What’s on your bucket list?

The view from Stirling Castle in the Scottish Highlands,
with the Wallace memorial seen in the middle

Before I get to bucket lists, I want to say that National Dog Day will certainly tell you who your friends are, although I’m not sure whether it is Sophie or me that has so many friends. But in haste I threw up a handy picture of me holding Sophie—it’s really not a flattering picture of either of us. Sophie was recovering coat after being shaved at the vet, and one skinny leg, all bone, is sticking up with a tuff of fur at the end like a booty. Otherwise, her coat looks like it never met a brush or comb. Sideways from the left is definitely not my best look—so much jowl I look worse than my dear dad. But 124 of you have liked it—and still counting. Sophie and I are both flattered and grateful.

Now about the bucket list. I saw a suggestion that we replace a bucket list with a “cut it” list, so I got to thinking about my list. It’s short. I think of bucket lists as mainly listing travel destinations, and at my age and given the fact that I’m not an easy traveler—don’t like to fly although I will—and I’m now mobility challenged, I have already put several things on a cut-it list. Still on my bucket list: a return to Scotland, where I left my heart in the Highlands, and a return to Chicago, my hometown. It’s no coincidence that I want to go to places I love and find comfortable. I missed the gene that wants to explore every exotic location on the globe. Machu Picchu is simply not for me.

I suppose a few things besides travel destinations go on a bucket list, so there are a couple of new restaurants in Fort Worth I want to go to—Le Margot (French) and Walloon’s (southern seafood). But I really don’t need them on a list.  I’ll get there sooner or later.

That made me think about what I’d do if “The Millionaire” arrived at my front door. My first instinct was that I would donate the money, probably to my church. But then I thought about the various projects we’d like to do around the house. Christian wants to create a master suite in the attic and an ensuite bedroom for me downstairs (no, I’m not ready to leave the cottage). And I am itching to do extensive landscaping, turning our lawn into one big bed of wildflowers. I realize the end of the hottest, driest summer in years is not the time to think about that. Besdies, back in the day when “The Millionaire” was popular, a million would go pretty far. I’m not so sure about today.

So much for dreaming about a bucket list and sudden wealth. What have I already put on my cut-it list? A cruise through the inner passage in Alaska—sure, I’d like to visit Denali and I think Ketchikan would be fun, but Anchorage, Juneau, and Fairbanks aren’t calling my name. I get pretty good salmon at home. I’d also probably like a trip to New England to see the fall foliage and eat fresh lobster. I know the lobster we get in Texas pales before what I’d eat at the shore, but I’ll settle for it. A cruise that we reluctantly cancelled a few years ago should still be on my bucket list—the Great Lakes from Chicago to Toronto. I’m fascinated by the Great Lakes, probably due to my Chicago upbringing. In Oakville, a suburb of Toronto, my grandmother’s house was a block from Lake Ontario. So both ends of the trip appealed, but the summer we were to go I was seriously ill and lost any enthusiasm for travel. I got my health back, but not the travel enthusiasm.

I suppose all our bucket lists reflect who we are, but I find mine shows that I like the familiar and the comfortable. I am not all that interested in exploring new places. Even Paris, London, and Rome don’t call to me. I am most happy in my cottage and at my desk. But my limited list, even my cut-it list, reflects my interest in food. Maybe bucket lists—and cut-it lists—are the new personality indicators.

What’s on your bucket list? Your cut-it list?

Some thoughts on frugality

 

A post on the New York Times Cooking Community this morning got to me to thinking about frugality. A woman wrote that she had cooked an Asian meal and, presumably for the first time, used water chestnuts. But she had half a can left over—not, she said, enough to freeze (do they freeze?). She asked what to do with them. Well, I could have told her: pitch them! It’s taken me years to get that attitude.

I inherited frugality from my mother, who lived through two world wars and the Depression. She saved bits of string and aluminum foil; she had a special cubbyhole right under her sink where she stored used—yes, used—paper towels. If she used one to wipe a counter spill, it went into the cubby; if there was a floor spill, she used her knee to open that cubby and re-used the paper towel. When we moved her out of her home, my brother was astounded at the number of tiny jars in the back of the refrigerator, many of them growing mold. She hated to throw away food—leftovers went into a soup pot.

When I was feeding a family of six plus Mom, leftovers had to be pretty generous before they were worth saving. Mom would ask what I wanted to do with such and such as we cleaned up after supper, and before I could answer, she’d say, “I know, I know. Pitch it.”

It took me years to get over the compulsion to boil the turkey carcass after the holidays (I did it again this year and was so grateful for the rich broth). I still save leftovers and, yes, I have a soup-pot container in my freezer. And bread—I must have a hundred different varieties, from breakfast breads to sandwich rye and dinner rolls. You never know when you’ll want to make croutons or need some fresh breadcrumbs. Panko? It’s just a fancy way of spending money when you can make your own crumbs.

But I will never be as frugal as my mom, and my kids are helping me see that I don’t need to. My oldest son, Colin, is a CPA, and I discuss financial things with him. Some twenty years ago, he and I were driving in Dallas, and I remarked on how much I’d like to have another VW bug. “Mom,” he said, “if it would make you happy, you should have it.” And I bought a bright blue Bug that some may remember.

When my four kids and I planned a nostalgia trip to Chicago so that I could show them the house and neighborhood where I grew up, I said there was a Best Western Motel nearby. They would have none of it, and the five of us stayed in a suite at the Drake Hotel which, all my growing-up years, was a symbol of luxury to me. We ate in fine restaurants, including the Palmer House, and we Ubered around the city like we were millionaires. That trip is one of the highlights of my life.

They buy me better clothes than I would buy for myself and they send generous gifts of flowers and chocolate. Colin keeps telling me I can afford a few things that I want, and sometimes I draw up a bucket list. Maybe it was the NYTimes thread but my bucket list often has to do with food—with pandemic and not going anywhere, I don’t need new clothes.

But I want to make gravlax from scratch (salmon cured with sugar, salt, and dill) and I want to waltz into Central Market and buy a whole leg of lamb. I already use real butter and whole milk, and I would like chocolate mousse with my dinner every night, please. I want to try my hand at Beef Wellington—and Salmon Wellington is pretty intriguing too. A bit of caviar? Of course, with cream cheese and capers. And lobster. Always lobster.

Maybe food and frugality are forever linked in my mind, but I’m trying. And I count my blessings every day. Thanks, Mom.