Great Stuff Made in USA

I feel like I should phrase it "made in the US of A."  Seems flag wavey-er.  But you know what?  Waving the flag is exactly what we should be doing.  We need to make stuff in this country again or we're never going to get out of the mess we're in.  And not just cars.  Everything.  You know, like it used to be?  When you saw "made in Japan" or "made in Taiwan" and you knew the thing was junk?  Not like now, when you have to resign yourself to just about every electronic item there is, and anything made of plastic, being made in China.  This was in the news recently with some reports of Diane Sawyer's, but it seems to have faded away again. I have to tell you that I've been on a not-made-in-China kick for a long time. About 10 years ago I noticed that just about every non-food item sold in Target was made in China, so I stopped buying those items.  If you limit yourself to only buying things that are not made in China, I guarantee your mindless throw-it-in-the-cart-it's-cheap way of life will stop.  You'll save money!  You'll stop filling your house with worthless crap! Due to the lousy products we have accepted as a way of life, thanks to Wal-Mart, Ikea, and Target, the antique stores of the future will be empty.

C'mon!  Do your part!  If you can buy something made somewhere besides China, do it!  And if you can buy something made in USA (excuse me--the US of A), that's best of all.  If there is any choice (which sadly with computers, TVs, etc., there doesn't seem to be), you must choose the item produced domestically.  I wandered around my kitchen for, like, two minutes and found some great products that are well made, reasonably priced, and made HERE.

Lodge cast iron serving kettle; Le Creuset spatulas; Ball collection elite canning jars; Anchor Hocking cracker jar; Swing-a-Way can opener; Edlund stainless steel locking tongs; Cuisipro microplane grater

Cheap Little Treats

Doesn't everyone need a little treat sometimes?  Sadly, more than likely no one is going to get you a little treat unless you get it yourself.  But a little treat is just that--little.  So it needs to certainly stay under $20, and hopefully less than that.  My latest little treats:



1.  Well of course you know I'm going to say the wonderful, always free library.  While you're there, kindly check out Valley of the Dolls by Jacqueline Susann, go home, lie on the couch, and start reading.  I finished it last night.  So good, so much fun.  It's Hollywood, it's New York, it's lunch at  21 and  drinks at El Morocco.  Just a total soap opera, with sex and drugs and...well, no rock and roll, but there are some Broadway stars with issues.  It starts in 1945 and goes through to 1965. Susann wrote what was considered a trashy novel, but holy smokes, could she write!  I think a lot of trashy novelists today didn't make it much past 7th grade composition class.  Go on!  Just go get it!

2.  Havaianas flip flops on Amazon.com for $14, with free shipping! And in the color I wanted (navy blue--I'm not really a fashion risk-taker).

3.  Buy a magazine and a nail polish at Target (or Wal-Mart, whatever).  You can do that for about $10.

4.  Get a single-serving dessert at the grocery store bakery.  Nice big eclair, maybe a slab of carrot cake...your call.  $5, tops.

5.  Go to Amazon.com and download free music.  Amazon puts it directly into your iTunes, once you download their (free, very good) software.

6.  In Target, there is a makeup line called e.l.f. (which stands for eyes lips face).  Well, don't buy the makeup, since it's made in China.  But the makeup brushes (which are also made in China, but you don't leave them on your skin for hours and hours)?  Well, you need to own those.  I mean, buying good makeup brushes can start at about $20 and go up (and up).  And just because they are expensive doesn't mean you won't eventually want to throw them away, even if you are good about washing them.  These e.l.f. brushes are either $1 each or $3 each (those are the expensive ones).  I am trying to try a little harder with my eye makeup, and since I already had some MAC eyeshadow from ages ago floating around the drawer, I certainly couldn't justify a few new $10 eyeshadows (and we won't even talk about department store makeup prices).  But for $4, I got two new brushes, I'm using up perfectly good makeup I already had...well, I'm just so thrifty!

7.  I love perfume.  A lot.  And not just any perfume.  It has to be unusual, it has to have certain notes, and it has to be made in France.  I decided it was time for a change, so I was on a perfume hunt, but the stores in my travels just didn't have anything that worked for me.  So, naturally, I turned to the internet.  Now perfume shopping online is risky, at best.  You can spend a fortune on a bottle of something that smelled wonderful on the woman in line behind you at the movies, but smells dreadful on you. However, you can get samples (or decants, as they are sometimes called) for a very minimal cost. And there is enough in a sample vial to wear it for a few days, so you can really give it a good test drive. Try Luckyscent.com, fragrancenet.com, and theperfumedcourt.com to buy sample vials.  Most samples are under $10 (Lucky Scent has a few that are $12 or $15, but that's for perfumes that cost close to $500 a bottle!), with most being around $3 or $4--certainly cheap enough to get out of the celebrity-fragrance rut.  I went to The Perfumed Court to get a sample of the perfume my mother wore when I was a child (Dioressence).  Made me feel quite wistful--amazing how scent can instantly take you somewhere in your past.

