Growing up, my brother and I always had what we needed.  But there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room for extras, so maybe because of that, I’ve become a pretty smart cookie when it comes to shopping wisely.  

These days, that means that I buy a lot of clothes from church thrift stores that work just fine for running errands around my little town.  A few years back, I even scored an older-but-works-great Mr. Coffee coffeemaker for free from a recycle email group. 

Heck, when my now-17-year-old daughter was in diapers, her gear came mostly from a sweet consignment store called Bearly Used (if you think that the shop’s mascot was a smiling, powder blue grizzly, you’d be right).

Being this sort of sensible buyer doesn’t mean, however, that I’m cheap.

I make it a rule to buy good shoes because they last longer; I also know they won’t give me bunions and blisters.  I make sure, too, that our honey is local and organic, as well as most of the meat, veggies and fruit we eat.  And when it comes to big purchases like a new couch, I’ll always go with American made, because even though I know I’ll be paying more than I would with an imported model, I also know the quality will be worth it.   

So, it pains me to make this confession:  I got snookered last month.

To say I am irritated with myself is an understatement—especially because what happened is all my fault.

It began with a vacuum cleaner. 

Now, this is an expensive model—my husband paid many hundreds of dollars for this sleek, forest green canister shortly after our marriage.  Over the last decade, it has been a solid work horse, even in the hands of a reckless teenager.  There have been a few repairs, but once the wand gave out—that overhaul alone would have set us back $400, with no guarantee—we both decided that a new canister (we prefer them over upright models) was in order. 

So, like every good consumer these days, I began with some online research. 

Soon enough, I found a name brand under $100.  Wow!  Not only that, but this model was deemed one of the top three vacuums in its class in 2014.  Wow again!  Reading on, a cornucopia of rapturous users described the machine’s merits, with one even saying her husband only let her buy this vacuum.  But for me, the cherry that topped the cake was this: this amazing canister, said so many beyond-satisfied users, was particularly amazing when it came to gobbling up pet hair.  Given that we have three big dogs, two of whom shed hair every single day in every single room, this vacuum seemed perfect.

I felt even smarter when I found the vacuum for $71.  Wow for the third time!  

Then the vacuum arrived. 

The box felt so… light.  Upon opening, I saw that while it WAS a canister, its body was made of cheap plastic.  With growing dismay, I also noted that the wand had no beater bar—a major design omission that has left most of our dogs’ hair still firmly embedded in our carpets.  There’s more: the coil that connects the machine to the wand is so thin and badly engineered that it actually twists up (imagine a cheap garden hose) while vacuuming.  I could go on, and I will… instead of four wheels, there are only two. And while there is a 20-foot cord, as promised, it is not retractable, but instead has to be wound around, over and over and over and OVER, to the bottom of the cleaner.

Basically, I’ve just thrown $71 to the wind—and still don’t have a working vacuum.

What have I learned?

For starters, why did I so blindly believe all of these users?  Who’s to say that the company didn’t pay them for their comments?  Who’s to say that they aren’t stockholders in said company?   Who’s to say that their pets aren’t hairless cats?  

I also made the even more terrible mistake of not checking out this vacuum in person.  Photos on the web site obviously didn’t cut it here.  In the company’s favor, I was so excited by the too-good-to-be-true price of a name brand canister that I merrily skimmed through the pictures, and skipped the crucial step of seeing the machine for myself.

What else have I learned?

Well, despite my sweet tooth for bargains, I will buy my next vacuum the way I buy my shoes.  

This time, I will go to a local dealer, one who specializes in another sort of vacuum—the high-end and dependable brand—which starts in the $400 range.  This time, I will not only see and touch and hear the machine with my own eyes, I’ll get to try it out.  Many reviews on many websites (yes, I still went online!) say that this particular brand has not only been around for decades, but that its canister models last for many, many years. 

It’s comforting, too, to know that the dealer in question has been in his same little corner shop for many years. We’ll start budgeting now.     

You can fool me once, name-brand crappy canister.  But there won’t be a next time… at least when it comes to vacuum cleaners.  

