Eisenhowerland

2011-10-02T17:14:00.000-04:00

Skinless, boneless chicken breast at $1.99 a pound. In this area, that's less than half the usual price. The only catch? I had to buy a huge package. This would be an appropriate amount for, say, a family of 8, or 2 football playing teenagers, but for just the one of me it's about a month's worth of chicken. But still, it's a bargain I wasn't going to resist. The secret is to repackage it and freeze it in a way that lets you pull out one piece at a time

First: Wash your hands. When you're working with raw poultry, wash your hands every time you touch anything. Heck, wash your hands if you think about raw chicken and you'll probably be safe.

I use the little sandwich bags with the fold-over tops to wrap most everything that's destined for the freezer in individual portions. I counted out 7 of them before I got my hands all gross with chicken goop. That way the bags I don't use stay in the box and uncontaminated.

Once they're individually wrapped, put them in a big freezer bag. Try to make it as flat as possible so it will freeze quickly and stack well in the freezer.

These T-bone steaks were another bargain. They're too big to put in sandwich bags, so I wrapped them in plastic instead.

In total, this is about 25 dollars worth of meat. It's also about enough for almost 20 meals, counting leftovers. On a per-meal basis, that's not bad!

Baked Custard

2011-10-02T12:57:00.005-04:00

Mom used to make this stuff under two circumstances: either someone was sick and needed an easy-to-swallow, nourishing meal or she had extra milk that needed to be used up. Yesterday, I found myself in both situations at once. I was a bit under the weather, and the quart of milk from the farmer's market was about to expire.

The recipe couldn't be easier:

2 cups of milk
2 eggs
1/4 cup of sugar
a dash (1/2 teaspoon or so) of vanilla
a pinch (1/8 teaspoon or so) of salt

The first step is optional nowadays, but I do it anyway. It's called "scalding" the milk. That means heating it up to a temperature of about 180 degrees, until bubbles start to form around the edge of the pan and it looks like it's going to boil soon. In grandma's day, you might have unpasteurized milk, and this step is essentially pasteurization. It also changes the flavor of the milk slightly, and in the case of farmer's market milk, it melts any bubbles of cream that may have settled out. (Supermarket "homogenized" milk doesn't have the floating cream.)

If you chose to scald the milk, scald it. Once that's done, break the eggs into a medium sized bowl and beat lightly. Add the sugar and salt and beat well until the whole thing is a uniform color and consistency.

IF you have hot, scalded milk you now need to add it slowly to the egg mixture, stirring constantly. Otherwise, you might get egg drop soup with milk, which is a different recipe entirely. If you skipped the scalding step, you can just add the milk and mix it in well.

Finally, add the vanilla. Pour into a baking dish, or if you prefer, several small custard cups. Put the baking dish or custard cups into a larger pan (I use the big brownie pan for this) and pour about 1/2 inch of water around the base of the baking dish so that it's sitting in a water bath. The cooking term for this is a "bain Marie" and it keeps the bottom of the custard from burning.

Cook for an hour or so at 325. To see if it's done, stick a knife blade into the custard about an inch from the edge. If the blade comes out clean (no milky residue) then it's done. TAKE IT OUT OF THE OVEN CAREFULLY because that hot water bath that its sitting in can really burn you.

Let it cool for a bit. I like mine with a bit of real maple syrup on top, but others like cinnamon sugar.

Country Fried Pork Chops (the cholesterol special)

2010-10-16T17:37:00.002-04:00

1 chop per person, either boneless or bone-in
1 large russet potato for every 2 people
1 can cut green beans
flour
bacon fat (can substitute something like canola oil, if desired)
salt, pepper, crushed red pepper flakes.

Peel the potatoes, cut into 1 inch slices and put in a pot of water. Be sure the potatoes are covered in the water. Get 'em boiling; they will need to boil for at least 20 minutes or so.

While that's underway, put 1 tablespoon bacon fat in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. Get it melted and add 1 tablespoon of flour and a dash of the red pepper flakes. Cook until the flour turns a very light blond color, about 2 minutes. (The cooking term for this is a "roux" which is pronounced "roo.")

When the flour-fat mixture is blond, add 1 cup milk, stirring rapidly with a whisk to get it all mixed together. Bring this mixture to a boil over low heat stirring often. It will thicken as it boils. When it's a nice gravy consistency, taste it and add salt or pepper if it needs it. (The milk plus roux sauce is called a bechamel (BAY-sha-mell) and this basic combination of flour-fat-liquid is used in all kinds of gravies.)

