An Embarrassment Of Movie Riches

Movies are our thing.  As a family and individually, if we're home, we're watching a flick.  On my first date with Mr. Incredible, we went out for lunch and then came back to my house and watched National Lampoon's Vacation (true story!).  My paradise is a trip to the Sundance Film Festival with a few friends and a backpack full of foldover sandwiches and six movies back to back (this has happened, and it raised the standard for movie awesomeness).

We cancelled our cable almost a year ago, and in the interest of filling that void, we upped our internet speed and loaded our Roku Box with Netflix and Hulu Plus and Amazon Prime.  We also have a shelf full of the movies that we love and must own, as well as Boo's other shelf of all of the Disneys.  We are loaded to the gills with movies.  It's becoming a problem.

On any given Friday or Saturday afternoon, we'll say "Hey tonight let's watch a movie."  Fantastic.  We put Boo to bed by 8:30 with high hopes to start a movie by 9.  And then we start clicking through the Netflix queue (184 titles as of this morning, after a 10% purge).  Then we move on to Hulu in case there's something they've added that we don't know about.  Then we go to Amazon Prime, in case there's something they've added that we don't know about.  We've likely added a dozen or so movies that garner an "oh that's a good one but not for tonight" response along the way.

An hour later, we still haven't picked a movie, and now we're drowsy because we've spent an hour slackjawed doing basically nothing.  And we end up just turning the TV off.  There's just too much from which to choose.  We are paralyzed by the sheer size of the available selection (poor us!).

One of the reasons we cancelled cable was that we spent so much time surfing past crap (there's really too much to link to...) to end up on one of the dozen channels we always watched.  Truth be told, a year later, all I really miss is Food Network and Turner Classic Movies.  Mr Incredible misses the ESPN genre.  Boo doesn't really care because she still gets all her same stuff, to the point where she has skewed my Netflix recommendations firmly into Children & Family.

So what do we do?  I mean, it's totally a First World Problem, I know.  But it's everywhere.  We shop at Costco, and while I love what they have, I hate how much of it you have to get.  There's just so much.  It's like we've forgotten what it's like to have enough of something.  We were watching Mary Poppins (for the billionth time) (because it's a movie and that's what we do) and she says in her inimitable way, "Enough is as good as a feast".

Enough is as good as a feast.  Whoa.  Mary Poppins, you just blew my mind.

I've talked about my love of "galore".  In my world, galore is when you have enough to share.  A hundred thousand available movies is not galore.  A hundred thousand movies is overwhelming to the point where I just go get a book (or I download one to my just-acquired Kindle, which has opened up a whole new world of overwhelming...).  It never ends.  It's not a feast.  It's gluttony.

Even though everything that is available may not take up actual physical space in our home, it's still clutter.  It's a mess in my head, and that's just as bad as a mess in my house.  Worse, in fact, because it's not like you can just un-know something and get that brainspace back.

I'm not sure what my solution is for this one.  What's your solution?  What do you do when there are just too many options?  Are you like me and you just check out?  Or do you pick something just for the sake of picking something and settle and it's FINE.  This is probably not the last time I'll write about this topic.  It's ongoing for me.

Summertime, and the living is easy.

A couple of weeks ago, I was staring dolefully at the apricots we'd received in that week's farm share basket.  I'm not a big fan of apricots--when I was a kid, we had an apricot tree in the back yard that exploded into thousands of nasty bits of orange slime each pecked once or twice by a bird before it fell to the ground and rotted, and it was most often my job to pick them up.  GROSS.  Seriously disgusting.  I've lived a good life free of apricots for 25 years, no regrets.

But then they showed up in our basket, and Mr Incredible (rightly) insists on at least trying everything in the farm basket and not just waiting out the shelf life of whatever we don't like so we can just toss them.  So I had to deal with some rapidly ripening apricots tout de suite.  Fine.

I'd made strawberry preserves before, and it was kind of involving.  The simple act of locating Sure-Jell in a suburban desert grocery store almost killed the whole process.  Sterilizing jars in the Great Big Family Canner?  Crazy.  But it happened.  I knew I could do it, but I knew that there had to be an easier way.  I mean, Laura Ingalls didn't have to do that every freaking time, right?

No.  As it turns out, she did not.  She may have anyway, because that's how they roll By The Shores of Silver Lake.  But maybe she was just a glutton for punishment.  Or maybe she just didn't have The Google.  Because a quick search for "easy apricot jam" led me here and a whole new world of culinary wonder was revealed to me.  Twenty minutes after I thought "Maybe I could make jam...?" I had made jam, and it was cooling on the counter.

I made this!

I added some vanilla extract, and it became a marvelous dessert topping as well.  I was so full of myself that I also baked bread, because one simply does not put homemade jam on store bread.

When I was properly stuffed with bread and jam (omg so good), I came back to the Google and started sniffing around for similar recipes.  How many times have I tossed furry strawberries and blueberries and insert-name-of-berry-here-berries because I buy more than I can possibly eat?  I started with strawberries, and I found this great, simple, no-fail recipe that tells you how you can do the sterilizing and canning, but also how you don't have to.  Long story short, if you're going to eat the jam "immediately", which I assume to be within 7-10 days refrigerated, you just extended the life of your fruit.