What about you?  Have you ever been fooled by something—or perhaps someone—too good to be true?  Tell me about it, and maybe I won’t feel so awful!   

 I’m smack dab in the middle of a beautiful love affair.

This wonderful relationship, as the best love affairs so often are, always feels new and exciting… this, despite the fact that my sweetie and I have been happily ensconced for a good two decades.

Oh, and you should also know that my husband isn’t in the picture. 

Even so, he not only approves of what I’m doing, but encourages me on, often and heartily, to please spend more time with my love.

You’ve probably figured out by now that this particular coupling has nothing to do with rolling around in the sheets.

My affair is with vintage cookbooks.

I wouldn’t call myself too obsessive about them.  I mean, I keep my two dozen or so in one specific area of the kitchen, in bookshelves designed just for them. I don’t dust the area as much as I should, but I am always organizing them.  And when that happens, I can’t help but ever-so-slowly leaf through at least one of the books, at least once a week.

The collection began, modestly and not surprisingly, with what was once my mother’s go-to cookbook—the perky, red and white covered Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book.  

This is a first edition, published by General Mills in 1950, with dulled silver duct tape now holding the binding together.  Intended for young, post-World War II brides who could barely boil water, the beginning pages of Picture Cook Book feature clear photographs under the title of Useful Kitchen Utensils, and a glossary called Meanings of Terms Often Found in Recipe Directions.  There’s also A Dictionary of Special and Foreign Terms (included here is caviar, entrée and macaroons). 

I absolutely love the Spanish rice recipe, which begins with a hot skillet and four tablespoons of melted butter.  What’s not to like?  There’s also a terrific basic sugar cookie to try, and lots of pies not seen much anymore, including New England Squash and Early American Pear.   

Along the way, I’ve bought Ruth Wakefield’s Toll HouseTried and True Recipes.  Yup, Wakefield is the accidental inventor of the chocolate chip cookie, which she named The Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie.  (More about the cookie is here, at http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2013/03/the-accidental-invention-of-the-chocolate-chip-cookie/).  Then, a few years back, my husband gifted me withThe Margaret Rudkin Pepperidge Farm Cookbook, where I read that there really was once a real Pepperidge Farm, part of a 125-acre parcel in Fairfield, Connecticut, purchased by the author and her husband in 1926.

About a year later, in a neighbor’s box of free stuff at her front curb, I discovered, complete with dust cover,The Fireside Cook Book by James Beard.  Published in 1949 by the venerable Simon and Schuster, its subtitle, in luxe cursive handwriting, is “A Complete Guide to Fine Cooking for Beginner and Expert Containing 1,217 Recipes and Over 400 Color Pictures.”   

Of course, my cookbooks are great fun to look at.  But they have imparted two important lessons as well.    

One, cooking is not nearly as difficult and labor intensive as so many of us were taught to believe. 

Indeed, simply follow the recipe.  (And in these vintage gems, most really are pretty  easy.)  You don’t even have to know how to measure, because a measuring cup and spoons do all of that for you.  And after making the dish once, you can always add or subtract seasonings or herbs, thereby making it the signature dish that will become unique to you. 

Two, despite the fact that so many of these recipes routinely call for butter, bacon grease, red meat and white sugar, one didn’t really see morbidly obese people when these books were being used by millions of homemakers.  Why? 

My common sense theory is this:  not one of these dishes calls for ingredients that sound like they were created in a chemistry lab.

In addition, meat was purchased in butcher shops run by real meat cutters, and about half of all Americans picked their veggies from their own backyard gardens. 

All of these elements, in their own way, make the recipes a kind of clean food.  Consequently, what is then put on the table is not only easier to digest, it’s also way easier to not have second helpings because this sort of honest food fills one up the first time around.

All in all, collecting vintage cookbooks, and USING them, has been one of the most satisfying—and certainly the longest lasting—love affairs of my life. 

What about you? 

If you have a favorite cookbook, I’d love to know about it, and why.  And don’t forget to include a recipe… or two or three.   I’m already putting on my apron!