8.  Finally, one of my favorite treats is getting all my housework done early on a Friday, and then spending the afternoon reading or cooking or laying in the sun (with sunscreen on, of course. No, not really.  I thought I should sound responsible. It makes me feel goopy. But at least I don't stay out very long, since I get too hot.) or doing something fun like a blog entry.  And frankly, a cocktail wouldn't go amiss in any of these scenarios.  In fact, I'm going right now to try a concoction of homemade lemon simple syrup, Ketel One Citroen, and soda water.  At some point, I'm sure I'll report back.

Dishwasher Resurrection

A bit of housekeeping:  if you are unable to see all my posts, click on the "home" button above.  Now, back to business.

The water where I live in Vacaville is sooo hard!  It wreaks havoc on my electric kettle, and I can only imagine what goes on inside my water-using appliances (I prefer not to think what it does to my hair color).  Last fall my dishwasher was, basically, a mess.  It’s a nice Kitchen Aid dishwasher, maybe five to seven years old, nothing fancy, but it wasn’t cheap, either.  However, dishes were coming out of the dishwasher sludgier than they went in.  My glasses had a haze on them, and there were little bits of…stuff…on everything. The stainless steel inside was all white and kind of crusty, and little tubes of hard water deposit were sticking out of the holes in the spray arms.   It was even starting to get kind of stinky. It was icky. It was time for a new dishwasher.

Financially,  it was a lousy time to buy a new dishwasher.  But I am not a fan of hand washing dishes.  My husband doesn’t mind it—it’s sort of therapeutic for him.  For me?  Not so much. My motto is if it fits in the dishwasher it goes in the dishwasher (my other motto is that if I’m in a sleeping bag it’s not a vacation, but I guess that’s neither here nor there right now) .  So a useless dishwasher needed to be remedied.

I started poking around on line, reading about dishwashers and detergent for hard water.  And I found out some interesting things. One site talked about how many dishwashers are sold each year, and how so many of them would not be needed if people had ever heard of Dishwasher Magic (and no, it wasn’t the product website).  It is my new favorite product, and I use it once a month.  It stops hard water buildup, and even cleans off the old buildup.  It comes in a plastic bottle that you put upside down in the cutlery rack, and then you run the dishwasher empty. The first time I bought it I got two bottles and used it twice to give the dishwasher a good dosing.  I was amazed at the change!  Truly, after the first two doses, it was like a new dishwasher.  The stainless is shiny and clean again, and all the hard water buildup is gone.   I use it once a month now, to keep everything up to snuff.  I believe you can purchase it in Wal-Mart, but I buy it on Amazon.com, several bottles at a time.

Once my dishwasher was all pretty again inside, I stopped using liquid-gel dishwasher detergent. Apparently it makes the sludginess worse.  Instead, I now use Cascade Complete, which comes with a blue and green swirl of dish soap and rinse aid (I guess), as well as powder detergent, all combined into one little cube-like pac.   They are kind of expensive, but if you buy them in Costco it’s much more cost-efficient.  Again—excellent product.

The last thing that I found is by Finish (they also make dishwasher detergent that I’ve never tried), and it is called Glass Magic.  You pour about a quarter cup in the bottom of the dishwasher every so often, and it really keeps the glasses sparkly.  You can buy Glass Magic on Amazon.com, but I’ve been getting it at Pacific Hardware here in Vacaville.

Now, a new dishwasher comparable to the one I have was going to be more than $700.  That will buy an awful lot of Dishwasher Magic, Cascade Complete, and Glass Magic. Before I tried these products, I had to scrub the dishes and glasses with an SOS pad before we had company.  Every day the dishes had to be checked, front and back, as they came out of the dishwasher, and we had some nasty surprises involving lettuce. In short, it was a total pain!   I know it sounds a bit loony to be so excited about products like this, but they saved me a huge amount of annoyance and money.  Now, thanks to Dishwasher Magic, Cascade Complete, and Glass Magic, when I take the dishes out of the dishwasher they are really clean.  It’s delightful!

And, no, sadly, I am not a paid endorser.