Put a lid on the gravy and move it off the heat. Dump a can of green beans into a sauce pan or a microwave bowl and heat them.

By now, the potatoes are probably done. Poke them with a fork, and if the fork slides into a potato slice with no resistance it's "fork tender" and they're done. Drain the water and mash them with some butter or cream. Add salt and pepper and possibly garlic powder until they taste right. Put a cover on them and set them off the heat too.

Salt and pepper the pork chops and put them in a bag with a little flour. Shake them to cover them in flour. Fry them in a pan with a little oil until they are done, which is usually about 5 minutes to a side if they are about 3/4 inch thick. Since eating undercooked pork is a bad idea, you might want to cut into one of them when you think it's done. If it's a little pink, its fine. If it's the same color as the raw chop was, keep cooking.

Finally, dish it up. Put the chop on a plate next to a pile of potatoes. Make a well in the top of the potato pile and fill it with the gravy. Put some gravy on the chop, too. Serve the beans next to it all. Bon apetit!

What's in your repertoire?

2010-10-16T17:01:00.004-04:00

As I was writing that last post, it occurred to me: over the years, I have figured out a pretty decent way of managing food in the house so that I do actually eat pretty well and I only throw a small amount away. Given the content of this blog, it's probably not a bad idea to shed some dim light on that process.

It starts with my menu repertoire. What are the things that I can make without really thinking about it. Here are a few:

The basic meat-starch-veggie combo in all its variety. This is, honestly, the stuff that gets me through almost every week night. It might be a piece of steak, a salad and a roll from the bakery; it might be a pan-fried chicken breast, peas and couscous; it might be a country-fried breaded pork chop, mashed potatoes and green beans from a can. I can make any one of those dishes in under an hour, and moderately inebriated at that.
The stir-fry permutations. Think chicken and vegetables in olive oil tossed with pasta and Parmesan cheese.
The big chunk-o-meat in the oven: Roast chicken or turkey, roast beef, rack of lamb, and so on. This is winter weekend food for me; not only does it make a nice meal, but it provides and endless stream of leftovers for the following week.
Speaking of leftovers, dressing up leftovers so they don't look like yesterday's dinner is an art form in itself. In my world, lots of them become casseroles and the like. There's chicken pot pie made with leftover chicken, there's shepherds pie made with lamb or beef, There are burritos made with just about any leftover meat.
Finally, there's the side dish that lasts several meals. Mac and cheese is one of these; done right, you can have it as a main dish one night and then serve it on the side with a leftover meat another night. Ratatouille is another.

If I actually listed every single recipe, it would probably be 30 or more variations on the above theme. However, when I first headed out on my own years ago, I didn't have all those options. I could make a decent pasta dish and I could fry a piece of meat and that was about it.

The trick is to come up with 10 or so recipes that you can either cook quickly when you get home or that you can prepare in advance and have in the freezer. That way, when you get home from work, you can pour yourself a drink, watch some TV and unwind for a bit, and still have a homemade meal by 6:30 or 7:00. Once you have 10 of them, you have a two week supply, which is a good start to avoid boredom. As you learn more, you can add them to the list.

Speaking of lists, the recipes are the foundation of the grocery list. Sit down and make a menu for the week, taking the schedule into account as you do it. On the nights that you know are going to be late, plan something quick. If you know you'll have time on another night, plan accordingly. Mom used to do this when I was young, so that whoever got home first could start dinner and know what to make, and when I moved out on my own, I copied the practice for a while. My menus looked a bit like this:

Monday: soup, biscuits and beer
Tuesday: pork chop, stuffing, green beans
Wednesday: Steak, salad, bread
Thursday: Chicken pasta primavera
Friday: order Chinese.

When you know what you're going to cook, you know what you're going to need. Compare what you need with what you already have, then buy the stuff you're missing. Usually by the weekend, the list on my fridge includes a variety of stuff that has run out over the week; add the recipe stuff to that and head to the store.

Now that I have a much larger file of recipes in my head, I no longer make menus, because I'm confident that I can improvise well enough to get the job done on any given week night. When you reach that point, you'll see something in the store such as a lamb shank on sale, and you'll think "I can make lamb and rice on Sunday and the leftovers will make a shepherds pie later in the week... but to do that, I need potatoes."

