Own Two Hands: The Flea Market Stall

I’ve been giving it a lot of deliberation, and I have decided that it’s time to branch out with my passions. Much as I enjoy cooking, I don’t think I’m skilled enough to do it as a business. However, possibly as an offshoot of my enjoyment of food, I love thrifting for vintage and antique kitchenware and houseware. But I have been doing it for so long that I don’t really need anything anymore! So I’m opening a flea market stall where I can sell some of my fantastic finds.

I’ve started with the Russell Flea market, which is a new market that runs some Saturdays from 9:00am to 3:00pm at Russell High School (982 North Russell Road, Russell, ON). Here’s my schedule so far:

Own Two Hands at Russell Flea
Saturday, March 24th, 2018, 9:00am to 3:00pm
Saturday, April 7th, 2018, 9:00am to 3:00pm
Saturday, May 19th, 2018, 9:00am to 3:00pm
Saturday, June 2nd, 2018, 9:00am to 3:00pm
Saturday, June 16th, 2018, 9:00am to 3:00pm
Saturday, June 30th, 2018, 9:00am to 3:00pm

Some of the vintage Tupperware that will be appearing in my stall.

I’m also planning on participating in other markets, like hopefully 613flea, and perhaps Stittsville’s Carp Road Flea Market, and McHaffie’s Flea Market. I will keep an updated list of where I’ll be on my About page. For now, though, I’m taking things slowly as I am on the steep end of the learning curve.

So what does this mean in terms of my blog? Not much, to be completely honest. I will still write about cooking, and food, and recipes, and thrifting, and family. I’m basically expanding what I do out of the blogosphere and into the material world.

I look forward to seeing you at the market!

But What Is It? The Sequel

Over this past summer I found a tool at the cottage my parents were renting and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was. After posting But What Is It? and But What Is It? Part 2, the general consensus was that it was some kind of homemade chopping tool, probably to aid someone who had limited hand strength.

Today I have a new quandary. I picked up a piece of Tupperware when I bought a big box of second-hand plastic containers, and I have no idea what it is. Here are some photos for your reference:

As you can see, it’s actual Tupperware brand (around here we often call any plastic container “Tupperware”, no matter the brand, so I had to specify). However, it doesn’t have a mold number, so it can’t easily be looked up online. Because of this, I suspect that it may be part of a larger item. Because of the colour/texture, I suspect that it’s of relatively recent manufacture, not vintage. It’s solid plastic, and one end tapers sharply, scraper-like. It measures 19.8cm (7 3/4″) at its widest point and is about 13cm (5″) tall at the highest point at the center of the arch.

I’ve asked my friend who is into collecting Tupperware in a big way, and she has no idea. My Googling has yielded nothing. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

EDITED TO ADD:

Karen and Peter over on my Facebook page pointed me in the right direction: it’s a food scoop! Its meant to scoop up food after you chop it so it’s easily transferred from food to pan. This makes sense, because the scoop was originally packaged with a five-slot knife block that had an attached recipe card holder. There’s a good example over on eBay. Mystery solved!

New Toy

So I have a bit of thing for hunting for interesting vintage kitchen gear. Part of this is the love of the hunt, part of it is because I love the look of older pieces, and part of it is because I actually use a lot of these things and I just can’t afford to buy them new. And, let’s face it, the phrase “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!” was beaten so thoroughly into my head as a child that I just can’t shake it free. My new toy is a case in point: a Oster Regency Kitchen Center, circa 1983.

Kitchen Center with slicer/shredder/salad maker/French fry cutter attachment and four cutting discs (shredder, French fry cutter, thick slicer, and thin slicer).

I adore the styling of the KitchenAid and Smeg stand mixers, but heaven knows that I can’t afford one. I do have a beautiful Dormeyer Princess mixer, but so far I only have the mixer attachment for it. My new-to-me Kitchen Center has slicer/shredder/salad maker/French fry cutter, mixer/doughmaker, and blender attachments. Actually, it originally came with a grinder as well, but that part went missing sometime in the last 35 years.

