Kinda Sorta Cooking...but mostly deals and winging it

 So over the years I have slowly realized I don't make food the way other people do.

Apparently most people learn how to make several recipes and then that's it. They know the stuff to buy and they are comfortable with it. They use a cookbook for other things and make it once - maybe twice. At least this is what I've gleaned by shopping with people and watching them cook with a book open.

But my cooking style has been informed greatly by two pervasive parts of my personality: the love of winging it and the love of things on sale.

Now the sale part my grandmother has the audacity to be angry about. She's always like "Alexandra! You are so cheap! You've got money! Spend it!" But I learned my love of sales from that woman. Like damn. Does she not remember my childhood? She shopped at the super rich people thrift stores so I could look like an expensive toddler (a strange oxymoron that people for some reason aspire to) for the price of 'we think we're rich'. I mean some of my earliest memories are of my mom and aunts chorusing "SALE!!" as they run into stores - which she molded them to do! So yeah. How dare she get pissy with me about my frugality. 

....But ok. I do have a minor variant on the sale gene. Theirs is more like Oooo a TEN THOUSAND dollar coat is marked down to thirty five hundred dollars. It'd be absurd not to get it. That's $6500 in savings (yes shopping math is not just a joke in my family). Mine is more like anything that costs over $2.50 is a rip off and it wounds me. Yes, NYC Subway - I'm looking at you. It's only worth $2.75 if i'm on the train for more than 45 minutes. When you get me to my destination in just a few minutes exactly how I want, it isn't worth full price! (yeah, I see the cognitive dissonance but I've been trying to get rid of it for a while. It has roots right in the middle of my life. I ground the stump down as best I could but I still trip over it a lot.)

My mother once tried to make me see the light. You see she sells kitchens - a notoriously spendy thing already - and high end ones at that. So she thinks she can amortize her way out of a paper bag (yes a miele dishwasher is 8 million dollars but if you run it nightly for the next 5 years it'll only cost you a cent a day to never have to do dishes again). Well not this paper bag, lady! I was talking about shoes - something I always think I'm willing to pay more for because I love them - but turns out that's a lie the stump has propagated so I'll trip over it more. Dick stump. Anyway back to the story. She realizes I only buy $40 shoes and this outrages my mother who drops $100 on shoes she will literally never wear every week. So she tries the amortization trick when I'm viscerally horrified by the prospect of spending $300 on ONE PAIR of shoes. Allow me to paraphrase:

You know, your aunt has a pair of magnificent Givenchy* knee high boots she bought like 8 years ago. She wears them at least 3x a week in the winter and they are still in good condition because they're such high quality. You should invest in a pair like that.

* I really don't remember the brand - maybe it was Gucci or Prada or whatever. I don't even know if Givenchy makes boots but I know they make perfume. But Ji-vaghn-schay is super fun to say so you're welcome.

Now in my mother's head she's like an Olympic gymnast having just stuck the landing with both feet. Little does she know much as I would like to engage with her nicely (you know listen enthusiastically, affirmingly and then conveniently forget she said anything) that tree I cut down and ground into a stump - well the trunk got made into a baseball bat and the voice in my head only has it and a desire to never let my mother get on the uneven bars again.

So it comes out that these shoes are the unacceptable price of like 5k. First of all - fuck's sake. Second, I'm like a shark in the water now. Oh yeah. So mom. Okay. Let's say the shoes last 15 years and that they somehow never need maintenance. Okay. Now the cost of the boots is like $333 a year. (5k/15 for those of you amateur mathematicians following along). Now let's say boot weather in Chicago is just under 2/3 of the year or roughly 33 weeks. So that's $10 a week. So about $3 a wear. (At this point she's like SEEE NOT BAD ALEXANDRA!! INVESTMENTS AMORTIZE).

Now you can imagine that voice in my head - let's call him frigal because he's both frigid and frugal - is making that grinchy smile where his whole face sinks into the grin in the ugliest way. This is too easy.

So I say uh-huh. uh-huh. $3 a wear. impressive. yeah. Well my favorite pair of beige heels - I bought them 5 years ago and I wear them probably 2x a week every week over 50 degrees in NYC. Let's say that's May to October for argument's sake - or like 30 weeks a year. They're not too much longer for this world and I did have them resoled a couple years back. So $40 to buy and $40 for a resole. So $80 for 300 wears if I tossed them tomorrow. That's 27 cents a wear. Kinda feels like the shoes pay me at this point, huh?

Mmm. Victory is so sweet that frigal doesn't even mind when she furiously tells me I'm the worst and invents a reason to get off the phone. I ignore the voice that says what about the other $40 pair you bought that fell apart the first time you wore them so much that you just threw them away.