Produce department, call on line 3

2010-10-16T16:19:00.004-04:00

That was the worst looking broccoli I have seen in a while. It was on sale, which always catches my eye. Mom trained me well in that department. But I went to pick out a nice looking, small-ish crown and it was just limp and squishy. Healthy broccoli should have some snap to it! So I put it down and walked away.

Over to the lettuce. Maybe a small head of red-leaf for salads this week? Not that one. Not that other one either. Again... wilted. Dry looking, limp leaves, damage from the twist-tie that holds the head together, just not an appetizing sight. We all know what a healthy plant leaf looks like, whether it's a head of lettuce or an oak tree. We also all know what an unhealthy, dying leaf looks like. This isn't rocket science.

But wait! The green-leaf next door looks better. All is not lost after all. There's a small head of lettuce that looks more like it might have been in the field recently. The leaves have a healthy color and are not wilted. Score!

The Chicken Cycle, Part 1

2010-03-08T18:38:00.006-05:00

Part of living on your own is, of course, cooking on your own unless you have both the budget and the metabolism to eat out all the time. I have neither, and rather than be both poor and fat, I have learned to fend for myself in the kitchen.

If you're trying to stretch your food dollar, you can do pretty well by buying a couple of whole chickens when they go on sale. They do, occasionally. The bird in plastic to the left is just under 4 lbs and cost about 3 dollars. In terms of protein per dollar, you can't really do better! However, unless you like salmonella, you can't eat it without cooking it.

Speaking of salmonella, this is a good a time as any to say a bit about kitchen hygiene. Obviously, wash your hands before you begin to cook. Less obviously, when dealing with poultry, wash your hands every time you touch the raw chicken, every time you touch anything that touched the raw chicken, and every time you think about chicken. Wash your hands with soap and water early and often! Also wash everything that comes into contact with the raw chicken and wash everything that comes into contact with anything that came into contact with raw chicken. Was that clear enough? WASH EVERYTHING when any kind of poultry (chicken, turkey, duck, etc) is involved.

Hopefully that hasn't scared you away, because this is really pretty easy. Thaw out that chicken on a plate in case the plastic leaks. Leaving it in the fridge on that plate for a couple days thaws it nicely. (If you're in a hurry, the best way to thaw out a chicken is to put it in a large pot of water in the sink and run cool water over it. Let the water run gently for an hour or two and it will thaw. If you're in more of a hurry than that, call KFC.) Then, over the sink, cut that plastic wrapper off.

With the chicken on its back, in between the legs you will find the "cavity" -- and keep your dirty thoughts to yourself! that's the inside of the body that used to contain... well, it used to contain the stuff that's inside a body. The processors think you might want some stuff, so they put the liver, the heart and the neck in the cavity. Sometimes they put them in a paper bag in there, and sometimes they just tuck them inside. Some people regard these things as delicacies. I just throw them out. However, if you don't throw them out, you're going to have a strange tasting chicken when its all over with.

Take a pan big enough to hold the chicken -- see above -- and cut up an onion into fairly thick slices. Then put the onion rings in the bottom of the pan. They will hold the chicken up off the bottom of the pan while it cooks and will flavor the pan drippings which you will use to make gravy. Put the chicken in the pan on top of the onions, on its back again, wings and legs pointing up.

Now you need a meat thermometer. Put it in the breast of the chicken (top of the picture on the right) and heat your oven to 375 degrees. To give the chicken some flavor, sprinkle it with celery salt and pepper. Put the whole thing in the oven for at least 20 minutes per pound. The chicken here was just over 4 lbs, so I cooked it for over an hour and a half. Let me just say this again: if you like salmonella, just go ahead and eat undercooked chicken! (You did remember to wash your hands about 30 times while you were making this, right? Good... now relax, cooking other meats is not nearly as soap-intensive!)

Put it in the oven and check on it after 20 minute per pound. The temperature of the breast meat should be around 185 degrees farenheit. If it's not that warm yet, leave it in longer. It is about this point that I have a Manhattan. Cocktails will get a more thorough treatment later on this site!

(Two jiggers of Bourbon, a Pony of Vermouth and a dash of bitters. Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a cherry.)