Kitchen Center with blender attachment.

Also missing: the mixing bowls! Well, two bowls that looked about right came with it, but it turns out that they weren’t the correct ones. I shopped around at my local thrift stores and found a total of four that work for about $20, which is reasonable when you consider they’d be about $70 on Amazon.

I was a little worried when I took the machine apart to clean it and realized that some of the gears are plastic. I have a bad habit of putting too much strain on my machines and stripping plastic gears. I’ve ruined a couple of blenders that way. Luckily, the gears for the blender attachment are all metal. We’ll see if the other attachments’ gears are durable enough to withstand my not-so-tender ministrations.

Kitchen Center with mixer/dough maker attachment.

I have to admit that the part I am most enthused about is the stand mixer/dough maker. So many recipes and instructional videos just call for you to use one. I mean sure, it’s possible to do it all by hand, but sometimes I just don’t want to put in all that effort. Also, it can sometimes be a bit tricky to translate directions (especially timing/consistency) from machine mixing to hand mixing.

Apparently there were a whole lot of other attachments that were additional, optional purchases. The one that interests me the most was the pasta accessory, which included five processing discs for thin or thic spaghetti, lasagne, rigatoni, and fettuccine. Unfortunately, it looks like it attached to the (missing) grinder. So I’ll be keeping an eye out for these pieces during my future thrifting expeditions. There may be homemade ramen in my future yet!

Vintage Stand Mixer

It’s come up before that I like old things, not just because they’re old, but for reasons that are:

a) stylistic (some of them are just pretty);
b) environmental (why buy new and add to pollution when there are working older versions of the same thing out there?); and
c) budgetary (old/used items tend to be cheaper than new, unless they’re very rare)

So it’s no surprise that when I recently found a really cheap vintage Dormeyer Princess stand mixer from the 1950’s up for sale, I jumped on the opportunity. I took the chance and bought it based only on some pretty bad photos, but I figured the risk was worth it. As I suspected, it needed a bit of work, but nothing I couldn’t handle.

The main part of the mixer needed a bit of cleaning.

However, what I was most worried about was the state of the power cord, which was dangerously frayed. It looked like it had been poorly repaired more than once. So I went out and bought a completely new cord and installed that — a fairly painless process, as it turns out.

When I opened up the main body, it was disgustingly gungy inside. I took it apart as much as possible, washed all the non-mechanical bits in hot soapy water, and wiped down the motor and all electrical/mechanical bits down thoroughly.

Now it’s clean inside and out, the wiring is safe, and it works like a charm!

It’s pretty, too. I think the styling is very reminiscent of an old Chevrolet.

In the end, the total cost to me was about $30, plus an hour or two of work. Not bad when a nice modern KitchenAid stand mixer costs about $600. Apparently there was originally a juicer and a meat grinder attachment for this model, which I’ll keep an eye out for while thrifting. I wonder if I could find a dough hook that would work with it as well? That would be lovely.

Weekend Craft Fairs

I’ve spent a good portion of my last few weekends at craft fairs and flea markets, searching for those elusive perfect gifts for friends and family. Last weekend I visited the 2017 Christmas Craft Market at Watson’s Mill in Manotick, the Russel Flea Market, and the Holiday Miracles Handmade Fair. This weekend I attended the Fisher Park Christmas Craft Sale (always a good one, held the first Saturday of December every year at 250 Holland Avenue), the Christmas Bazaar at the Parkdale United Church (also a lovely yearly event, at 429 Parkdale Avenue), and my favourite of them all, 613Christmas at the 613Flea Market.

The 613Christmas flea market filled up the entire field house at Carleton University, which is a 58m x 49m indoor turf field. Not only was it a huge space packed to the brim with vendors and customers, but the artificial turf was much more comfortable underfoot than most places’ concrete and tile (or occasionally hardwood).

There were stalls with a plethora of interesting finds. I took quick pics of the ones that were the most interesting to me, but there was a lot more variety than that.

