This weekend the girls went to my in-laws for a couple of days. John said, "So what do you want to do?" And the first thing that popped out of my mouth was, "Hit the Goodwill!"
And a fruitful visit it was. I found an American Harvester food dehydrator (a Harvest Maid model, they don't make it any more but it's basically the same as the one I've got) for $6! My housekeeper was just saying how much she wanted one, so I figure hey, great tip! It even had the manuals. (Mmf, I'm eating jerky right now that I made last time she was here, that's how I knew how bad she wanted one; the whole house smelled delicious and we kept snatching pieces out of the dryer. The only thing that would improve this last batch I made would be a little maple syrup in the marinade of teriyaki and garlic.)
Then I found two matching crockpot liners; they only had one lid between them, but that's fine. Most of the time I'll only have cheesecloth over the top anyway. I got them for my sourdough starter to live in. It only needs the lid when it's in the fridge, which is rarely. The two of them were $8 total. I need to get going with the home breadmaking again because we've discovered Josie seems to have a wheat intolerance and I make a pretty darn good whole rye sourdough that she'll eat but not overeat. Get a loaf of wheat bread in the house and she'll eat the whole loaf in a day and be sick for two.
Next to them I found a glass sun tea jar--hard to find glass ones any more--for $2, that I now have my "hooch" brewing in. This is fruit juice with a rinsed kefir grain in it. It ferments into a very mildly alcoholic and fizzy drink with lots of healthy lactic acid in it, good for relaxing the muscles. I talked to the local beer brewing store about getting an alcohol measure for my brews, but they said, wild ferment, don't bother; put some cultivated yeast in, you may have a problem, but not with wild yeasts. And in truth, so far I get way more high off a dose of Nyquil than a bottle of hooch. The sun tea jar makes it easy to rack off the hooch into EZCap bottles without disturbing the yeasty sediment at the bottom, since the jar has a tap near the bottom.
And the final purchase turned out to be the most interesting, and we didn't even know what we had til we got it home. Near the crocks I found a pretty little handthrown pottery thing; I thought it was a planter. It had what looked like its saucer taped firmly to the top. It was glazed in blues, reds and purples and was really quite lovely. I thought, hey, perfect for repotting my African violet. And it was $2. Got it home, untaped the lid, and it turned out to be a handmade butter bell! Considering I'm one of a handful of people in Portland who even knows what a butter bell is, this was exciting; considering that we actually make butter from time to time and had wanted a butter bell to store it in but couldn't justify the $18-25 for one, it was nearly providential.
Actually, there was one more purchase; up at the checkstand we found a little red chair with a woven string seat that was just the size of Josie's doll Julia (a not-quite-American Girl). $2. Josie was thrilled with it.
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