Okay you get the picture on my strange form of frugality (we don't have time to go into its intersection with my conservationism/sustainability. Quite complicated really).

Now onto my perverse love of winging it. I do a fair amount of public speaking and I gotta tell you preparing a speech feels great but actually giving a speech is the pits - why? because in your head (okay maybe just my head) it's like this defining moment where the world realizes your glory and they cheer and body surf you to supreme ruler of the universe. This is never what happens. Even if people are nice after you severely fuck up or tell you this is exactly what they needed and you changed their life - you still feel like IF I COULD JUST HAVE GOTTEN EVERY WORD IN ORDER. Thus - I prefer panels. On a panel I can shine - be funny and charismatic and have no expectations of what I'll say - and there are 4 other people who will be talking and giving me the space between jokes to think of more stuff. YES. Oh winging it how I love you so. It doesn't just apply to extempore speaking. - everything feels like you nailed it (or did at least better than could have been expected given you made that shit up on the spot). And people awe over it. Great feeling. Highly suggest. Winging it is my form of spontaneity - and what other people might call 'creativity'. We'll come back to this.

Meanwhile back at the grocery store - I'm the absolute worst shopper. I walk along most aisles (okay I don't need to go into the soda, chips, and candy aisle. Those are not my preferred way to waste calories). I inspect every price tag and deeply consider what is a good deal. Not what I need - what is a good deal. Do you see that gene coming back? If I have to spend more than 2.50 for it then it has to be a deal.

tangent: last week I saw bags of onions were on sale 2 for $3. So I grabbed 2 bags and handed them to my lovely assistant to stow properly before something in my brain was like "THIS ISN'T RIGHT" and sure enough it was a trick. The tiny bagged onions were $1.50 per pound and the big old monstrosities I love were $1/lb. I properly snatched the bags back and loaded up so I could live that #bigonionlife. Oh, yeah.

So as I shop I see things and I'm like these two things can go together! I think? probably. I'll find a way. My surefire thing is to buy a bunch of fake meats then think about what starches go with those fake meats then work in a ton of veggies. Honestly though since stores aren't laid out this way it means I get a lot of cardio when I grocery shop. I know all the list makers are horrified. Especially since they're like lists make you stay on budget! and I'm like my frugality is not budget based - it's about feeling like I got a win. Budgeting is the long game. This is about going to the cash register with a bursting cart and having it be under $100. HA take that, suckers!

So I get home with this random mishmash of things. And I'm tired. But I've learned this lesson in the past. shopping day and cooking days don't align. So I usually buy myself something pre-made and heat that up after I put everything away.

Now we have all the foods and the next day the cooking is ON. So my personal philosophy is that if I have to cook for 30 mins to make a meal or 2 I may as well cook for 2 hours and make 18 portions. Other people call this meal prepping. I have been calling this consolidating the pain of cooking for over a decade.

Remember that 'creativity' I mentioned before? It's just taking inspiration and combining it into something kinda new. Basically what I'm saying is I don't follow recipes - I look up a ton of different recipes by googling random ingredients together then looking at the images tab. If it looks delicious then I open the recipe and try to gauge how many of the necessary ingredients I have or could figure a way around. I skim it through to understand the order that things go into pots then find the next interesting picture and do the same thing. I do this until my brain says "I've had enough of looking at food" or "Oh I got this." You'd think the latter bodes better but winging it is winging it. The chance it will be good is pretty much the same.

I should also mention that I'm usually just cooking for myself so the stakes are low. And one pot meals are everything to me

Here are some of the things that have come out of my brain recently...I'd give you the stuff from the past but I honestly can't remember all the things I've randomly cooked. Easy come, easy go. Also most things I make are somewhere between a slop and a mush. But they do taste good. Feel free to add nooch to any of these. Hell yeah.

Vaguely Irish, mostly potatoes - some interesting (read: lazy) mixture of colcannon and coddle:

Take a 5lb bag of potatoes and a 2 lb bag of carrots. wash and cut them into 1.5 inch chunks (leave as much skin as you like). Also rough chop a very big yellow onion. 1 pack of tofurky sausage, half coined. and the leaves of probably 2 bunches of kale - any one will do.

now I've done this two ways:

A) sautee the onions in a deep pot and then pile in the starches and cover with water, boil and keep doing so until most water is gone/absorbed, add in the sausage and keep cooking until it starts to loose its shape a bit

B) dump starches into boiling water and let get fork tender. meanwhile saute the onions and sausage separately and add them in to the starches once they are in that waterlogged but not swimming state. The water should be cooking off

Now either way: the kale. you'll want to make into quite small pieces - like 1/3 of an oreo. and quickly pan fry it so it wilts. then dump it into the big pot and stir for your life.

