Garage Sales
If you ever want to trace the history of food trends, just go to a garage sale. You will quickly know what isn’t popular anymore. And forget about reading consumer reports: just go to a garage sale and you will be able to figure out on your own what kitchen gadgets to avoid!
I am a flea market junky, as I’m sure Jordan has pointed out in a few articles. This past weekend I had the opportunity/task of helping my Mom in Ontario clean out her house in preparation for her move to an apartment. We sold an amazing amount of stuff that has collected over the years, but also quite a few newer items; rarely used or even still in their original packaging. These items generally fall under the category: “Seemed like a great idea at the time”.
I attend a flea market here in Calgary every weekend, and of course, make it to every garage sale on Gabriola that I possibly can. I have noted a few trends that seem to be the same whether you are in Ontario, Alberta or BC.
1. I think that by now, everyone has realized that hot-air popcorn tastes like the styro-foam packing chips, which are perhaps not so coincidentally called “popcorn”.
2. Those clear-brown glass sauce pans burn your food, and are impossible to clean.
3. You don’t need 5-thousand different microwave gadgets; a few good old-fashioned pyrex bowls in combination with clear-plastic produce bags, will work to steam/cook just about everything.
4. Fondue pots, that were abundant in the past few years at garage sales everywhere, are now getting hard to find, especially ones in retro-orange or green. There has been a resurgence in fonduing.
5. Crock pots, and yes, even pressure cookers are certainly finding a new niche, and the younger couples are snagging these as quickly as you can get them priced.
6. There are probably only a few people in the world who know how to use, or why you would want to use a food-saver sealing thing.
7. Unless you drink a lot of foreign beer, no one needs a bottle opener anymore, but instead of going to an antique store and paying “collectible” pricing, just go to any yard sale at the home of a senior citizen.
8. Apparently, everyone who knows anything about roasting, and obviously watches too much of the cooking network, is throwing out their old roasting pans, and buying the ones with the multi-layered bottoms, that cost the price of a small car and weigh just as much too,
9. And, apparently, some people=s mothers have decided that they never have to make a birthday cake again!
10. Most people just don’t have a room big enough to store a salad-spinner, although we all know that it is the best way to get salad dressing to stick to our lettuce.
11. There must be a spatula-gnome who steals the flippers from my kitchen and takes them to someone else’s house, because some people have so many of these that they have to get rid of them at their sales, and I have to keep buying them.
12. Some people are just idiots, and actually sell their beautifully seasoned cast-iron fry pans. That’s alright; their loss, my gain.
13. Did you really think that your mother/brother/best friend would be thrilled to death over the pasta maker you gave for Christmas? Do you realize just how much work it involves?
14. Finally, I would just like to add that I am personally offended by people trying to practically give away their copies of my favourite, can’t live without, cookbooks. Some people just have no taste!
Signing off for now, this is your intrepid yard-sale investigator, Kerry Sorrenti.
If you don’t or won’t use those cracked old wooden spoons anymore, it isn’t likely that anyone else would want to either.