When your chicken is done, take it out and let it rest on a cutting board for about 10 minutes. Don't throw away all the stuff that's in the bottom of the roasting pan. It's the source of all gravy! Pour (carefully, it's hot) that stuff into a big measuring cup and let it sit for a minute. You'll see the fat rise to the top. In today's lowfat world, that stuff is EVIL. But in June Cleaver's day that was liquid gold. Take a couple tablespoons of the fat and put it in a pan on the stove top. Then add an equal number of tablespoons of flour and cook it for a minute or two. Now you need what's UNDER that fat in the measuring cup -- chicken drippings! skim off the rest of the fat and throw it away and put the dark brown liquid under the fat in the pan. Stir it constantly with a fork or a wire whisk. It will brown and thicken up nicely. Add enough water (or better yet, chicken stock if you have it) to make a nice gravy. Once it has all come together, take a clean spoon and taste it. It probably needs salt, but there's only one way to know that! Add salt if necessary, and pepper too, until it tastes right. You may have to taste it a few times to get it just right.

Carving a chicken is a lot like carving a turkey. Did you ever watch Grandpa carve the thanksgiving turkey? If not, click here. I recommend serving it with mashed potatoes (which taste great with that gravy) and green beans.

Once you're done there will be leftovers. Put them in the fridge with a cover over them (to keep them from tasting like refrigerator, and to keep the fridge from smelling like cooked bird) and we'll deal with them in a later post. Bon apetit!

Fighting entropy every step of the way

2010-02-27T10:57:00.004-05:00

Blame it on my years of teaching physics: I just can't resist comparing housecleaning to entropy. In a very oversimplified nutshell, entropy is the tendency of systems to get into "disordered" states, simply because there are more disordered states than ordered states.

As an example, take 10 pennies and get them so they are all facing heads-up in a little pile. Then drop that pile on the floor from a couple feet up. They will bounce all over the place and some will land heads-up while others land tails-up. There's a 1 in 2 chance that any given penny will be heads-up. For two pennies, the chance that they will both be heads-up is one in two squared -- in other words one in four. For three pennies the chance of them ALL landing heads up is one in eight, and so on it goes. So for ten pennies to land heads-up the odds are one in 1024. Now think of something like your sock drawer. There is one "ordered state" with all the socks paired, folded and in the drawer. Now how many combinations of unpaired, unfolded socks scattered around the room are possible? Quite a lot! So the odds of the socks putting themselves into pairs and into their drawer without some human help are pretty slim.

Going back to the ten pennies for a second, if you were to drop them one at a time, you'd still get the same result: a 1 in 1024 chance of them all landing heads up. This situation is more like the little messes that happen every day, and the secret to maintaining order is to intervene! When a penny lands tails-up, turn it over! When something you do creates a little mess, take 5 minutes to tidy it up right away and you won't have to take 2 hours to clean it all up on Saturday when you'd rather be doing something else.

In my scientist-turned-homemaker world, this process takes place on three levels:

At the lowest level, I try not to make a mess in the first place. I get home from work, and naturally I want to take my coat and tie off and trade my shoes for slippers. (I do look a lot like Mr. Rogers coming through the door, except I don't trade my sportcoat for a sweater the way he did.) I could, of course, take the coat and tie off and throw them on the nearest chair. I could sit in that chair and take my shoes off and then go chase down my slippers wherever they have gone into hiding. But I don't. I go into the bedroom, hang up the sportcoat and tie in the closet, get the slippers out of the closet and put the shoes away after I take them off. It takes an extra 30 seconds. I would love to tell you that this habit came naturally to me, but it didn't. I'm just the sort of person who has to fight the urge to throw the coat and tie on a chair, and I had to fight that urge for years. Nowadays, it's such an ingrained habit that I don't give it a second thought. Extend that same concept to all the little things during the day. If you're like me it will not be easy, and you will spend a couple months reminding yourself to pick stuff up in a tone of voice that will sound exactly like the one your mother used to use. After you get over the annoyance of that, you might start appreciating that you can now find things. (How do you suppose I know about chasing down slippers?)

