All who are hungry, let them come and eat

As an ecofrugalista (if that isn't really a word, well, it is now), I don't eat out very often. Eating at home isn't just cheaper; it also gives me a lot more control. If I want to choose local produce, or Fair-Trade coffee, or free-range eggs, eating at home is generally the easiest way to do it.

But not, it appears, the only way. As it turns out, my little town of Highland Park is now home to the Better World Café, described as a "community café"--the fifth of its kind in the country. It serves up local, seasonal foods at reasonable prices. It lets customers choose their own portion sizes--and also the size of the bill. While the cafe will give you a "suggested price," you can pay less if that's what you can afford, or pay more if you'd like to make a donation. If you don't have any money at all, you can instead volunteer an hour of your time to pay for your meal. So no one goes away hungry. Cheap eats, living-wage jobs, no disposable dishes—how could I not love a place like that?

I'd been meaning to give this place a try since it first opened back in October, but I kept forgetting about it--or at least, forgetting about it during the lunchtime hours (11 to 3) when it's open. Today, as lunchtime rolled around and I realized that there were no leftovers in the house, I decided this was the perfect time to check it out. I wandered in and found a cheerful crowd eating and a server chatting away with one of the customers. She explained how it all worked and pointed out that day's menu on a white board, with suggested prices. I got a bowl of mushroom broth with tofu and veggies, a chunk of bread to go with it, a carrot cupcake with cream-cheese frosting, and a cup of Fair-Trade, organic coffee--all for a suggested total of $5.28, which I rounded up to $6. The soup was hot and savory (though a bit on the sour side), and the carrot cake moist and tasty. It didn't look like a big meal when I sat down, but by the time I finished my coffee and bused my tray, I was stuffed. Yet I didn't have to feel guilty, because it was all nutritious (hey, carrot cake is a vegetable, right?) and locally grown. A hearty, healthful meal for six bucks--from a place that helps feed the hungry, supports local farmers, and strengthens the community. How cool is that?

The thought that counts

Happy New Year! One of my resolutions for 2010 is to update this blog more regularly--at least once a week. I also think that it would be good for the blog to have a clearer theme, instead of just picking up on whatever random thoughts fire across my brain synapses. So I've decided to focus on this concept of ecofrugality that I introduced back in May. There is already another blog out there that goes by the name of "The Ecofrugal," but since it was created in May 2009 and still boasts only one post, I doubt I'll be treading on anyone's toes by picking up the idea and running with it.

So, with this new focus in mind, I'd like to say a few words on the subject of holiday gifts.

Looking back at the presents we gave and received this past month, it seems to me that there was no correlation whatsoever between the cost of a gift and how much it pleased the recipient. The most expensive gift we gave was a $50 Home Depot gift card for my sister and brother-in-law, and they did like it--although my sister actually argued that it was "too generous" a present to give in the middle of a recession. On the other hand, my mom seemed equally happy with the Puzzle Lady mystery I got her from the library book sale. (She likes crossword puzzles, and she likes mysteries, so it seemed like a pretty sure-fire choice.) Of all the gifts we gave our nieces and nephews, the best received was the "jungle adventure" tent that we picked up from our local Freecycle group, which didn't cost a cent.

Likewise, the gifts we loved the most weren't necessarily the most expensive ones. For instance, I was quite pleased with a book of crossword puzzles from my sister-in-law that she candidly admitted had been re-gifted. She said she found the puzzles too hard for her and wanted to pass them on to someone who could handle them; how could I not be flattered by that explanation? The biggest present we got was a check from my in-laws to put toward the purchase of a new fridge, and while we were naturally happy with the check, what really delighted me was the packaging:



So what's the moral of this holiday story? Is it really the thought that counts? I hesitate to say yes, because so many people seem to use that phrase as an excuse for not really thinking about the gifts they give. If you don't care for the present they selected more or less at random, they'll say, "Well, it's the thought that counts," as if that phrase meant "I remembered to get you something, and that's all that really matters." So I'd like to suggest instead that what really matters is the amount of thought that goes into a gift. The best gift will be one that you clearly chose with a specific person in mind, one that really shows you were thinking of that particular person's tastes and interests. In other words, the thought that counts is not "I need a Christmas present for Aunt Mary," but "I know this will make Aunt Mary happy." And if you can't find the gift that fits that thought, a token gift--or none at all--is better than an expensive present that could just as easily have been chosen for a complete stranger.

Cable chaos controlled

Hooray for the Troll! He dug around under my desk and got all those cables sorted. As I suspected, putting them all together in a single bundle wasn't possible, but he got most of them contained in two bundles--bound together with twist ties, and then covered up with some pipe insulation we had left over. He also made handy labels for the cords so that I can tell what each one is, should I ever have to unplug them. Did I mention that he was wonderful?

Cable chaos

In some ways, my computer makes my life a lot more organized. My work can be done almost entirely with electronic files sent back and forth between me and my client, so my desk doesn't get buried under stacks of paper. I can receive and pay most of my bills online, do my taxes electronically, and use the Internet to find articles on just about any subject. And storing it all in little folders on my hard drive takes up a lot less space than storing it all in real, paper folders, and makes it easier to search, as well.

