#167: Can I Redeem These?
Remembering Green and Blue Chip Stamps
What Can I Redeem with These?
Are you old enough to remember green stamps? You know, the ones we would get at the grocery check out stand back in the day when the checker called out the prices of each item being bought. I remember my mom putting TV dinners, Vienna sausages, Dinty More Beef Stew, and vegetables that cost $0.06 per can in her basket. Sometimes the total reached as high as $20. That was a lot back then. Then came the stamps.
And, the books to put them in.
There were Blue Chip Stamps, too.
My brother and I filled up the books and poured over the catalogues to see what we might redeem them for.
My first grown-up cookbook, the red and white checked Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book, was redeemed with blue chip stamps. I was eleven or twelve at the time. I think it may have taken just one book of stamps and I was so proud and excited when I came home with it. I spent many happy hours pouring over each page, studying pictures and recipes, seeing what we had in our pantry, deciding what I would cook and bake. I remember too that even as an adolescent cook and baker I altered recipes to my taste. Recipes are just a starting place, right?
BG&H magazine had a tie in, too. Each month new recipes from readers were published in the magazine so you could insert them into specific sections in the cookbook.
Instant puddings and frozen whipped toppings were very much in vogue in those days.
But, you know what I wish I could redeem those stamps for now?
The survival of our planet and food security and water for everyone on it.
What will it take to redeem that?
What I’m Reading
A PILGRIMAGE TO ETERNITY FROM CANTERBURY TO ROME IN SEARCH OF A FAITH by Timothy Egan
This isn’t the first of Egan’s books I have shared with you but this volume is the most personal I have read of his. Traveling, mainly by foot, from Canterbury in the UK to Rome, he hopes to meet Pope Francis. On the way he shares personal stories as well as history of the Catholic church, and its saints and sinners. His daughter, who joins him for a week of walking, shared these words with him:
“I don’t like labels. I don’t have a Bible or text I consult. But I know what I believe in. I value family, friends, love, community, lifelong learning, continuous self-improvement, reflection, creative expression, empathy, care of the natural world and all the creatures who inhabit it."
What I’m Watching
EXTRAPOLATIONS
A subscription to AppleTV came as a perk with my mobile phone account. So far, I’ve watched all three seasons of Ted Lasso, which I loved, Pachinko, Coda, Grayhound, and a few more. When my sister Helen said that she was watching a series called Extrapolations, I decided to take a look and was hooked after the first one. No binging on this one for me. The survival of our planet and all life on it is an intense subject and I’m taking it one episode at a time. For Game of Thrones fans, Jon Snow does not play a good guy in this series.
I remember the S&H green stamps well. Wasn’t there a catalog store? Or something like that to redeem the stamps.
Reading Hidden Mountains : our friends son wrote it, wow is all I can say.
I remember those green S & H stamps. Have a book of them somewhere around here. Fun to go down memory lane with you on the subject. I remember it was my job to lick and stick them into place. I worked oh-so-carefully, to put them perfectly in their places. I too wish I could redeem those old stamps for a better environment for our planet and its inhabitants.