GetThrifted

This juicer is so kick-ass. I got this from my parents, and it must be from one of their childhoods, because according to the information I can find online, this is from the 1950s. And it still works good as new. It juices the heck out of any oranges or grapefruits you throw at it. This winter Esther and I bought a big box of mixed organic oranges sent from a farm in Florida to a farm in Whately, MA, just north of here. The tangerines made the best juice. Here are some pictures of the veteran Juice-O-Mat in action.

Historically speaking, I haven't been very good with plants. I've had a few cacti over the years, and in the last year or so, my two cacti have barely been clinging to life. One was a gift from Esther when I started college, and one I purchased at the Durfee Conservatory at UMass around the same time. When Esther and I moved to a new apartment recently, I considered calling it quits on the cacti and starting fresh from scratch with new plants.

But a friend who was helping with the move made me change my mind, and inspired me to breathe new life into the two plants. Another friend came by recently to our new place and brought the plant you see below in the foreground (originally in the yellow pot) as a housewarming gift. Esther and I did some transplanting today and now I think the cacti in the background have a new lease on life (the green and blue pots came from a tag sale back in the beginning of the summer). The cutting our friend gave to us is also going to be happy with a bit more room. So huzzah! for pretty plants in pretty pots, and an apartment that has room for plant life without taking over all the space!

Esther and I have had good luck tag sale-ing this weekend. One find from yesterday was a big ol' heavy duty metal toolbox. For the last year or so I've been keeping my bike tools in a sparkly blue plastic Lisa Frank-style makeup chest, complete with a butterfly on the box's latch, and a fold-out mirror inside. That box was itself a great thrift, a couple bucks at the Salvation Army, and it was actually pretty practical—a lot more practical than the system it replaced: a series of disordered bins and boxes.

But the blue box began overflowing with tools about as soon as I started using it. But real toolboxes are expensive! Enter the Husky. I paid $25 for the box with good handful of tools already in it. This thing is sturdy, big, and heavy as hell. Plenty of room for my present selection of bike tools, and room for future tools.

The blue Lisa Frank box can now either be relegated to storage of household tools or it can go back to the Salvation Army and become a little girl's makeup box again, like it was made for originally.

I never was much of a blender guy. Growing up, we had a food processor for things like pesto, gazpacho, and making breadcrumbs (my mom used to make very kid-friendly breaded chicken cutlets). We had a blender, but I just didn't see the point of it. Frozen cocktails? Kind of a pain in the ass.

Well, last summer, Esther and I were driving through Amherst (the town where I went to college at UMass) and we came across a tag sale. We didn't see much we liked, but there was a blender sitting there, for free. So we had a blender for a while. Back at that apartment, we used it for making pesto and hummus, which isn't much fun when you know how much better a food processor is for that kind of stuff.

A year later (now) we have a food processor for that stuff. And we still have a blender. And we've finally found a good use for the blender: smoothies. This apartment gets blasted by sunlight from 10 in the morning to 4 in the evening, so it gets pretty hot in here. Many days this summer have been way to hot for cooking. Smoothies and the free blender to the rescue!

Banana

Plus strawberry and yogurt

Plus soy milk and honey = Delicious! What a damn fine breakfast.

A few weeks ago, at the very beginning of tag sale season, Esther read about a cool-sounding tag sale in our neighborhood, down by the Three County Fairgrounds. So on a weekend morning walk with our dog Zevi, we stopped by. It turned out to be a good tag sale indeed: a big house full of Hampshire College students selling their stuff. Artsy college kids tend to have pretty solid tag sales and this one was no exception.

A great find at this tag sale was an old camera from the early 1980s, a Lomo LC-A. This is a simple, no-frills camera made by the Soviet Union's state-run optics manufacturer. These cameras have something of a cult following, and go for anywhere between $70 and $200 on eBay. I picked up mine for $10 even. Three obscure batteries later, I have a fun, functional camera.

Below are some scanned photos from the first roll of film that Esther shot with this camera. The dreamy, quirky quality of these photos is what makes this camera famous!

This photo was taken in the Charlevoix region of Quebec, at the end of a nice hike.

A meadow in Northampton's dog park

A sight on me and Esther's daily morning dog walk route

In closing, always keep an eye out at tag sales and flea markets for old cameras (and light meters, lenses and flashes). There are some real gems to be had out there, and they can be mighty cheap! For more information on the Lomo LC-A, check out Lomo-Camera.com. For information on Lomo fanaticism in general, see Lomography Society International.

Let's start off real simple. One of my favorite things to scavenge for at tag sales and at thrift stores is a mason jar. I've never canned food, but these jars are fantastic in the kitchen for storing beans or grains, or as a flower vase. I've also seen them used as to-go cups for iced coffee or smoothies. This gem, found at the Hospice Shop in Northampton, which is right in this neighborhood, distinguishes itself from your average utilitarian mason jar with its festive, plaid print lid:

This cute little jar became the perfect vessel for a staple food item in this household: popcorn. Now our popcorn can join the ranks of our black beans, chickpeas, brown rice, flours, lentils, and cous cous, all on shelves in the pantry in old-fashioned glass jars.

My obsession with mason jars is not over and won't end any time soon. Sure, we're running out of space in the pantry, but there are still grains and beans from the bulk section in humble supermarket bags. Not only that, a plethora of fruits and vegetables are growing in the fields all around us. Maybe a little canning is in the works?