I quickly found that there are two types of jam-makers: those who require pectin (Sure-Jell) and those who do not.  I do not.  Right then, things got easier.  Cindy Burke at Culinate.com blew my mind by putting it all on one site.  The riper your fruit is, the sweeter the end result and the less sugar you'll need.  Your fruit doesn't have to be perfect, but make sure it's clean and not fuzzy or similar.  You cook it down, stir in some sugar and lemon juice (lemon keeps it from turning brown) and if you know it's going to cook up tart or overly sweet or whatever, you season accordingly.  In my experience, you cannot go wrong with vanilla.  It makes just about anything better (amIright? yeah.).  When I get some strawberries, I'm going to go off the grid and toss in some fresh basil.  Doesn't that sound wonderful? YUM.

What I love about this is that it's super quick and doesn't require anything that you don't have in your kitchen already.   You don't need to break out Grandma's great big canner.  You can do this tonight for tomorrow's pancakes.  Really.

I would be remiss if I did not include some very clear information and finger-wagging about safety.  Food preparation is serious business.  Taking a dozen peaches and making jam for your family is great, as long as you're careful about your environment.  At eatright.org, we learn scary things about E.coli and wikihow.com tells us all about the dangers of botulism (scroll down).

So that's it.  Don't shy away from buying as much summer fruit as you possibly can.  Eat all you want fresh out of the bushel basket.  When you're turning into Violet Beauregarde, just make some jam.

Guest Post! Movin’ on up

My friend Christina offered to lend a new voice to Get A Grip.  Her background is in Interior Design, and her current status as a bona fide New Yorker give her serious space management cred.  

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Hi.  I’m Christina, and I’m a fan of the folks over at Get A Grip.  You know, there are days when I read the blog and see the Huddle Up and I say “Amen, sister!” and there are others when I learn something new.   I’m big on organization over here too, even though we’re kind of messy. Messy, but hey, I know where pretty much everything is.  To be honest, my organization happens mostly behind closed doors.  Our closets and drawers are freakishly neat. Most of the time.

So why am I here? A little bit of a different perspective, some of my own organization tips, and most of it in the context of moving.  You see, we over here are “movin’ on up”.  We, my little family of 3 and a dog, are living in New York City (East Coast, represent!) and while we aren’t moving to the East Side, we are moving “up” – 10 blocks north, to be precise, and we are doubling our space.  This move will happen in about 3 months, and in the meantime we are trying to sell our current home and I am obsessively planning everything ahead for the new place.  The Get A Grip folks and I thought that sharing the experience with you, the lovely readers, might be worthwhile.  They help you get your life organized, and maybe, just maybe, I can help with ideas to get your stuff organized.  So let’s humor each other a bit, why don’t we?

Binge & Purge. Clothing, that is.

A couple of weeks ago I bought a new dress.  A really cute one too.  I needed to hang it up, and when I stepped into my closet I realized that not only were my dresses crammed into the dress section, but some were forced to share hangers.  Quel horror!  So the dress stayed folded in the shopping bag, which sat on the floor of my closet.  This is never good.  I mean, why would a new dress want to be hidden from view?  It should be out there, looking at me, saying “wear me!”, and not in seclusion waiting to be forgotten.

So then one fine rainy Saturday, I found it: my Motivation.  The voice inside my head was screaming at me to go clean out the closet.  And I listened.  And once I was done I had a big pile of stuff that I wasn’t going to keep.  And herein lies the problem: what to do with it all.  Sure, Goodwill comes to mind, but that’s too easy, and let’s be honest, not always the right place for everything.  Why don’t we discuss our options here, of where to send those old friends of yours who you are sending out into the world.

Resale/Consignment

I have some stuff that is on the ‘nicer’ end of the spectrum, clothes that maybe I can make some money back on.  It’s not like I’m running around in Chanel over here (I wish), but there are some “ready to wear” brands that you’d find in the fancier sections of your local department store.  One never knows – they might be worth something and don’t I owe it to myself to find out? 

One thing I have learned is that there are resale and consignment shops for every level and price range of clothes.  Even if you can make just one dollar on something, isn’t that better than nothing?  It might seem like a chore, hauling your stuff to the shop on the off chance they will want your stuff, but you know what? Just do it.  You may have a local shop where you can do this, or you can find a shop that is part of a larger chain, such as Plato’s Closet (for your clothes-horse teen) or Second Time Around (for your fancy department store stuff).

Charity shops

Goodwill and the Salvation Army are the biggies here, but you might also look at donating your non-resalable clothing to a local church or other charitable organization.  Here in NYC my preferred donation location of choice is Housing Works, which provides services, advocacy, and housing for those in the community suffering from AIDS.  The shops don’t just accept and sell clothing – they take books and some furnishings as well. (I bought our AMAZING Danish modern dining set there for a relative steal).   Bottom line, if your can’t get money back from your clothes at a resale shop, you may as well send it out into the world to do good for someone else.

