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How green can you be…drinking water from far far away…

August 1, 2007 by Auntie Kate of Too Good to be Threw

Editorial in the NYTimes today re drinking bottled water includes this passage:

“almost all municipal water in America is so good that nobody needs to import a single bottle from Italy or France or the Fiji Islands. Meanwhile, if you choose to get your recommended eight glasses a day from bottled water, you could spend up to $1,400 annually. The same amount of tap water would cost about 49 cents.
“Next, there’s the environment. Water bottles… are made from natural gas and petroleum. …it takes about 1.5 million barrels of oil Continue Reading »

Posted in Slices of (my) life | 4 Comments »

Thinking about a blog for your shop?

July 30, 2007 by Auntie Kate of Too Good to be Threw

You don’t have to really WRITE to have a blog, you know. You can use it to update your clientele on what’s going on in your shop, to share what’s important to know from info to your new arrivals rack, to make important announcements, and also, simply, to highlight current offerings in tempting photographs.

For that, all you need is a good digital camera, a clean spot for a backdrop, and the time it takes to choose, photograph, and post on an item or two a day. Great way to get your shop remembered by your most loyal customers…and to create new loyal customers!

Blogs are, at least the simplest ones, free, and a whole lot easier to use than MySpace…and look a whole lot better if your target clientele is older than 15.

Posted in Shopkeeping talk | 1 Comment »

When in doubt, right-click.

July 28, 2007 by Auntie Kate of Too Good to be Threw

When in doubt, right-click. I finally got it one day when, for the umpty-umpth time, I screamed at my screen and cursed at my computer. I actually wrote When in doubt, right-click on a Post-It and stuck it to the monitor.

It’s a good rule. Before you start thinking the programmer was a total idiot, the CPU is having a meltdown, or the stars are misaligned and you might as well stop working and go float around in the pool with a rum and coke balanced on your mouse-potato tummy…. right-click.

Aha! There the little bugger is: just the menu choice you were clicking the left mouse button for, over and over, swearing it had to be there. All you had to do was…right-click.

Life lesson learned: take a different approach. Try a different path to your destination. And sometimes thinking outside the box works before you have to resort to A; throwing the whole problem out the window in disgust or B; dousing yourself with rum and cokes. When in doubt, right-click.

Posted in Slices of (my) life |

This book by Sam Horn just POPped out at me…

July 26, 2007 by Auntie Kate of Too Good to be Threw

I hate plane rides. So much, I bury myself in a book. So when I was getting ready to go to the NARTS Conference in San Antonio last month, I made a trip to my local independent bookstore (no Borders or B&N for me, thank you any way; big boxes are not the way to shop in my humble opinion.) for something to read.

Found 2 books to read and I just finished devouring, for the second time, POP: Stand out in any Crowd by Sam Horn. You need to read this book if Continue Reading »

Posted in Shopkeeping talk | 1 Comment »

Recipes. One of the best parts of friendship.

July 24, 2007 by Auntie Kate of Too Good to be Threw

Well, those we we we all the way home piggies below made me hungry for ribs, so I used my friend Shirley Innis’ Magic Ribs recipe. Recipes from friends are always the best and usually the most fun to make too.Cooking up a storm in consignment shops

Shirley’s Magic Ribs

Ribs, beef or pork (I used 4-5 lbs baby back pork ribs… more would work too)

Roast bare at 450 degrees for 20 minutes to render fat and to brown them a bit (I roasted them 30-40 minutes, but then I have a DuH who’s very happy with well, well, well-done food!) I cut the ribs into serving amounts, too, so that they would fit into the Dutch oven in the next step…

Put them in a large pot. Add (here’s the fun part) a full, big bottle of ketchup and a 2-liter btl of real, not diet, Coke. Shirley made the excellent suggestion to add garlic and some thin-sliced onions, so I did.

Cook uncovered for hours. The longer the better. Gives you plenty of time to bury the Heinz and Coke bottles in the recycling bin so your guests think you’re a master of subtle yet piquant seasoning.

When the sauce is at about 1/3 its original volume, it’s time to whip up some cole slaw (cut the standard creamy dressing with about 1/4 volume white wine vinegar, much better and better for you) and cook up the corn.

Got any recipes to share?

Posted in Slices of (my) life | 7 Comments »

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