The booths with vintage kitchenware were my favourites. I drool over Thoroughly Modern Vintage‘s stuff every time I see her at an event.

Although I do have a soft spot for stuffies like the ones from Truly Charlotte.

Of course, there were all kinds of vintage Christmas finds at a market this close to the holidays (although I’m not sure I’d trust the old lights not to overheat or have broken-down wiring).

I have a special soft spot in my heart for all of the super-sparkly and super-fragile glass bulbs that are just like the ones my mother and grandmother hung on their trees. I especially favour the ones with a concave indent to catch the light, like the one that you can just see in the top left of this photo.

The highlight of my day was meeting Charles de Lint at 613Flea. This local author was there promoting his latest novels and signing autographs. I’ve been reading his novels since I was a kid and I especially like the urban fantasies set in the Ottawa area. I loved Greenmantle, Memory and Dream, and Jack, the Giant Killer, just off of the top of my head, although I have read so many more. (Although could I remember the titles when I was chatting with him, oh heavens no, I just stood there um-ing and aw-ing as if I didn’t have two brain cells to rub together.) We even studied one of his books in high school, and despite my teacher’s best efforts to study it to death, I still came out of that class enjoying his work — which is more than I can say for other authors I studied. To contrast, I would rather stab myself with a knitting needle before I read Shoeless Joe, Heart of Darkness and Lord of the Flies again.

So I bought a copy of the beautifully-illustrated The Cats of Tanglewood Forest (2013) and asked Mr. de Lint to personalize it for Thing 1. I really hope that she will grow up to be as big of a fan as I am.

Book Fair

This past weekend was a busy one, and it would have been even busier if I hadn’t been sick on Sunday. It started off in grand fashion with a trip to the Rockcliffe Park Book Fair. They advertised that they had over 30,000 used books, CDs, DVDs and records… And I think they delivered.

To be totally honest, a sale like this is a little slice of heaven for me. I’ve been a bookworm ever since I can remember; it was one of the things that I was teased the most for as a kid. That didn’t slow me down, though, and now I wear the label with pride. All of these books piled high in a gym brings me right back to the happiest days of my childhood, when the Scholastic Book Fair would come to my school. I would bring the money my parents gave me, plus all of my saved allowance money, so that I could bring a stack of books home with me to keep. (Libraries are like a second home to me, but having books I didn’t have to give back was an extra-special treat.) Of course, now that I’m an adult I can drive out to a bookstore any time, but the prices at a used book fair are so much more affordable — and it’s somewhere that I can pick up vintage and out-of-print books as well as new releases.

I came home with two big bags of books, mostly novels and a few Christmas gifts. (Yes, I do buy some of my gifts second-hand; there’s a lot of stuff that is just as good that should be reused instead of going to the dump, and some things just aren’t available any more.) I did find a few cookbooks that I just had to have, though.

– Julia Child’s Menu Cookbook (Julia Child, 1991) — This one is a reprint of Julia child & Company and Julia Child & More Company. It’s hard to believe, but this is the first Julia Child cookbook that I have ever owned.
– The Ontario Harvest Cookbook: An Exploration of Fests and Flavours (Julia Aitken & Anita Stewart, 1996)
– Incredible Edibles: 43 Fun Things to Grow in the City (Sonia Day, 2010) — Okay, not technically a cookbook, but it’ll lead to more cooking in the end.
– A Modern Kitchen Guide: A complete Book of Up-to-Date Recipes and Household Hints (Farmer’s Advocate and Canadian Countryman, 1946) — This is the book with the blank red spine. It’s one’s old enough that I haven’t found it online, which makes it all the more interesting to me.
– A Little Canadian Cookbook (Faustina Gilbey, 1994) — This one is autographed by the illustrator!
– Totally Bread Cookbook (Helene Siegel & Karen Gillingham, 1999)

What a great haul! And what a lovely way to spend a few hours for a bookworm like me!

