Lost in Vonn's

I don't think I've ever taken so long between posts. I just popped into Vonn's to buy some cheese and some raisins and before I knew it a month had gone by.

Let me explain why it's so easy to get lost in Vonn's. Here's a map showing the layout. I highlighted cheese in pink and drew circles around the various places you might look for raisins.

It's not quite to scale and a little bit fuzzy but I think you get the picture. Look how many different places they keep the cheese (6, by my count).

This, hilariously, is the fancy cheese - in the fruit & veg area

A few feet away behind the deli counter, cheese in breeze block format

Far far away beyond the egg nog some other cheeses. Wonder if this guy is as confused as I am.

I think of this as the secret cheese. It's between the ice-cream cakes and the doughnuts. Obvs.

And as for the raisins, well it makes no sense. They have a very limited range - America knows nothing of currants or sultanas, just raisins. Yet they scatter them about as if to tease someone, some confused Brit maybe, in search of different dried fruit.


Also witness how the porridge and proper muesli, classed as 'hot cereal' are far away from all the other cereal.

It's madness. And that is why I have been so slow to post. (Nothing to do with a trip to NY, a beloved house guest, 4th of July stuff, P's week off school, and general busybusyness).

Can the customer experience ever be too good?

Customer service in the US is famously better than it is in the UK. So much so that it takes a bit of getting used to. Shop assistants barely even pause texting to look up when you enter most high street shops, and British waiters are experts in studiously avoiding eye contact. Meanwhile over here they accost you with offers of help from the moment you walk in, which can be alarmingly. Even after you've shopped they throw out a ‘Need help to your car, ma’am?’.

So far, so clichéd. I always thought the British were underserved by the cliché though. The family who ran my old corner shop were always very friendly, for what it's worth. And the customer service in John Lewis is usually brilliant.

Still, I don’t think there is anything in the UK to match the experience TLOML and I just had at a shop called Pirch, which claims to purvey joy. No, really.

Thanks to an unreliable oven and a juicy insurance cheque, we are in the market for a new range. Our house came fitted with a 48” Thermador, from which it is rather difficult to retreat. I mean, we’re not going to take it out and replace it with something smaller, for starters. What would we put in the gap, after all? It turns out there’s no such thing as a budget 48” range, and if there were, it would probably affect our home’s value. Frankly if your real estate listing doesn’t call out a Thermador, Wolf or Viking range you might just as well spraypaint ‘tear down’ on the front of the house.

Therefore we are in the market for a fancy range. And therefore we went to a fancy shop. We went to a mall in Orange County that looks like this:

Jjust as an aside, heres how the Farmers like to purvey their goods down in the OC (puts the trestle tables of Saltburn's farmers' market to shame somewhat):

I think the farmers were out on the golf course they day we visited

Anyway, back to Pirch and the reason for our visit. As you walk through the fancy schmancy doors, you are greeted with an offer of coffee – freshly ground and made to order. Then an actual chef talked us through how he would could what with which range, and did a little steam oven demo. They offered us a test drive: a trial run cooking on the ovens in the store (with foods their chef had prepped – no need for us to chop or peel, obvs). I'm not sure I could cope with cooking in a kitchen this pristine, so I declined.

They had a chicken on a rotisserie which I think if we’d wanted we could have helped ourselves to.

That's TLOML's nose. I cropped out the drool.

All the appliances are wired and plumbed in. In fact I think you can even use the loo or take a shower if you want.

It was actually rather overwhelming. TLOML didn’t even want to look at the wine fridges, which is how I knew it was all a bit much for him. We shuffled out feeling drained and somehow not entirely full of joy. We really do need a new range, and it does need to be a posh one - but I’m not sure we really needed the Pirch experience. Does anyone?

The latest offerings from the mall in the sky

The big plus of this recent travel has been my chance to reacquaint myself with Skymall, and catch up on their latest offerings. 

 'Always-in-style'. A lady and a lamp. It's too much!

And is this the solution to those spaces in our garden?

Maybe I should put my new Cardioflexed fitness level to test with a round of the Human Slingshot. It is apparently the newest craze, though I've yet to see it in action around here. I can't think why.

And finally, for the next of those business trips, I think I'll make myself really comfortable.

Grocery grumblings

When we last lived together in LA, we did a llot of our grocery shopping at super expensive, gourmet, organic, local, hand knitted, artisanal grocers like Bristol Farms or Pacific Coast Greens.

Sadly, the days of spluffing $75 on a home cooked dinner for two are over. We've got a college fund to save for now, after all.

However we are a bit too fancy for our own good. Ralph's, or Von's, or any of those common-or-garden supermarkets don't quite cut it. For one thing, they don't always stock European butter. They are also often short on good fresh seafood. And their ground meats all contain mysterious 'natural flavourings' i.e. '100% ground turkey with natural flavourings'. I assume the fact they need to call them out on the packaging means these are not the natural flavourings which, um, naturally occur within turkey. Needless to say, I miss Saltburn and Sainos and the butcher very much, as I stand tutting to myself in the aisle.

