Thrift Store Treasures

I love thrift shopping! I always have, always will. I say it comes from the Tarango side of the family since they all love thrift shopping as well.

My idea of a perfect Saturday is to wake up late, (around 8am) and head out for the thrift stores. I just think to myself, "Settle down cobwebs, dust to go sleep, I'm shopping with mom, cause mom's don't keep." (Meaning I don't worry about cleaning the house on Satudays, none of us remember how clean our mom's houses were do we? But we remember time spent with our mothers.)

My partner in crime is my mother. She loves thrifting as well. We've had many a bonding moment over other people's junk. One woman's junk is another woman's treasure, I always say. Goodwills are our favorites. They just seem to have the best stuff and they also seem the cleanest.

This Saturday, we hit the Goodwills and found many treasures. Sometimes you go and you find nothing, sometimes you just get lucky. The first Goodwill we hit had nothing and we got a little discouraged. The second one...well I hit the jackpot. I left the shopping cart with my mom who was looking at blouses and I went to check out the aisles with dishes, Nick-knacks, odds and ends...and I found these!!! $.75 each.

Beautiful wine glasses with a hand painted grape design! I think you can click on them to see the design better. I'm trying to do a grape theme in my kitchen and they're harder to find than you might think, so I was really happy to find these. So I carried my little treasure back to my mom's shopping cart and my mom said, "You don't have room for those, where are you going to put them?" And I said, "C'mon Mom, there's always room for jello!" And off I went again.

So then, I came across these gorgeous ice cream bowls. What I first noticed is that they almost looked like carnival glass. I have one piece of carnival glass and I love it. These were not carnival glass, but I was really in need of ice cream bowls. Lovely, aren't they? $.75 each.

So I carried my little treasure back to my mom's shopping cart again and again she said, "Very pretty, but where are you going to put them?" She can be so practical!


So since I was on a roll, I took off again and happened to catch one of the ladies who works at Goodwill bringing out a wire cart from the back room. In the back room they have these magical elves that price the treasures and put them on a wire cart. Then the ladies roll them out with brand new treasures that haven't been picked over yet! Oh, let me tell you...it's a joy and a privilege to be the first to pick through the NEW junk!


That's where I found the "Nico Bowl". What is a Nico Bowl you ask? Well, I had an aunt named Nico. Nico was the most wonderful, beautiful soul ever born on this earth, next to the mother of Jesus Christ! She was a gentle, loving woman who although she never had children of her own made us all feel like we were her children. I don't ever remember a cross word from Nico, a frown or a reprimand. I just remember love; beautiful, wonderful, unconditional love.

Nico had a bowl that looks like the one pictured below.


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I can remember this bowl as a child filled with little "panesitos" (little bread). Nico used to make these little unleavened rounds of bread that we loved to eat with beans, or Chile Verde or Bologna. My mom still makes them and they are one of my son's favorite foods.

My mom ended up with this bowl and it became for our family; the Nico Bowl, or La Olla de Nico. This bowl is famous in our family for being the bowl/olla that holds bbq meat every single time we bbq. It's famous for my brother Fred saying to first Alicia (his daughter, not me), then Bebe. "Ale/Bebe, bring me the Nico Bowl", when the meat was done on the grill. When La Olla de Nico comes out, you pretty much know it's almost time to eat!

So now I have my own Nico Bowl, or Olla de Nico. Let's hope that I can build memories as wonderful as the ones Nico left me in my childhood and that my brother Fred gave me in adulthood.

What childhood memories do you have of Nico, or some family member in your life?