Thrifting

I absolutely love going thrifting, i.e. going to second-hand shops, antique stores, flea markets, and giveaways in search of treasure. I mean, it’s the kind of treasure that is other peoples’ trash, but that’s totally okay by me. Treasure is in the eye of the beholder, really. Also, this is treasure I can actually afford.

613flea at Aberdeen Pavilion (Lansdowne Park).

The Original Fabric Flea Market at the Glebe Community Center.

The Ottawa Antique Market on Bank Street.

I did find some great treasures lately, like this stack of fabric from the Original Fabric Flea Market. I arrived with only an hour left of the market, and I really regret not showing up for the opening. I still scored some cute vintage prints, a bit of Halloween fabric, and a good chunk of grey faux fur (always in demand for costumes).

I also found two vintage tablecloths and two vintage-style (but brand new) aprons. The aprons are especially useful because I’ve found myself relying on them more and more to save my clothes when cooking — and they get dirty pretty fast, so it’s essential for me to have a small stash of them.

Recently there was a 50% off all books sale at Value Village, and the Salvation Army is currently running a coupon special that if you buy 3 or more books they’re all 50% off. (The coupon is valid until October 31st and is available here, for my fellow thrifters.) My girls are voracious readers, so I picked up dozens of new-to-them books that I will dole out over the coming months. For myself, I picked up the above-pictured Halloween books:

– I Can Decorate: Pumpkin Fun from Practico Media (2007)
– Halloween Recipes & Crafts by Christine Savage (2003)
– A Zombie Ate My Cupcake by Lily Vanilli (2016)

Books I’d like to go through with the kids:

– Fairy Tale Feasts: A Literary Cookbook for Young Readers & Eaters by Jane Yolen (2009)
– Starting from Scratch: What You Should Know about Food and Cooking by Sarah Elton (2014)

A bunch of cookbooks, which are disproportionately from Canadian Living because most of the other ones I was interested in that were available, I already had:

– The Canadian Living Entertaining Cookbook by Carol Ferguson (1990)
– The Canadian Living Christmas Book from the Canadian Living Magazine (1993)
– Canadian Living’s Family Cookbook from the Canadian Living Magazine (1995)
– Canadian Living’s Country Cooking by Elizabeth Baird (1994)
– Canadian Living’s Best Vegetables by Elizabeth Baird (1995)
– Canadian Living’s Best Soups and Stews by Elizabeth Baird (1997)
– Canadian Living’s Best One-Dish Meals by Elizabeth Baird (1994)
– Canadian Living’s Best Light Cooking by Elizabeth Baird (1994)
– Canadian Living’s Best Breads And Pizzas by Elizabeth Baird (1998)
– Betty Crocker’s Bread Machine Cookbook from Betty Crocker (1995)
– Restaurant Recipe: Ottawa’s Best Recipes from Loeb (2000)
– How to be a Domestic Goddess by Nigella Lawson (2003)

Tucked away in one of these cookbooks was a clipping from a newspaper, which reads (translated roughly from French):

FOUR HAPPY YOUNG LADIES made their Brownie promise at the Notre-Dame d’Aylmer convent last Sunday. They are Dominique Robert, Elaine Davis, Analisa Lemieux, and in the back, Lyne Bisaillon.

As an aside, if anyone in this photo wants the original copy or a high-res scan, I’d be happy to send it to them.

To satisfy my knitting curiosity, I snatched up:

– 2-at-a-time Socks by Melissa Morgan-Oakes (2007)

I also thought that these old drop spindles were interesting. I’ve made a few attempts at spinning my own yarn in the past; perhaps it’s time to give it another go?

Some of my favourite finds of the last little while were two Pyrex England casserole dishes. The one on the left was originally my mother’s (although probably not the original lid) and it came to her as a wedding gift; the ones on the right I found last weekend. I believe that I mentioned in my Mom’s Homemade Macaroni & Cheese recipe write-up that this is, to me, the proper dish for my mother’s casseroles. Mom taking this dish out of the cupboard meant that I was about to have one of my all-time favourite meals. I still feel happy just looking at these dishes. It’s probably silly, but I bet everyone has a simple object with emotional connections to their childhood like this.

