, as soon as he moved the barrel, it became apparent that he wasn't going to get the remaining water out without opening it up, because some of it had turned into a block of ice that we could hear clanking around in there.

So he undid the screws at the top and removed the lid, revealing a few chunks of ice, a bit of liquid water...and a layer of dark green algae smeared all over the inside of the barrel. Fortunately, it turned out that this stuff peeled off pretty easily, so Brian was able to remove most of it with his hands. He discarded it, and the ice, in a little bed to one side of the yard where we've planted this year's crop of garlic and shallots; with any luck, it will serve as fertilizer. Then he reassembled the barrel and stowed it in the shed. He did happen to notice one problem when he reattached the lid; the black rubber pipe attached to the back, which drains the overflow from the barrel away from the house, was starting to split in places. Trying to remove it from the spout just exacerbated the problem, so he left it in place for now. When we return the barrel to service next spring, we'll see if the damage proves severe enough to cause a leak and replace the part if necessary.

Then all that remained was to return the downspout to its wintertime configuration. He took off the piece that routes water from the downspout into the barrel and replaced it with a longer piece that extends the pipe down to the ground and directs it outward, across the barrel's concrete resting pad, and away from the house. That should keep the foundation safe from water damage, whether winter brings us rain or snow.

As for installing the storm windows in our screen doors, that turned out not to be necessary, since he'd never actually removed them to replace them with screens this spring. We don't tend to leave the doors open for ventilation anyway, since we have plenty of windows, so it wouldn't really have made much difference. We still have plenty of ice melt left over from last year, and our snow shovels remain in good condition, along with the car's tires and windshield wipers. And we've both had our flu shots already.

So now the only task left on our winter checklist is to buy a big bag of birdseed and set up our backyard buffet for the local cardinals and sparrows. (Not the squirrels, though. They may have managed to plunder our plum tree and pilfer our eggplants, but so far they absolutely cannot figure out how to hack our bird feeder. It's this kind, so if you're looking for a feeder that can truly thwart the furry menaces, I can recommend it.)

As soon as that's done, we can count ourselves ready for winter—which will leave us free to enjoy the last few lingering, golden days of fall.

Walking the line with technology

A few months ago, the New York Times Sunday Review ran a piece called, "Save Your Sanity. Downgrade Your Life." The author, Pamela Paul, frames her decision to deliberately go without, or even give up, various high-tech devices as part of her quest for a simpler and more meaningful life. A few examples:

• Trading in the "frantic whir" of her electric toothbrush for an older, manual version
• Sticking to a "stubbornly DVD-based" Netflix account rather than switching to downloads on demand
• Limiting smartphone use in specific ways (no devices in the bedroom; leaving her phone in another room when she's with the kids; not giving the kids their own phones)
• Cutting out not just cable TV, but network TV as well
• Eschewing all personal phone calls and e-mails, preferring to "catch up with a good friend or a family member...[when] we actually see each other"
• Skipping Spotify in favor of "the radio and ye olde compact discs"
• Avoiding e-book readers and tablet computers

Paul argues that choices like these help her minimize "techno-stress—the psychological and physical impact of spending countless hours staring at a screen." She highlights the dangers of constant connectedness, such as online harassment and cellphones cutting into face-time, such as the family dinner hour, and sees "creeping backward toward the 20th century" as her way to resist the relentless march toward a faceless digital society. This is a goal I can certainly sympathize with. But I can't help wondering whether Paul's knee-jerk rejection of all new technologies is really the best way to achieve it.

One of my favorite remarks about the simple life comes from Ursula LeGuin's "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas": "Happiness is based on a just discrimination of what is necessary, what is neither necessary nor destructive, and what is destructive." It makes perfect sense for Paul to eliminate or limit the types of technology that are clearly destructive: the constant clamor of Facebook, for instance, or the siren call of the smartphone screen at the dinner table. And it may even be worthwhile, at least for her, to eliminate some of the "neither necessary nor destructive" forms of tech like her electric toothbrush. But is she throwing out the baby with the bathwater? In her eagerness to eliminate all forms of "unnecessary" tech, is she deliberately making her life more complex and less fulfilling?