There are some things that even the best habits will not keep clean. Take the kitchen, for example. This morning, I had pancakes for breakfast. Making them involved two mixing bowls, some measuring cups, spoons, a sifter, a couple pots and pans, and several plates. Now there's a mess on the counter and a dishpan full of dirty dishes. At least once a day -- more often if I'm home all day -- the kitchen gets a thorough cleaning. I generally do this as part of my end-of-day, getting ready for bed routine. It really only takes 5-10 minutes, and the result is a clean kitchen at breakfast. Since I am NOT a morning person, the fewer hassles my morning contains, the better. In the same way, as part of my getting dressed and ready in the morning, I take an extra 5 minutes to make the bed and tidy up the bedroom and bath. All together these "5 minute cleanups" take about 15 minutes a day.

Unfortunately, neither of those tricks deals with the accumulation of grime, dust and filth. They really just make sure that things are where they belong when I need them. To deal with the underlying soil, I have to really CLEAN every week or two. That means dusting, vacuuming, cleaning the bathroom, mopping floors, etc. I really dislike that job, and if I had the budget for it, I would gladly pay someone to do it. However, since I don't have the budget, I have to do it myself. On the plus side, by keeping the place tidy all the time, I don't need to take an hour to put everything away before I start cleaning up.

Don't pretend you enjoy it, but it has to be done

2010-02-21T18:05:00.000-05:00

Ahh vacuuming. Once a week, or thereabouts, even if it doesn't look like the place needs it. Now, I have to be honest. I don't like housework. That may seem like a strange admission from a guy who is blogging on how to keep a house, but it's true. I like a clean house, but I hate to do the cleaning myself. Now, it's true, there is a solution to my problem, and it's called a maid service. Unfortunately, on my budget, the maid is yours truly -- as is the cook, the valet and the bartender. Around here, if I don't do it, it doesn't get done.

So, acknowledging that vacuuming has to be done, here are my vacuuming secrets:

First: Dreading it is worse than just doing it. Have a couple cups of coffee until you're on a good caffeine high, and then get to work. Sitting around all weekend saying "I have to do housework" is not productive. Note to the straight males in my audience (such as it is) -- just because the place doesn't have dust balls rolling around like tumbleweed does not mean it's clean. You change your oil every 3000 miles. Vacuum your apartment at least every 2 weeks. It's preventative maintenance.

Second: Tidy first, then clean. They are two different things. Tidy means things are in their places: the clothes are in the dresser or closet, or alternately in the laundry basket. You can see the top of your desk, your coffee table and your kitchen counters. In other words, its pointless to start cleaning -- that is, removing the dirt -- until you can actually get at the dirty surfaces. Tidying should be a daily habit, and I'll deal with it in a future post. This morning, I made a quick pass through the apartment and put away a camera, a briefcase, a suitcase that I used a week ago (I am as prone to leaving things where they land as anyone is) and a bunch of small things. At that point, I could actually access the floors that needed to be vacuumed.

Third: Rugs, floors, edges and corners. If your home is like mine and you have a mix of rugs and hardwood, it's better to vacuum all the rugs first using the rug brush, which will have the "beater bar" -- that rotating brush that tangles stuff. Then move the small rugs out of the way. Just throw them on top of the larger rugs. Switch to the floor brush -- which is the one that has nothing fancy on it -- and vacuum all the floors. Don't forget the floors that you might mop, like the kitchen and bathroom. The mopping is a lot less disgusting if you get the dry stuff off the floor first. Finally, put the little round brush on the vacuum and go along all the edges and corners, and if you're really ambitious, the ceiling corners and tops of door frames too. That goes a long way toward reducing the spider webs in the corners.

(For those of you who own an upright vacuum where you cannot change the brush, I'd say do the same thing, but you'll need to find a new way to do the corners and edges. Maybe go to the store and spend 20 dollars on a small handheld vacuum. For those of you who have NO vacuum, here's my recommendation, for what it's worth. Buy yourself a cannister type vacuum with a hose and various attachments. It's more versatile than the upright Hoover with a Headlight. If you're on a tight budget, look for an old Electrolux or something like it. I have seen them in Salvation Army stores for not a lot of money. As with other things, if you let it be known that you need a vacuum, someone will probably have an extra one to give you.)

I have a relatively small place, about 700 square feet, and I can do all of this in under an hour. I don't enjoy it, but I do enjoy the results all week long.

From humble beginnings

2010-02-09T10:49:00.000-05:00

My first apartment looked a lot like this. Minus the pretty bay window. I had the same hardwood floors and steam radiators, the same high ceilings, and the same complete lack of contents. My friends in the architecture school called stuff like this "minimalist." I called it unlivable.