I’d have to say that my absolute favourite find was a copy of The New Purity Cook Book by Anna Lee (1967). This cookbook was a mainstay in my mother’s kitchen, which is why when I moved out I made sure to buy the reprint The All New Purity Cookbook. And you know, I probably would have been quite satisfied with that, except they made one crucial error to my mind: instead of organizing the index alphabetically like in the original, it was organized by category. This means that’s it’s impossible to quickly search for dishes with one main ingredient. It also leaves me trying to figure out which category some dishes fit into (it can be subjective). So it’s not just for nostalgia, but for practical reasons that I’m so happy I found a copy of the original book, and not only because they’re over $50 each on Amazon (I paid thrift store prices for mine). Not only that, but it’s in near-mint condition — much better than my mom’s well-loved copy!

There are a bunch of flea and Christmas markets coming up soon, which I’m looking forward to even though I’m not even ready to think about the holiday season yet. Heck, I haven’t even gotten through Halloween yet! What I’m looking forward to soonest is Ottawa Give Away Weekend, when people put items they don’t want on the side of the road for anyone to pick up for free if they are so inclined. I’ve found some lovely treasures on this weekend in previous years, including the beautiful antique mirror that hangs in my front hall. You might call it trash picking, but I call it recycling. Why should I buy all new things when there is such a huge variety of awesome second-hand items out there? Newer doesn’t always mean better — and it almost always means more expensive.

Second-Hand Cookbook Finds

This past Friday I went thrift shopping with a friend of mine, and we must have spent at least an hour going through shelf after shelf of second-hand books. In addition to finding a stack of books for my girls (classic Nancy Drew mysteries for my eldest and Garfield comic books for my youngest), and a number of vintage copies of the Serendipity series for my friend, who collects them. For me, I found another copy of the Joy of Cooking (2006 edition) that I plan on gifting one of my girls when she eventually moves out — or I will use to replace my own copy should I ever dump a cupful liquid in it. What made me most excited, though, was:

Nanny Ogg’s Cookbook (Terry Pratchett, 1999), which is a “useful and improving Almanack of Information including Astonishing Recipes from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld”. As my ComicCon costume of Discworld Death probably hinted, I am a huge fan of this series of books. I’m currently loaning my copies out in the hope that my friends will want to do a group costume next year. I am looking forward to trying such recipes from the book as Sticky Toffee Rat Onna Stick (page 98) and Nanny Ogg’s Perfectly Innocent Porridge with Completely Inoffensive Honey Mixture Which Shouldn’t Make Anyone’s Wife Laugh (page 70). Honestly, the book is more of a hilarious commentary than an actual cookbook, but I do hope to try out some of the recipes just for fun.

I also picked up English 18th Century Cookery (Roy Bloom, undated but online research indicates it was first printed sometime in the 1970’s). I look forward to going through the book and recreating what recipes I can, which will be a challenge because, well, as per the foreward:

Many [of the recipes] are still favourites today, yet others have somehow been forgotten. Certainly the quantities are often overwhelming, the directions not always precise and indeed sometimes the ingredients are not suitable for present-day use. Nonetheless the able cook need not be disheartened — commonsense and a little imagination are all that is required to adapt some of these ideas into delicious realities.

The contents of the book are much older than the printing date, as they originate from an 18th-century household library. Luckily there is a glossary, as some of the terminology is no longer in use, and the Net will help me fill in the other blanks. Some substitutions will have to be made, since a number of the ingredients are no longer in common use, and others aren’t available outside of England. Updating recipes from this book looks to be an interesting challenge that I hope I am up to!

New Cookware

When it comes to garage sale and thrift store shopping, my mother is my role model. Actually, that’s true when it comes to shopping in general. My mom can go into a clothing store and find three pairs of trousers and a shirt, all that fit well, all for 75% off or greater, in less than fifteen minutes. I will go into the same store and come back with maybe one of those pieces. It’s as if she has some kind of supernatural ability to sniff out bargains.