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will know that I'm no slave to technology. I've written numerous times about my slowness to adopt various gadgets and services, from smartphones to social media. But I've also written quite a bit about the types of technology I do find worthwhile, like our tablet computer (which gives us access to a wide selection of e-books from the eLibrary) and my online bill payment service. I see no contradiction in this; to me, it's simply a question of deciding which forms of technology are "neither necessary nor harmful." I could certainly live without online bill payment and pay my bills the old-fashioned way, writing out a check and sticking it an envelope with a stamp and putting it in a mailbox—but it's slower and more cumbersome, it costs me money for the stamps, and it wastes paper. In this case, it's the high-tech system that truly simplifies my life.

This is why I have problems with so many of Paul's tech-related choices. I like having my entire music collection at my fingertips on iTunes; I can select any song I want with the click of a mouse and easily put together themed playlists for different occasions. I can't see how giving that up in favor of "the radio and ye olde-fashioned CDs"—which would force me to listen to whatever happens to be on at the moment, including advertisements, or else fumble with a huge collection of physical disks—would make me a better or happier person. Likewise, while I don't currently have Netflix, it seems to me that if I did, there would be no advantage in a "stubbornly DVD-based" subscription that would force me to make my selections ahead of time, wait to receive them, and then have to mail them back—possibly even unwatched, because by the time they reached me I no longer had the time or the inclination to watch them. If you can't watch what you want, when you want, then what's the advantage of having the subscription at all?

Worse still, I wonder if Paul may actually be hurting her relationships with friends and family through her single-minded determination not to let technology "interfere" with them. I have a lot of friends and family members who are scattered across the country; if I insisted on "wait[ing] until we actually see each other" to catch up with them, I wouldn't speak to them more than once or twice a year. Not to mention that I would have trouble arranging to see them in the first place, since it's awfully difficult to make plans to visit someone who lives in another state—or even in another town—without using either the phone or e-mail. (I guess we could use old-school snail mail, but in the time it would take a series of letters to go back and forth between us, we might end up missing the one available weekend when all of us happened to be free.)

To me, it seems clear that if you really want to "simplify" your life, blindly rejecting all forms of technology isn't the way to do it. It makes much more sense to evaluate each new device or service on a case-by-case basis and ask: Would having this make my life better or worse, easier or harder, more or less fulfilling? If the answer is clearly negative, it obviously sense to eschew the new technology; if it's clearly positive, it makes sense to at least look at the cost and decide whether the benefits are enough to justify it. And if you're not sure, there's nothing wrong with holding out until you have a clearer idea of both the perks and the drawbacks.

It's also worth noting that the answer to this question can change over time. When I wrote this article on technology and frugality back in 2010, I said I "wasn't tempted by the new e-book readers," which seemed to have no clear advantage over printed books. But a lot has changed in the seven years since. Today, there are free e-reader apps for tablet computers, so it's no longer necessary to spend $100 or more on a dedicated device that can do nothing but display books; there's also a much bigger selection of e-books available for free or cheap through sites like the eLibrary. Nowadays, reading books in digital format gives us a lot more to choose from, and it lets us start enjoying our new reads right away instead of waiting until the library is open.

Of course, if the book we want doesn't happen to be available in digital form, we still have the option of going to the old-fashioned brick-and-mortar library to check it out. Because that's the other nice thing about new technology that Paul seems to be ignoring: simply having it doesn't mean you actually have to use it. There's no rule against communicating with your friends by e-mail and in person, or playing both computer games and old-fashioned board games. A new technology is a tool, not an assignment.

If your smartphone, or your Facebook subscription, or any other type of technology in your life is causing you stress or sucking up unreasonable amounts of time, then sure, it makes sense to dump it—or at least put limits on it. What doesn't make sense is to throw out things that are making your life better, easier, happier, because you've decided that technology, as a category, is harmful. There's plenty of room in LeGuin's "middle category...of the unnecessary but undestructive, that of comfort, luxury, exuberance, etc."—for the things that we could live without, but we shouldn't have to.