You can add in some vegan butter while the starches are hot if you like - and of course salt/pepper to taste.

makes like 6 servings

The next one is minorly mexican mush.

I sauteed a chopped onion with the thinly chopped kale stems leftover from another meal. Simultaneously I was boiling up some red/yellow lentils. Then I took my cauliflower and thin sliced the florets (I eat the stems while cooking since they're so sweet - or I store them to make some crunch in salads/ as snacks). saute the cauli and add in some TJ's soyrizo (completely unwrapped so it crumbles). Add it all together and, season with cumin/ paprika/ chili and top it with sour cream, maybe serve it over lettuce or as a taco filling. makes about 5 servings

Bigass Bean stew:

saute a big onion then add (previously soaked) mixed bean soup - 2 packs and cover with water. while it's boiling small chop your veggies - really anything but your starches should go in first (carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, rutabaga, rice, quinoa) then fresh non-leafy veggies (squashes, brocc, cauli, brussels) then frozen veggies then (5 mins to the end) leafy veggies (kale, spinach). really just cook until desired result is achieved. and lastly - vinegar! It makes every bean or lentil stew better. Trust me. If you're new to it try seasoned rice vinegar, else balsamic will do. I even tried the balsamic mustard once - really complemented the flavor profile. (I'm not sure people who make slop are allowed to say flavor profile but nobody's arrested me yet) Servings will change drastically depending on what you add - but last time I made it like 10 servings came out.

One unmoving pot pasta:

I hate when they say one pot but you boil the pasta first then put it the side and make the dish. I'm not moving a pot filled with boiling water. No. I reject your loophole.

This is a favorite easy crowd pleaser. decide which veggies and protein you want. Make that. For this we'll assume I'm using tj's meatballs (2 packs) and frozen veggie foursome (3 packs) - I'd saute a big onion then toss in the balls - let them sear a bit then toss in the veggies. cook for a bit then toss in the canned (bpa-free!) tomatoes (one large crushed with basil and another chunky tomato sauce) and 1.5-2 of those cans of water. let it boil then toss in 24 oz of pasta - I like brown rice or veggie pasta as it takes overcooking better and this process is finicky. stir it under the water as best you can and close the lid. halfway through stir again to make sure all of them are submerged and the stuff at the bottom isn't sticking. top with a packet of your favorite vegan cheese and close the lid again. once done open the lid and stir the cheese in. makes like 11 servings.

Poshmark

 Hello Poshmark!

I noticed you have openings for product in core experience. And I thought that was fitting because core experience is killing me as a user. It is actively dissuading me from buying things.

So I decided to write this little thing about low hanging fruit. To be clear - I don't fancy myself a PM. I even oppose this kind of let's build every feature that falls out of my brain mentality I'm about to espouse here. But your product has SO much opportunity that I think you can afford to hold off on digging into metrics until a few of these are implemented - since they will make your customers lives so much easier.

Who am I? I love clothing. I especially love shoes. Unfortunately as a vegan who doesn't use Amazon and used to buy her 5" stilettos there exclusively I was scared every time I got a scuff....until I signed up for Poshmark. Now I'm swimming in people's cast offs. This is especially good since I try to keep my purchases of first-hand (non-consumptive) items to under $300 a year.

Kinds of purchases I want to make:

1. Clothes that wear out but I know I want more of/ basics I'll always be looking for. (I know the size, brand. When something fitting hits my threshold I buy. sometimes I like things in advance if they aren't low enough to hit my trigger but if need arises I could go for. If there were a way to know similar items from other brands it'd be helpful.)
2. Interesting pieces (think a great thrifting find, a unique piece, aspirational ward-robing)
3. Things from ads I saw (the same as number one applies here)
4. Non- clothes products (gifts, etc that I may need spur of moment and decide to check craigslist/ fb marketplace for)

I should be a fish in a barrel. So why haven't I bought more?

Shipping. It grinds my gears to pay $7 every time. And only pay less if it comes out of the pocket of the seller. I get it. USPS ain't free. But it still irks me. I know you can't make shipping free....but what if you could ease the burden? You could...

