Canned Cornucopia

So the question still remains: How do you make a house a home?
The answer is: by filling it with stuff.
Yes, yes... you also need to fill it with love, and friendship and good-times, (and the sent of the Tchullent cooking downstairs in the oven isn't bad toward the wanted "homey" affect). All that is true and nice. But you also need stuff.
Stuff that you can call your own, stuff that makes you feel your house is different from the house to your left (or the one on your right), stuff that helps you relax when you come in after a long day. For those of you shaking their heads right now, asking - "Why can't they relax with a good book?" I will answer: (1) a book is also stuff (2) it would be nice to have a shelf to put that book with after your done reading.
After that forward, I will now explain that our first week of Ithaca was mainly spent buying things. Let me tell you - For a small town, this place sure has a lot of malls! There are 2 mall complexes, one on each side of town, each actually consisting of around three separate malls. So as far as everything for the home type stores: there is a K-Mart, a Wal-Mart, a Target, a Sears (though a small one), Lowe's, Home Depot. For supermarkets: a Wegmans (I hyper-linked that one because it's the nicest, with huge fresh meat and seafood counters, lots of local fruits and veggies and fresh bagels made around the clock), 2 Tops and a P&C. In the supermarket department there's also something called Aldie. We went there after being tipped off that it's the cheapest supermarket. We went in expecting a warehouse, and accordingly, warehouse prices. Instead it turned out to be a rather small supermarket with imitation everything. You know the type: That everything is generic, but made to be reminiscent of the real thing. So "I can't believe it's not butter" will still be yellow, but will be called: Butter-flavored vegetable spread that is reminiscent of butter". And some things might have named similar to the original, like "Hola" a red bottle labeled "Carmel flavored fizzy soft drink". Anyway that place was really depressing and Uri and I decided that without the need to feed 5 children, the price difference did not justify the depressing atmosphere there.
Wow look at that - I wrote all this, and still have not gotten to what I initially wanted to say... can you handle more? If you can - read on, if you need a break:



Anyway, we spent the first 3 days just going between stores buying thing. From essentials like toilet paper, to must haves like lamps for the living room (I already mentioned it's low and dark - right?) to personal touches like shelves for the kitchen with baskets for the potato and onions. I have to tell you that I have a new respect for Paris Hilton. It is not easy to do so much shopping. After about three hours, your eyes start to water from the neon lights, your head start to sway a little, and your most intelligent thoughts are (read in cookie-monster voice): "Oh! Look at all the pretty colors" and "Ah! This pillow so soft and nice".
One of the most amazing things about shopping in the United States concerns grocery shopping. I can not begin to describe the extent of which everything is pre-packaged. The supermarkets are just rows and rows of cans and jars and finding basic items (ie dried beans, tomato paste without flavorings) is really hard. This of course, versus the Israeli supermarkets where there is a "canned goods" section. Also, walking around the supermarket, we keep saying to yourselves "What will they think of next?" (Or, when in a more cynical mood, "How lazy can these people be?"). They have taken the "take the same thing, make a tiny change, and sell it as something new" concept to an unbelievable level. For example: Garbage bags: at first it was just a bag, then there was the whole string thing, now there is also bags the have flaps, so tying the bag will be easier. Or, a special plastic cooking bag (very different from a regular cooking bag, because it has a different name) that one puts inside the slow cooker before using it so as to avoid the need to clean the slow cooker after using it. Amazing.
Friday, we decided not to go shopping at all. Saturday we tried to have an alternative shopping experience. We started the day by driving north to Trumansburg to check out a garage sale. I will quote Uri who defined it as: "People trying to sell junk they bought at other people's garage sale and then found out they have no-where to put it". We were younger by at least 40 years from anyone else we saw. These included two gentlemen that had an oxygen device hooked to their belt. This experience made it clear that in this post-Craig's List era, garage sales are really for those who don't know that the Internet is on computers now. From there we headed to the Ithaca Farmer's Market which was a bit disappointing on the practical side. I don't know why we expected it to be cheaper than buying at the supermarket. But I'll cut the story short by simply saying that it wasn't. Around a third of the stands sell prepared food, which makes the market a nice place to get lunch (though, again, not a cheap lunch), but since we did need to by fruits and veggies, we headed afterward to Wegmans to do our shopping.
To end on a high note: On the way from the garage sale to the market, Uri spotted a guy BBQ grilling in a parking lot. The size of his grill, the amount of chicken he had inside and the fact that he was almost alone were signs that this was not a family-weekend BBQ. We pulled into the parking lot, and it turns out that this guy, for a couple of years now, has been selling BBQ ribs and "Cornell Chickens" every weekend. We bought a chicken, which Uri had for dinner - Delicious! The guy said that the NY Times just interviewed him, and that he will be featured sometime soon, so when that comes around, I'll send the link.