My next swap was both practical and sentimental.

Years ago, a long time ago, when I was living at home, working on my Master’s degree, engaged to be married when I graduated, and collecting what used to be called a trousseau, my brother gave me a bean pot for Christmas. I love baked beans, though at the time I didn’t know how to prepare them. I wasn’t a cook, I was an academic. Time enough for that. I was pleased to receive the pot, a big family size, brown, of course, with a lid.

My brother was apologetic. He said he felt guilty because the pot cost so little—one dollar.(. (He got it on sale.) After Christmas he bought me another Christmas present to make up for it. I don’t remember what he gave me. It’s long gone. But I kept the bean pot and I learned to use it. I made Boston Baked Beans but I also learned to make my Icelandic grandmother’s Bena Supa (bean soup) and I served it at parties. Actually, I sort of made it up. My amma’s recipe read: “Boil beans and mea.t.” I developed it from there. My recipe can be found in my book, Letters to Icelanders, which is about to be re-published in October.

I’m sill talking about a Boutique swap.

Over the years, my brother’s bean pot had a lot of use. The lid cracked and broke and I used aluminum foil as a cover. Fast forward to my present home, a comfortable apartment for one, with an office, and with greatly reduced contents from my Other LIfe. But I still had my brother’s bean pot, with no lid and too big for me to use but I still loved baked beans and Bena Supa.

I found a new, intact, smaller, brown bean pot in the Basement Boutique. So I swapped.

Happy ending.

I can now bake memorial beans in my new-old pot. I might have a party.

You already know about the Basement Boutique, don’t you? It’s a free high-end recycling station in the underground garage of my apartment building, our own private free swap/sale, with returns but no refunds, because no receipts. It’s useful and popular, and guilt-free.

You noticed I used the word free three times in my explanation. That’s why it’s so popular. But it’s also very useful, particularly for me with the swap angle. I haven’t discussed this with anyone, not that it’s not important but that it’s such a given that I forget to mention it. It started a few years ago with my celery box.

Is anyone old enough to remember Tupperware Parties? I am and do. Some things stay with you, like my celery box. It’s Tupperware. It’s plastic, of course, about the length and width of a whole head of celery, with a light green body and a no-colour lid. Anyone who cooks as much as I do uses a lot of celery, so my celery box has housed a lot of celery. I’m old now and so is my celery box. We’re both here but Tupperware Parties are a thing of the past. So is Tupperware, I guess, except what’s left in peoples’ kitchen cupboards, still in use. Tupperware lasts forever.

Not quite.

Over the years one corner of my celery box lid bent or frayed off so the watertight seal that protected the celery was no longer watertight. Nothing I could do about it. Tupperware was a thing of the past. You never could find it in a store; that’s why there were Parties. But I found a celery box—in the Basement Boutique!

Intact.

So I swapped.

I put my old, clean celery box with one damaged corner on the lid and took the old, clean celery box with a seal-tight lid. It’s in use today, in my fridge, with fresh, crisp celery ready for my next salad or sandwich or wrap filling or dressing/stuffing or meat loaf or soup, which takes all the leaves and ends and odds. I use it all. That was my first swap.

I have to have breakfast now. More anon.