On the advice of some people who are unintimidated by enormous warehouses, we tried CostCo. The one near us hosts a fresh fish guy every Friday and Saturday. You could almost call it a fishmonger pop-up store. Except that it's in a CostCo. The fish is genuinely fresh and you can buy Kerrygold butter in bulk there too.

And yet... and yet there's something just too depressing about shopping in CostCo. It's that moment when you find yourself clutching a 6lb packet of spaghetti, saying 'this is so cheap!' and realising you don't have the cupboard space for it – because you're not running an Italian restaurant. And you put it down and shuffle on and think 'that's another 30 seconds minutes of my life I'll never get back'. That and feeling a bit wired from the horrible lighting and all the sugary samples I couldn't resist.

So it is that we came to track down our nearest Korean grocery. TLOML loves a good Korean grocery, and tells me they are famously inexpensive, for Koreans are famously smart shoppers. Plus they have an incredible range of seafood including plenty of live shellfish, and some obscure species to boot.

We did a big shop, stocked up on the good kim chee and some very inexpensive oils and fruit and veg. But I didn't like it. It was packed, and overstocked, and full of people who'd been there a million times before and know where everything was and what the heck everything was too.

As I stood, baffled by the tea selection and stumped by the shellfish, I was jostled constantly. I don't speak Korean but I'd hazard a guess that the murmur as they passed me was “Look at this pale faced giant – she looks like she's never seen a geoduck in her life!”.

Or what to do with a geoduck?

Am I the only one here who doesn't know what balloon tea is?

TLOML can handle the Korean market, and he has the mental strength for CostCo too. But when it's my turn to pick up the groceries, I'm afraid it's back to Ralph's or Von's. Or if I'm feeling a bit extravagant, Bristol Farms.

Essential equipment for parenthood

People go a bit mad when they have a baby. It must be the sleep deprivation. Or all those hormones. Or perhaps just the sheer enormity of the task of parenting. It's understandable that one might go a little nutso.

So people become hygiene freaks. Or neurotics with video monitors and mattress sensors. They start thinking tiny socks are 'adorable' (as opposed to just a useful garment for a baby). I won't throw the first stone. I too have wept in BabyGap. And I check Lady P's still breathing at least once a night.

Still. I haven't gone so completely doolally that I think the 'Daddle' - aka Daddy Saddle - is a good idea. But someone must have done, because it is a real product that actually exists.

Nor do I think it's worth spending £30 on a bucket in which to bathe Lady P.

I think I'll skip the dummy which plays music and takes her temperature, too.

And the baby food organiser. Got shelves already, thanks.

It's like the stuff in Skymall. Only more ridiculous. And because its aimed at parents, probably way more successful. Ah, pity the parents, for our minds are so addled we may not make good consumer choices anymore.

(For more bonkers products check out Parenting.com).

Vintage vs junk

The last time I had to hastily furnish a flat on a budget, I did so with a mix of cast offs, Habitat and junk shops. That was a decade ago, and, alas, gone are the days where you can buy a big, quality, stylish sofa from Habitat for  £700. Frankly, it's all gone a bit IKEA. Today's £700 Habitat sofa looks a lot like a £400 IKEA one.

Something similar seems to have happened to junk shops. They've all gone a bit vintage.

I bought 4 lovely midcentury modern chairs for £20 when I moved into my flat in 2002. I got them from a no-nonsense second hand shop in Gospel Oak. They were a bit tatty and my cat, Jack, made them even tattier. But they served a purpose and for a fiver each you can't ask for perfection. My old friend, the Activist, revamped them for a book project and they looked brilliant, until Jack destroyed them again.

It was with the memory of my £5 chairs that I struck out onto the Holloway Road last weekend. I wasn't after anything fancy. A battered old chair, a scarred kitchen table, perhaps a rickety bedside table. An honest house clearance shop, selling crappy formica wardrobes, nasty pine chairs, and the odd hidden gem.

I quickly came to doubt such shops, and such hidden gems, still exist.

This shop sells a fairly undistinguished dining table for £900. I'm no expert but it didn't look like anything special to me. For £900 I'll stick with John Lewis and age the thing myself, thank you.

 

And this place, which looks pretty low end, offers old fashioned shop fittings. Including a lovely glass-fronted set of drawers - which reminded me of the local sports shop we used to buy our PE kit in - for £1800. I guess I'm not their target market. I'm after actual junk, you see. Not already-identified gems.

I was a little heartened by 'Ooh La La', a few doors down. They seem to straddle the worlds of junk and vintage fairly comfortably. Common-or-garden, but charming, chairs for £30 each and a cool '60s bureau for £200. That's a little closer to what I had in mind.

