Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Worst Marketing Campaign Ever

Burritos are a new thing for me. In fact, I've probably only been eating burritos for about 1.5 years. Crazy, I know. Here's the thing: I can't eat beans. None of those squishy squashy, twice cooked, turn into mush in my mouth beans can go in this body of mine without me feeling as though I were a black bear in need of some serious hibernation. They just don't go with me. Well, little was I aware that burritos were also evolving into the gourmet realm along with every other food out there... A few adjustments here and there and I had discovered that I was fast joining the cult of the burrito snob. 
Having been recently removed to suburbia, I have not consumed a burrito for almost 8 months. The town next to us recently got themselves a Chipotle, so we decided to try it out. Well, the burritos were mediocre, the state had already taken away their liquor license and their marketing campaign to elaborate on how Chipotle sources their food locally was quite frankly, the worst thing out there. 



Don't try to make "local sourcing" cute. It panders to the complete morons who go in there (like the lady next to me in line who made a scene when she accused the one minority looking burrito maker of "not being able to speak english" and thus messing up her order when in fact she had failed to differentiate between beef and braised beef). What really peeves me about this marketing campaign is that it is in the voice of a farmer who apparently truly believes that his lettuce can call home, email or text message. And then the farmer apparently thinks that Chipotle is taking care of the lettuce. C'mon! I'm eating that lettuce! I'm certainly not taking care of it. I'm pressing that stuff firmly into a burrito along with a variety of foods and then that lettuce is going into my digestive tract. There is nothing cute about that. But what really frustrates me is the pandering to a generation of uninformed consumers about local sourcing. 

Why isn't it possible to speak about how sourcing your products from local farms is actually: 
1. Good for the local economy
2. Good for your health as they *theoretically* have to utilize less pesticides and preservatives when they don't have to transport your food so far. 
3. Able to drive awareness of goods and services closer to home
4. Much tastier. 
5. Promoting sustainable land management.  

I don't know I'm sure that there are a bajillion more things that are good about local sourcing but those are the ones I could think of off the top off my head.

C'mon Chipotle, we're not all idiots. 


Thursday, July 15, 2010

What I Learned Today

Today I learned that if I were by some stroke of sheer idiocy stuck in my freshly painted sunroom with the windows being my only avenue of escape, I would be a goner. See, one of the things I love about older houses are that you can paint the windows! One of the things that I hate about older houses? Painting windows... They look so lovely and crisp freshly painted, and then you have to open them.





















I also learned that I love Frog Tape. The sunroom is floor to ceiling wainscoting and I can guarantee that I would not have achieved the same result if I used regular blue painters tape. Do you remember when all that we used to use was masking tape? And then the invention of the blue painters tape? And now Frog Tape. What will they think of next?! One of the many things that I love about Frog Tape is that it's the same price (!!!) as good old blue tape at my local Lowe's, or at least I think it is. Well, ignorance is bliss.

After:





















It's not complete, but is a much needed improvement from the caution tape yellow. The hubs picked the color out and I'm really hoping that on dreary New England days when I curl up in a chair in this room that it won't feel so much like the summer will never come back.  If it weren't for the sheer gaudiness of "Living in Palm Springs," I might make this into the Palm Springs themed-room because that would scream Boca Raton! 


***Forgive the iPhone pictures! After almost blowing a gasket opening the windows I decided I was just too tired to use my digital.



Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Room with a view

It might just start to be time to start unveiling my first room makeover in our new house. It's been a little crazy here trying to purchase and re-make our first home, plan a wedding, work our full-time jobs, stay on top of our "social" calendar and have sufficient time to connect to each other. That being said, we are about 80% complete in our first total paint-redux, complete with replacing broken windows and oodles of priming.

Before:



















This is what the room looked like while touring the home. I can't really believe that you would show the house with a room looking this disastrous but it was obvious that this was their "dumping" room. It was so full of the former homeowners' belongings that we had a very happy surprise when we went on our final house tour and realized the size of this room! What was going to be my home-office is now going to be re-purposed as our Sunday morning paper + coffee nook.
More to come!

Monday, July 12, 2010

Sailboat Ties

The wedding planning recently got a kick-start with the discovery of my love of monkey knots.



I know, I know... strange. What ended up happening was I started looking at how to make my own monkey-knot doorstop, stumbled across the previously mentioned "Know Your Knots" kit, realized that my venue was seaside, and the rest is history in the making. How do the Sailboat Ties come into question, you say?
Well, this weekend I was down in the little town where I spend most of my weekends of the summer and I happened to be taking a different route home from the usual one due to a real-live fire!

Let me interject by saying of course that fires are no good for a multitude of reasons but in the little seaside community where I spend my summertime (due to the complete and unencumbered generosity of my future-in-laws might I add) NOTHING ever happens! But of course, the overpaid and underworked policemen race around as though they are Chicken Little (or any other variety of dooms-dayers) putting their sirens on for almost anything and causing a stink about absolutely nothing. So this time when I heard sirens, I thought nothing of it until I saw the fire, and then believed that the cops, namely one chief, was finally utilizing the enormously large salaries they receive from this little enclave. Okay, okay, back to the tie.

It was fabulous. It was perhaps older, but still absolutely perfect. And unfortunately, I didn't have quite enough gumption to jump out of my car to ask this elderly gentleman if I could take a picture of his tie while he was strolling with his lovely wife on the way to a cocktail party. And for that, I could kick myself for I have not been able to find another one like it. The tie is only in my mind now (well also in that gentleman's closet) so I have to try replicate the image in before it gets all wishy-washy and I end up thinking it looks like this:


Which it does not. This is tacky. The tie I'm drooling over....it's so lovely. With big sails billowing in the wind, a blue ocean and the huge numbers 91 on the sails in red. It was of that which dreams have been made.

Although this tie would also be really cool with far fewer birds (3-5) silkscreened on it in a much different color.


I'm so sad, I'm not certain that I'm ever going to find the tie again! I'll have to keep on looking. And of course, start stalking the other area of town where I seldom drive to see if I see this gentleman wearing his necktie again.