The Heartbreak of TMS - Too Much Stuff

ROSEMARY HARRIS: Happily neither of these pictures depicts my home - but...like a lot of people I occasionally wonder, why the heck do I have all this STUFF?

I know I have a lot less than my my friend's wife (the hoarder.)

Or my other friend's wife (the shopaholic.) 

But every closet, chest and trunk is filled to the max.

My house has no attic, no basement and very few closets (lots of glass...great for plants, not so great for stuff.)

So I'm requiresd to make periodic purges.





Right now I have a Bagster in my driveway. Have you seen them? They're very large, tarp-like bags which can hold a couple of tons of debris. 

They cost about 30 bucks and when they're filled you just call Waste Management and someone brings a truck and hauls it away. It's one of new favorite things. And for the past few weeks I've derived an enormous amount of pleasure filling it. Broken chairs that I've never gotten around to fixing. Falling apart willow fencing. The tag sale shutters I never used in the whimsical garden I never made. The broken window pane that I never got crafty with.


So explain to me how, with a clear conscience, I went to not one, but two estate sales yesterday. What if I really liked something? Where would it go??

The scary thing is that I own a bunch of stuff that looks very much like the items in the generic tag sale pic below. (I used to collect vintage radios.)

Mercifully I resisted the charms of the outdoor furniture sets, the stone planters, the vintage rattan sunroom furniture, and the ubiquitous floral prints which seem to be at every estate sale I've ever gone to.

That said, I came home with three very large resin planters, a black wrought iron coffee table, wicker footstool/table, two small ceramic planters and about 20 books - history, vintage Peter Rabbit and a copy of Anne of Green Gables, which I've never read and someone on JR rhapsodized about.

And a Stangl vase ($8) that gets my vote for deal of the day.

 Is this schizo behavior? Like ordering diet soda with an order of french fries?

(I'm counting on the JRs to say "no Ro! This is perfectly normal....")
 

Butter Beer with Bernie Botts' Beans, Anyone?

HALLIE: Picking back up on our favorite kids' books and merging it with another favorite topic, food...

My sister Amy Ephron, has posted a wonderful essay by Agatha French on her ONE FOR THE TABLE web site. http://www.oneforthetable.com/oftt/stories/celebrating-anne.html

("Anne of Green Gables is, to put it plainly, a total badass," says Agatha. "The recipe for raspberry cordial, a drink that featured prominently in a famous episode of the book, begins with this Anne-ism: 'I love bright red drinks, don’t you? They just taste twice as good as any other color.' Which in my opinion is totally true.")

So then I started thinking about other great children's lit and the food it inspired...

The Laura Ingalls Wilder Country Cookbook--pioneer food. Recipes were adapted from her personal records. A lovely recipe for gingerbread.

The Narnia Cookbook written by one of C. S. Lewis's stepsons. Gooseberry fool and steamed pudding, anyone?

Mary Poppins in the Kitchen by P. L. Travers. Shepherd's pie and tips on making a souffle, delivered with MP's brand of dry wit: "You must wait for the souffle--it won't wait for you."

Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes--recipes, compiled by Josie Fison and Felicity Dahl and illustrated by the wonderful Quentin Blake, are for dainties like mosquitoes' toes and wampfish roes. Edible marshmallow pillows take two days to make.

Which took me back to Dr. Seuss's Scrambled Eggs Super and Green Eggs and Ham;" Maurice Sendak's Chicken Soup with Rice; and my kids' favorite Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

HANK: Stone Soup, of course. And hunny, if you're planning a visit to the Hundred Acre Wood. Remember the search for what Eeyore liked to eat?

And in my beloved Many Moons, the Princess Lenore falls ill from "a surfeit of raspberry tarts."

Oh! And in Alice in Wonderland..remember Alice is so hungry, and finally gets to the Queen of Hearts' banquet. They show her the "joint," I think it is, and say something like: "Here's the joint." And then Alice reaches for a piece, and they say--oh no, you can't eat it now. Once you've been introduced to the food, the Hatter or someone tells her, you can no longer eat it.

My favorite line is "Alice, Pudding. Pudding, Alice." (I say it to myself all the time at restaurants, when the wait staff shows off the food. I always feel as if we're being introduced. And then I wonder if it's okay to eat it.

Oh--wait, my favorite line is "We had jam yesterday, and we'll have jam tomorrow. But never jam today." Something like that.

HALLIE: Ah, Alice – how I loved that book. And how lovely to find someone who remembers Many Moons, that wonderful book by James Thurber and illustrated by the great Louis Slobodkin, and in which the Royal Wizard avers that though he has “squeezed blood out of turnips for you, and turnips out of blood,” he cannot get the Princess Lenore the moon.

Please, share your food/kidlit memories...