Case in point: my mom bought me some new cookware at garage sales this past month, both for about $2.00 apiece. The first was a pretty vintage 1970’s-ish Dutch oven. I love this style of enameled piece, and although my mom gave me her old one a while back, she was not ashamed to admit that this one was in better shape. As a bonus, it’s also bigger.

Mom also found me this adorable pumpkin pie plate, virtually brand new; it still had the cardboard insert to protect between the top and bottom parts from each other. I doubt it has ever been used. I think it will be perfect for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, when pumpkin pie is often my main contribution to the meal. The temperature at night is telling me that fall isn’t far off, so it won’t be long until I get a chance to use this dish.

The Great Glebe Garage Sale 2017

The Great Glebe Garage Sale is a Big Deal in Ottawa. A community garage sale may not seem like an exceptional event, but it is huge and densely packed with buyers and sellers alike. The roads are thronged with people, strollers, bicycles, and parked cars. Driving in the area — which is usually a fairly quiet residential area — is inadvisable; if you’re going to park in the area, plan to show up at the crack of dawn to get a spot. Even people who don’t go to garage sales as a general rule will make a day of hitting this one.

Panorama taken to give an idea of the crowds; click to enlarge. Please ignore how some people are visually chopped up, as everyone was moving and my camera objected. Taken from just north of Glebe Ave. and Lyon St. South.

I found somebody selling everything including the kitchen sink.

For those unfamiliar with the area, the Glebe is one of the older and wealthier areas of downtown Ottawa. It is bordered by the Queensway (a.k.a. the Trans-Canada Highway) to the north, the Rideau Canal to the east and south, and Bronson Avenue to the west. The residential streets are lined with huge hundred-year-old houses, and are shaded by equally-old trees.

I spotted this CCM GT-101 bicycle in a hodgepodge of bikes in front of the Glebe Collegiate. I think it would have fit right in in Stranger Things — it even still had its headlamp. Except that CCM is a Canadian company, and Stranger Things is set in Indiana, I guess.

Bargain hunters on Glebe Ave.

The Glebe Community Association schedules and runs the Sale, which has been held on the fourth Saturday in May, rain or shine, since 1986. Sellers are expected to donate a portion the day’s proceeds to the Ottawa Food Bank. The goal for this year was to raise $12,000, which is in addition to all of the other fundraising events that take advantage of the crowds. For example, every year I have attended there has been a scout troupe selling hot dogs and cold drinks in front of St. James United Church, and they do a brisk business. Some groups pool all their resources and run a larger sale from inside a community center or church, although some such fundraisers are held in volunteers’ driveways and front yards.

This was the thing that I wanted the most at the entire garage sale, but at an asking price of $175 it was much too dear for my budget, especially since I didn’t need to use it for anything, I just liked it. It’s an M-S-A Chemox Oxygen Breathing Apparatus — a rebreather (probably for firefighting), most likely from the 1950’s.

Both sides of this driveway were lined with golf bags; there were literally so many that I couldn’t get far enough away to get them all in one shot.

I have been attending the Great Glebe Garage Sale for at least fifteen years now, and my success in finding things to buy has been variable. Some years I don’t find a darned thing; other years I have to walk back to my car (usually parked outside the Glebe but within relatively easy walking distance) four or five times to drop things off because my bag(s) have become too heavy. But I find it fun to go whether or not I discover any treasures. Half of the thrill is of the hunt, but there’s also a lot of fun to be had people-watching (spotted a man carrying a live parrot on his shoulder this year), listening to music (there seems to be a busker or a DJ set up on every block), and eating (every fundraiser going is selling food on the street, alongside every style of food truck in town).

A whole pig being spit-roasted for pork sandwiches to be sold at lunch. It smelled divine.

The crowds on Third Ave.

If you’ve never been to the Great Glebe Garage Sale, and you’re in town on the fourth Saturday in May, I highly recommend that you go. Especially if you’re into anything that can be difficult to find — you might just get lucky!