Recycling

I read a shocking statistic that, at least here in New York, textiles make up almost 6% of landfill waste.  SIX PERCENT! And as much as we like to tell ourselves that the stuff we throw out is biodegradable (or whatever) the truth is that once something is part of the landfill and is buried under other Stuff and deprived of light and air, well, it’s just not going to break down and become on with the earth.  It’s just not.

Here in NYC we are lucky to have textile recycling available to us, and I can drop off stuff at any number of local farmer’s markets.  What would you recycle?  Anything you might not know what to do with that you might be sneaking into your Goodwill bag with the hopes that they will figure it out.  “Who me?”, you say. Yeah you, you know what I’m talking about.  The t-shirt with a hole in it, or the duvet cover that has ripped at the seams, or the favorite pyjama pants that you split the seat on thus rendering them unwearable, even in the privacy of your own home.  The damaged stuff that still has large areas of good useable fabric, that’s the stuff I’m talking about. 

If you can find local textile recycling, then this is an awesome option.  The sad truth is that I have seen torn-open garbage bags on the sidewalk outside of some charity shops filled with clothing that they didn’t deem acceptable.  You think you are asking them to deal with it so you don’t have to, and they’re just throwing it in the trash anyways. This bums me out.

Other things for the more ambitious

I can’t exactly throw up a sign and have a garage sale here on the island of Manhattan.  Sure, people have “Stoop Sales” or hold sales in their apartments, but I just don’t think that would fly in my co-op building.   But you suburbanites out there, this might be a great option for you.  From what I gather, yard sales can be a lot of work, but if you’re up for it, then go for it.    There’s ebay too, though I’m not sure how effective this is for grown-up clothes.  For kid stuff I hear it’s great – put your child’s outgrown clothes up for sale in groups, rather than as individual pieces.  Or host a clothing swap!  Among my friends we have little kids of all ages and will sometimes host a swap – set up tables by size, toss your used clothes in the pile, and pick up some new stuff in the sizes you need.  Combine this with brunch and a playdate and you’ve got a fun and productive Saturday morning!

It’s a lot of information, and maybe the thought of multiple piles of stuff going to different places overwhelms you, but it’s easier than it looks.  So go purge that closet and make room for some great new stuff!

You know, I’ve never figured out what is the best way to get rid of old undies.  If you figure that one out, please let me know.

So you want to bake some bread.

I've been asked for my bread recipe.  Awesome.

Full disclosure:  I initially got the recipe from The Simple Dollar.  Hers has pictures, and for a baking noob like me, it was invaluable.  Now that I know what each step is supposed to look like, I don't need the pictures, so I typed it up.  I also made some variations with the ingredients, but not many.  It's a great recipe, and please go over to Simple Dollar and tell her so!  I did :).

Super Easy Homemade Bread

Get a big glass bowl.  Fill with hot water, and then dump it out.  Warm bowls make for good bread.

In warm bowl:

Dissolve 1 packet of yeast in 1 cup warm water

Soften 5 tsp of butter in the microwave, add to yeast/water

Add 1-1/2 tbsp cup sugar and

1 tsp salt

Stir that until it's a nice shade of beige.

Add a cup of flour, and stir.  The dough will be sticky.  Keep stirring.  Add another cup of flour.  Keep stirring, and pay attention to the consistency of the bread--it will become stretchy.  Keep stirring, have one more cup of flour on deck, and add it slowly.  You may or may not add that last whole cup.  Bread is fickle.

Generously sprinkle some flour on the counter. 

When the dough is in a nice ball, and doesn't stick to your hands or the spoon too much (you'll know), take it out of the bowl.  Put the bowl in the sink, fill with soap & water.  You'll need that bowl to be clean in a few minutes.

Check the clock, note the time.  Beat the crap out of the bread (classy people call this "kneading") for 10 minutes.  If it sticks to itself, the counter, or you, add more flour.  When 10 minutes are up, it should be a nice, pliable ball.

Wash and dry the bowl.  Spray the inside (duh…) with some cooking spray.  Plop the dough in it and cover with a nice clean cloth.  Let it rise for an hour.

After an hour has passed, the dough has possibly doubled or more, or not.  Don’t sweat it.  It’s fine.  Take it out of the bowl, and put it on your (still floured) counter.  Work it into a rectangle that’s as wide as your bread pan and about twice as long.  Roll it up, put it into your bread pan (did you spray that will Pam?  You should do that…), tucking the ends under.

Cover it with your cloth again for another hour.  Go clean up your kitchen and put stuff away. 

After the 2^nd rise, put it in a 400* oven for 30 minutes.  When it’s done, take it out of the pan immediately, or it will keep cooking (trust me).

YUM. 

I use Sugar In The Raw, about a 2:1 ratio of Gold Medal Better for Bread Flour and whole wheat flour, and real sweet cream butter.  You can also add fresh herbs (dill! chives! rosemary!) to the flour as you stir it in.  If you're feeling fancy, sprinkle grated cheese over the rectangle of bread before you roll it up and put it in the pan.