But I kept moving and looking, positive that there must, surely, be better bargains out there. I'm glad
I did.

This shop is camped out in an old newsagents. I'd call it a Pop-up but I'm not sure it counts if the proprieter doesn't know what Pop-up means. 

It is run by a madhead with crazy eyes who sits in the pub across the road and runs out if he sees you go into his shop. Then he regales with you insane stories till you either buy something or flee. It's quite an effective sales strategy.

In amongst the absolute rubbish he was selling - shell suits, old Jackie annuals, worn Gola trainers, and the plastic floral display you see here - was the rocking chair.

I paid £30 for it and am pretty sure that once it's been sanded, screwed and glued, and painted, it will look like it's worth almost £50. That's the kind of vintage furniture I like.

Grisly Gristedes

New York is home to some fantastic grocery stores, delis and gourmet shops.  You can probably buy whatever you want from anywhere in the world, at any time, somewhere in Manhattan.

But life isn't all Korea Town kim chi dashes, artisan bread purchases from Chelsea Market, or browsing the range at the venerable Murray's Cheese. Sometimes you just need to grab some muesli for breakfast the next day. Or an onion for that sauce. Some last minute lemons, a tin of soup, some so-called 'English' muffins. The basics, you know?

At times like that, TLOML and I go to Gristedes. We go there because it is only a block away. We certainly are not enticed in by the window display:

That packet of crisps has been there since we moved here in April.

I particularly love this display of washing liquid.

Eat your heart out Bergdorf Goodman!

I wonder if the 'neuro' marketing people intended for the red and orange bottles to languish in the footlights like this...

It isn't for the value either. Gristedes combines the prices of Whole Paycheque Foods with the ambience of Penn Station at night. I've seen actual proper furry mould on tomatoes in their veg aisle. And for a couple of weeks back in December it smelt like a rat or perhaps staff member had died and was rotting behind one of the display fridges. The staff, by the way, are pleasant enough but always look kinda grubby. Oh, and the odds of seeing a crazy person shouting to themselves in there are pretty high too.

And yet... and yet it is so close to home. I seem to be in there a couple of times a week, on a lazy week. To be honest, when TLOML is out of town and I'm mainly eating cauliflower and carrots and other substances banned from his presence, I'm in Gristedes quite often. One of the few New York retail experiences I will not miss.

Wonderful gifts from the mall in the sky

Yesterday we travelled to Snowmass/ Aspen, for a weekend of throwing myself down a hill while TLOML waits at the bottom. (Ah the joy of being a late bloomer, when it comes to winter sports.)

On our flight out here I had the chance to peruse  Skymall, which I blogged about when we moved to NY (I never did get around to buying those furniture items I liked so much). During an extremely busy December and with Christmas around the corner, I took a closer look.

It’s about this time of year that this store of miracles gets thicker - it's chock full of Christmas gifts you never imagined possible. For example, I’m thinking of getting this wine ager for TLOML.

He’s been lugging some of these old bottles around for over a decade, from San Fran to West Hollywood, from Malibu to New York. Are we really going to move them now to London? Surely it would be smarter to drink that 1973 burgundy, and when we move, just buy a bunch of £10 villages wines and age them ourselves?

And since he likes gadgets so much, I’m sure he’ll appreciate this handy i-phone strap.

So convenient!

Also these ingenious $20 cereal bowls. The perfect gift for someone who is both annoyingly picky and supergreedy. 

Just a little bucket of ‘crispy’ cereal to start the day.

Ooooh I'm going to go on such a spree on the return flight!

Our freebie holiday

You know you might have spent too much money at Aveda when you have earned enough points for a free Jamaican holiday.

I like Aveda, because of they use wind power to make their products, and give you liquorice tea while you shop. Oh, and the stuff they make is pretty good too. I keep shopping there because of their loyalty scheme. When I was a singleton in London I used to earn enough Aveda points to get a free haircut two or three times a year.

A few days after I moved in with TLOML we went to the Beverly Center (LA's ugliest, yet extremely useful, mall) to stock up Aveda. TLOML saw the loyalty scheme ad with a picture of the spa in Negril, and immediately challenged me. Why was I throwing my points away on free haircuts when I could be saving for Jamaica?

I knew he was right - as he annoyingly is about so much. I immediately focussed on the bigger prize. I marked double points days in my calendar, and bought six months worth of shampoo at a time. TLOML converted to Aveda hair products. Aveda became our fallback for gift buying. It was like a very focussed, middle class version of 'Extreme Couponing'.

And now... two years later, we have made it. Four nights in a cliffside spa in Negril, Jamaica. With air miles covering half our flights, and Aveda taking care of the hotel, it's pretty much a free holiday. Though as I said, I wonder if I may have spent rather more than I needed to on shampoo in order to get it.