Your post reminded me: we have a heritage stone fruit grower a mile or two away from our home. He grows spectacular cherries, apricots, nectarines and peaches, but they cost more than the grocery store or even farmer’s market. However, they’re worth every penny. For the brief few months I can get this fruit, I do spend a lot. But I make some of the money back because I don’t buy any sweet junk food during this time. The fruit is better than anything human ingenuity can devise.
Mmm, cherry season is only a couple of months away.
Shoes. I want them to last, and I want non-leather shoes, so I get them from Vegan Essentials, or I find Skechers that don’t have leather.
Tools, I agree with. I have some Snap-Ons from when I worked in a garage more than 20 years ago that are perfect. Although, I guess they aren’t “relatively inexpensive,” unless you compare them to cars or something.
I’m another tea-splurger. I figure, even the really good stuff only costs something like a quarter a cup: If I wouldn’t flinch at paying a buck a serving for pop, then that’s nothing. And even if I can get cheap tea for a nickle a cup, I’m getting a lot more than 20 cents worth of flavor from the good stuff.
The only other thing I really splurge on is mustard. If there’s Bertman’s Ballpark Mustard available, then I’m getting that, without even looking at the price tag. If there isn’t, then there’s one other brand that’s almost as good. If I can’t have either, then I’ll get some other brown mustard (never yellow!), just enough to tide me over until I can get the good stuff.
And I don’t consider paying more for things like tools and shoes to be splurging, because of Vimes’ boot theory. Good quality tools cost less in the long run. Splurging costs more in the short and long run, but gives other benefits (like better flavor, or more comfort, or whatever) to make up for it.
Pineapples, pomelo, mangosteens, rhambutans, longans, dragon fruit, mangoes mostly. (I don’t buy durian, but hubby likes it!) Plus lots of strawberries, blueberries, watermelons, grapes, regardless of season. Plus we grow cherries and raspberries on our property.
We love fruit, and the winter is so long and cold! We’re willing to pay the cost. When I make Green Thai Curry for dinner, I’m always craving mango smoothie with it! Gotta have it!
Several people have mentioned peanut butter. Ironically, my favorite peanut butter is a store brand: I’ll buy Wegmans rather than any national brand. What I do insist on is having “natural” peanut butter - one made out of just peanuts. I don’t like any peanut butter that’s got added salt, sugar, or oil.
Oh, man. I bet you’re talking about Andy. It’s a fairly long drive from me, but if I have any excuse to be going south on 101, believe me, I stop there. THE most amazing fruit. I’ve also tried Olsen’s Cherries in Sunnyvale, but it’s not even comparable.
Ha! Another Andy’s fan. Yes, it’s Andy’s Orchard. Right on the heels of cherry season is apricot season, and he grows Blenheims, a homely-looking smallish apricot that tastes out of this world.
Cane sugar colas, especially Coke. The increased price per bottle is trivial, especially since I drink so few of them, but I prefer them.
On the fruit front, one of my indulgences is trying unfamiliar fruit. That often means relatively expensive fruit, since it’s stuff that doesn’t show up in bulk. When I’m only getting one to try, though, it doesn’t amount to much. Well, it would have in the case of the jackfruit I tried not long ago, since a whole one weighed about 40 pounds, but fortunately, they were offered in quarters as well. (It was delicious, BTW, but a colossal pain in the ass to prepare.)
(Not inexpensive by any means, but definitely a drip in the huge bucket of $$$ I am spending setting up my machine shop…)
Just got my Starrett combination square in the mail today. It is such a pleasure to behold.
I haven’t touched one of these in more than 25 years, and I had forgotten the stunning quality of their tools.
A standard combination square at Home Depot is probably ten or fifteen bucks. This one was well over a hundred. It is so absolutely perfect: crisp edges, satin chrome finish, easy to read numbers, precision all the way.
I can’t afford Starret tools for all of my other stuff, but at least I’ll have a really nice combination square.
Ukes. I have a small arsenal of ukuleles, ranging from my first one, a no name that I got from the JCPenney catalog circa 1979, to a bass uke I just got for Christmas. It’s a fairly inexpensive way to deal with GAS. Most of them are kept tuned and hanging on the wall above my piano, so I can just grab one and play when I get a notion. Also most of them have different enough tones that even my non-musically inclined wife can tell the difference.
Nth-ing the toilet paper/paper towels. You’re not really saving any money if the stuff is so chintzy you have to use 3 times as much or it disintegrates as soon as it gets wet.
Butter. I grew up eating margarine and I’ll never go back.
Fresh flowers. Nothing nicer than coming home on a dark, blah, cold, sloppy day to a big colorful bunch of flowers on the coffee table.
