Stories

Despite the anxiety-producing hit that my 401K has taken, I’m quite sure that the current belt-tightening is not bad for me.  I agree with my friend Marc that “it doesn’t debit your happiness to live with less.”  Yet Marc still gets grief from his friend for driving a VW now instead of a BMW, and I recently got grief from my friend for returning a $45 pair of windshield wipers to Pep Boys when I found Consumer Reports “best buy” ones on Amazon for $12.  Only someone wealthy, arrogant and out-of-touch belittles driving a VW or saving $33.  So here are some thoughts for middle-class people like Marc and me about how to live a very good life on a VW-with-Amazon-wipers budget.

Ya gotta say:
Goodbye Neiman’s – hello Loehmann’s.
Goodbye Barney’s – hello Ross.
Goodbye Nordstrom’s – hello Nordstom’s Rack.
Goodbye Lancome – hello Neutrogena.
Goodbye mani/pedi – hello nippers and PedEgg.

Last weekend, I ventured up to the Altadena Urban Farmers’ Market at the Zane Grey Estate. There, all sorts turned out on the glorious, sunny JanuarySunday. Men and ladies with long grey hair, red-lentil eating bralesschicks, beautiful couples in crumpled clothes with feral angel babiesin tow and Pasadena ladies in crisp, cropped pants all ambled about thefading estate.

Curious to see the property, eager to pet one of the resident goats and hopingto find some amazing back-yard yuzu and artisan goat cheese, Martin andI signed the legal release at the entrance and perused the booths setup all over the lawn and asphalt driveway. For sale were leather belts,fabric bags, handmade soaps, honey, prepared foods, jams galore,multiple varieties of granola, home-baked breads and many kinds ofbaked goods. I didn’t get near any of the baked items. I didn’t want toget too close and have that awkward moment when I decline to purchasethe proffered sweet. I got the distinct impression that the cookiesetc. were vegan, and while I’ll eat vegan vegetable and grain disheshappily any day, I see butter and eggs as necessary additives tocookies.

Wi-Fi. Hi-def. Super-sized. 200GB. High protein. Low fat. With every brand getting upgraded to meet today’s newfangled demands, you might think there would be no room in the market for good old-fashioned values. That’s where you’d be mistaken. With so much hubris cluttering the shelves, a little bit of minimalism can offer weary customers a breath of fresh air.

Enter Little Pepi’s, the Hatfield, Pennsylvania-based company whose secret recipe is simplicity. Since 1963, they’ve been following the same ages-old recipe for their waffle cookies, keeping the ingredients as basic as when Italians whipped up the first batch somewhere around 700 B.C. Little has changed since then. Even back in the cookie’s native Abruzzo region of Italy, where they are still enormously popular, pizzelles (the cookies have the same etymological origin as “pizza”; both words mean “round and flat”) are still made from the same basic ingredients: flour, eggs, butter or vegetable oil, sugar, and a special flavoring, such as vanilla — almost the very same ingredients that Little Pepi’s uses in its own pizzelles.

We went for a cocktail-hour potluck last week at Paule and Flavia’s place. They’re both architects and they live in a house of their own design in the medieval village of Poreta.

We had been to visit them once before and I pretty much sort of knew where it was. It was up this steep little street, I remembered. Well, it’s not a street; it’s more like steps that you walk up but cars use it, too. It’s a medieval thing. I have driven up a number of stairways in my time, in quaint European villages, but never intentionally.

So, we parked at the bottom and trudged up the steps in the direction of the twelfth century castle that crowns the hill. I figured I’d recognize Paule and Flavia’s place when I saw it. By the time we got to the top of the hill, I thought I had seen three possible candidates but no clear winner.

We walked back down the steps, which was a lot easier than going up but Jill was tiring of carrying the bowl of hummus and the plate of raw vegetables that we were adding to the lucky pot. I carried the wine, which is a husbandly duty.