However, in order to keep everything on my computer organized, I need to have it connected to a monitor, a printer, an external hard drive, a cable modem, a set of speakers, and probably some other things I don't even know about. As a result, the space under my computer is a mess, as you can see from the attached photo. I've done my best to coil up the excess lengths of cable and keep them out of the way, so now instead of a mass of tangled-up cables, I have a mass of coiled-up blobs of cable. But I can't help thinking there has to be a better way.

I have seen products for organizing cables, but none of them seems like quite the right thing for me. For example, IKEA sells a little basket that attaches to the underside of a desk, but that's only useful if all your cables are going from the same place to the same place. I have cables from point A to point B, from B to C, from C to D, from B to D...it seems like I'd need one basket for each direction. This doohickey called the WireMate looks a little better, but can it really send all the wires in every direction I need them to go in? And can it handle the multitude of different cables, of all different thicknesses? And even if it can do all that, is it really worth 20 bucks? It seems like there ought to be a cheaper, more elegant way to accomplish the same thing--but I must confess, my creativity is failing me.

'Tis the season to buy plastic stuff

The Troll and I have finished most of our holiday shopping, but we still don't have any idea what to get for our two-year-old nephews. With adults or older kids, you can always ask, "What are their interests?", but in the case of these two little guys, their main interests are climbing on things and hitting things. Hard to translate those into something that will fit under the tree.

So, searching for inspiration, yesterday we wandered through the toy aisles at Target and BJs. We both had the same reaction to this experience, one that can best be summed up in a single word: ick.

It's hard to explain exactly what was so off-putting about it. Maybe it was the fact that there were just so many mass-produced plastic objects crammed into that one space, row on row, box on box, until they all kind of blurred together. Most of the gifts we're giving to our family members were accumulated over the course of the year, as we came across them at sales and stores and concerts and thought, "Oh, this would make a good gift for so-and-so." Picking a gift off those shelves would have felt like the exact opposite of that: "Oh, we need to get something for so-and-so. Here, this will do." It would be like hanging an empty pizza box above your sofa because it's about the right size for the space. It would so obviously show no creativity, no real thought for the recipient, that it felt like more of an insult than giving nothing at all. As we emerged from the toy section at BJ's into the grocery section, the Troll grabbed a butternut squash off a rack and declared, "I would rather give each of them a butternut squash than give them one of those toys." (Well, why not? They'd probably have just as much fun with it.)

Now, it is of course possible--even probable--that we're overthinking this. After all, these kids are two years old. It's unlikely that they would be offended at being given a gift that was obviously selected at random off a shelf in the toy aisle. As long as they have a box to unwrap, they probably won't even care what's inside it. But in that case, why not just wrap up an empty box for each of them? They could climb on them, sit in them, hit each other with them and not do too much damage--hmm, I think I might have something here.

First day of school

Today, as the Troll and I sat at breakfast, we heard the voices of children traipsing up our street on their way to start a new year of school. (It pleases me that the schools in our town don't start until the day after Labor Day. It seems cruel and unusual to drag the kiddies back to school while it's still officially summertime.)

This time of year always makes me a bit pensive. For more than ten years after I graduated from college, I would always find myself growing restless as August started drawing to a close. Something about the shortening days would trigger some deep-seated drive in me, and like a swallow returning to Capistrano, I would feel the urge to go out and buy new notebooks and pencils and go decorate my dorm room and get my schedule and start my new classes. Which, of course, was a profoundly frustrating urge to have when I had no new classes to start. All I could really do about it was go buy some new pencils for which I had no real use.

This went on until two years ago, when we bought a house. That year, September came and went without stirring in me the longing to go "back" to a place that, for me, no longer existed. All the urges for change that fall had always brought got channeled into the process of fixing up the house, which at that time had only been our home for a little over a month and was still very much a work in progress. So I might have expected the migratory urge to return in full force the next year--but it didn't happen. In September 2008, I was so focused on insulating the attic and wondering whether we'd have a chance to build some permanent garden beds before the frost hit that the start of school passed right by me.

So this year, as the kids head off to another year of learning, I find myself musing about what this all means. Why did I feel the urge to go back to school each fall for so long after I had a school to go back to? And why did becoming a homeowner deflect that urge?

The best answer I can come up with so far is that because I spent the first 22 years of my life as a student (minus a couple right at the beginning), I came to think of fall as a beginning--a time for starting new things. So whenever fall came around, I would have that urge to start something new--but there was never anything new in my life to start on. So the whole urge just took the form of a helpless longing to start a new school year, to be given an assignment, to be told what to work on next. But one thing I've learned about being a homeowner is this: in a house, there's always something to work on. There's always a new project to be started. So now, when that fall restlessness hits me, it just makes me want to be up and doing whatever project is next on the list (usually something that I've been putting off all through the hot, lazy summer). I no longer need to go back to school and be given an assignment; I can come up with plenty on my own.

Or, to put it another way--I've become a grownup.

Squashed!

I see that my last entry, about two weeks ago, described the "teeny-weeny" zucchini that I had just spotted in the garden. Ha, it is to laugh. Take a look at this monster zucchini I harvested today. By the time August 8 rolls around, I may be all set to celebrate Zucchini-Sneaking Day.


And the pumpkin also shows signs of getting out of hand. Yesterday the Troll had to rig up a little sling from a piece of panty hose to to hold the largest of the pumpkins so that its weight wouldn't pull down the whole trellis.

I think perhaps I cucurbit off more than I can chew.