I moved into my first apartment in August of 1988. I had driven from Boston to St. Louis in a car packed so full of family leftovers -- dishes, pots and pans, clothes, even a rug -- that there was barely room for the driver. I got to the new apartment, unpacked the car and sat down in the one piece of furniture that I had brought: The chair. The one that had been in the basement rec-room for a few years. The chair whose chief virtue was that it could be collapsed and packed in a flat box.

It looked a lot like this one, except without that pillow that looks like a hard-boiled egg. Same bile-green stripes on the cushions, same low back. At the time, I thought it was horrible. I can't say that I'm a fan of the style now, but I do appreciate it a little better for what it is. I also wish I still had that chair, since they are now "antiques" and are selling for more money than they cost originally.

There I sat in my only chair, looking at my empty apartment and realized the enormous quantity of stuff that would be required to make this space into a home.

A functioning home is a place where you can sleep, eat, bathe, and relax. Of those four, I had the ability to sit in a chair, which might be called relaxing, and to bathe. The kitchen had some basic pots and pans but no food. I had plates and silverware, but no table. For sleeping, I had a borrowed sleeping bag and a hardwood floor. Highest priority: Sleeping. Second highest: a table and chairs. Budget: not much.

The layout of this apartment was a bit strange. It had clearly been a larger apartment which had been broken up into several smaller places, so it had a living room, a dining room, a kitchen and a bath. The rental agent, perhaps misunderstanding that the room adjacent to the kitchen would be intended for eating, kept referring to the dining room as "the bedroom." Because of the strange layout, I decided that the best sleeping option would be some form of pull-out sofa bed. Because of the budget, I decided to rent it.

Furniture rental. Not a decision I would have made if I knew then what I know now. I have nothing against it, really, and it is a viable option if you're going to be somewhere for a short period of time. The two problems are: your choices of style and color are going to be limited to what they rent, and it's going to cost more than buying if you do it long-term.

Sofa-bed. That's a decision I would make again -- indeed, I have made again, when faced with a very small apartment. However, there are some considerations. I happen to be short, which is a real advantage when you consider that the sofa bed mattress is almost always 6 inches shorter than a normal queen or double sized mattress. Now that I have owned one, I also recommend the air-over-coil style that has an inflatable air mattress on top of a regular foam and coil mattress. They really are much more comfortable, although that comfort comes with a price -- usually a couple hundred extra dollars.

Within the week, I had also bought a table and chairs set from the campus resale store. My home was ever so humble, but it had begun to be functional. Total cost for furniture in 1988: about $250. In today's dollars, that would probably double, but with a little luck and time, it could probably be done for the same or less even now.

2010-02-06T14:15:00.000-05:00

Let's face it. She's dead, or if not dead, she's 90-something and currently resides in the Shady Rest Home for the Aged. Mourn her passing, because some "wisdom of the ancients" passed into eternity with her. Homemaking, as it was known to generations, is a dying art.

Before I lose my readership, let me make it clear: I am not suggesting that women belong in the kitchen, and I do not want to turn back the clock to the 1950s. That's not the purpose of this blog. My purpose is to collect the scattered knowledge of June Cleaver, keeping what is relevant and timely and updating it to provide a sort of users manual for how to establish and maintain a home now, in 2010 with a full time job and all the other time-vampires of modern life. This is not a gender-specific task. I am a single male and I have a household to run. I think I'm not alone in that respect.

For lovers of midcentury trivia, there is going to be information for you here as well. I DO know how to operate a vacuum coffee pot, adjust the toast color on an old Sunbeam toaster, and light an oven without a pilot. (The secret is a piece of pasta.)

A little background is probably in order. I am a math and science teacher, so my job involves explaining complex things in simple steps. I was not alive in the 1950s. The decade of my childhood was the unfortunate 70s. However, I visited the 50s regularly anytime I went to either of my grandparents' houses. When the time came to set up housekeeping on my own (1987), I chose to recreate the atmosphere I had felt in the houses of my grandparents, especially since the stuff of the 50s was readily available, cheaply, at antique stores in the 80s. Of course, it only took me about 5 minutes in my new, nearly empty, apartment to realize that homemaking involves both stuff and knowledge. I had very little of either. I have a lot more of both now!