1. Have a PoshPrem member ship where like Prime the buyers can pay a yearly fee to get free (or reduced priced) shipping on all orders. I would pay $100 yearly to get $1 shipping.
2. Make it easier for me to find bundles!! How?
1. In my likes - have a tab for proposed bundles. That's all the items by one seller. So I can see where I could get a bunch of items with combined shipping.
2. Have a symbol on item cards on the search page of sellers that I have liked other items of (this is a harder engineering challenge for performance).
3. Allow me to search for multiples by one seller because sometimes I'm looking for a bunch of basics at the lowest cost.
1. ie a listing for 3 express camisoles at $6 is better for me than a listing for one cami at $4. Allowing sellers to list that it's more than one item in a listing is useful
2. Finding a seller that has 6 listings for old navy soft v-necks - that way I can bundle and get lower shipping plus a bulk discount.
4. Show me sellers that have listings for items on more than one of my saved searches - maybe in my proposed bundles? (saved searches shown below)
1. also if this could work across likes + saved search items that'd be cool
3. Allow me to search for members in a certain radius of me that allow pickup. This may be trickier for privacy and pickup coordination.

Finding and Cataloging the options. I'm a maximizer not a satisficer. I want to find the things I want - and I want to monitor for them incoming. Because I want the very best option.

1. Boolean Search: people use all kinds of words to describe similar things. Let's say I want a shimmery skirt. Well of course I nav to women's skirts and my size. But then I have so many words: Shimmery, Sparkly, Metallic, Sequin, Glitter, Foil, Silver, Gold, Beaded. So now I have to make 9 searches which may have a lot of overlap. It's exhausting. the OR would make this easy. I do still need the AND to work at the same time (ex: I want a shimmery tulle skirt)
2. Saved searches that show me new results (see streeteasy) - so I can see what's new since I was last looking for this item. How? I make a search (enter parameters, sort doesn't matter so much) and then label it. How would I interact with it?
1. I could subscribe to emails daily or weekly about new items in this search.
2. I could navigate back to Poshmark and select my saved search to see what has been added since I was looking. I only want to see the delta (or at least have a demarcation of new since last time)
3. Sift through my likes better. I need to be able to compare similar items I've liked when I want to decide to purchase
1. The regular search bar available on my likes page
2.  Folders for grouping of items
1. Some kind of linking of items that are the same item (usually I'd buy the cheaper one but what if the more expensive one can be bundled thus bringing down the cost or the seller offers me a private discount?)
2. Also allow my saved searches to be linked to the likes folders. IE: if I like something from saved search A it goes into the like folder attached to that saved search. I'd like to have multiple searches attached to a like folder (see the example from boolean search)

Fit - if it's not something I already own how do I know it'll fit? I think the thing to do here is socialization - help poshers from both sides to understand how to measure. I know measuring my body doesn't work for me; I lay out clothing I already like the fit of and measure that. That's worked well for me. Also having pictures of the clothing on a real person has helped me know if it'll fit me.

Socialization - Shopping is a social activity for so many people. I want to be able to find my IRL friends on Poshmark and see what they're looking at - talk to them about it, maybe even buy it for them. During the early pandemic I made a decision as Maid of Honor (when we couldn't go get fitted for bridesmaids' dresses but we thought the wedding would still happen) that all of us would buy a specific brand and color dress off Poshmark. It was such a hassle to send links to each other over email and text - if we could have been part of a Poshmark group and seen what each other were buying in advance that'd been nice.

Clutter - It's hard to sift through everything. But adding in clutter? That just makes me numb to the stuff I may actually want and be able to buy.

1. How do I unsubscribe from parties? It feels like one of my old acquaintances is selling me some pyramid scheme beauty thing. I tried to block the Poshmark editor. didn't work. It just adds clutter to my newsfeed. I don't care about some rando's opinion. If I can have a Poshmark party with my friends I'm into it.
2. Tabs in my likes of unavailable items vs available. This is pretty self explanatory - if you're using my likes to make a profile for me to be able to suggest what I like in the future then I want to keep it liked but if it's sold I don't want it to clutter my decision making space. Maybe this would be solved by having search function on my likes.
3. Lots of items are not really there - I try to look at the date last updated/ or comment dates by the OP but several times I've ordered and then radio silence from the seller until Poshmark refunds me. Do something to make sure the sellers are still monitoring and have the items they have for sale.

Lastly, here's pie in the sky what ifs:

Upload my Pinterest folders about clothes and see what pictures for items are similar on Poshmark - maybe my dream items are just waiting around the corner. (reverse image search)

The app sees what I liked prior and finds similar items over time using predictive analytics.

Also using those image processing to tell sellers when they've taken a bad photo of an item (or at least which photo should be the front image (a dating site did this at one point by swapping the default image and measuring the number of interactions)