Dip Me in Chocolate – On Not Loving Clara’s Cooking Show

Clara Cannucciari’s online cooking show “Depression Era Cooking with Clara” is an Internet sensation, drawing thousands of viewers across the country who follow recipes from this cute Italian granny’s hardscrabble girlhood. Watching the 93-year old Internet phenom whip up pasta, peas and potatoes in her sparse kitchen on transports me to another place and time. A cold water flat in the 1930s?

Not exactly.

Instead, I find myself fantasizing about the luscious Nigella Lawson dipping her beloved Bounty chocolate bars in the deep fryer in her posh London pad.

The Bull and Bear TiniMeter

Current price of one martini at the Waldorf Astoria’s Bull and Bear Bar: $18.50. That same amount will buy you these items, with change to spare:

1. 18 slices of pizza at 99cent Fresh Slice
2. 10 shares Ford Motor Company Stock
3. Round-trip ticket, NY-Boston on BoltBus
4. 3 pitchers of beer at Rudy’s Bar & Grill, + free hot dogs (before 5pm)
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At the End of Your Robe: Pegging Your Personal Style

Stylist Julie Greene offers expert advice on looking fierce in a financial crisis.

For the last three weeks, I’ve been encouraging you to let go of your closet clutter, get more mileage out of the clothes you own, and make a little cash from your cast-offs. Now it’s time to work on developing your overall sense of style.

What Wedding?

Last spring, quite a few people—from Kiplinger to the National Association of Catering Executives—were suggesting that weddings might be recession-proof. As with so many ideas in the early stages of the downturn, that proved to be wrong. Everyone is getting pummeled now, including couples, vendors and honeymoon locations.

What’s an engaged pair to do? DIY Bride offers some practical advice on how to recession-proof the big day.

And The Royal Plantation Collection and ABCNews.com are hosting an online contest for a free honeymoon. Send a video (by March 9) explaining how the economy has affected your plans, and you could receive a five-day, four-night trip.

Traveling Tight: Cruising the Recession

Think you can’t afford a cruise? Think again. The Recession is bringing on a boatlaod of cruise bargains. We’re talking $50 per day for a four-day trip from Miami to the Bahamas on Norwegian Cruise Lines. A seven-day Alaska cruise, usually more than $2,000 per person, for $499. Cruise bargains are so plentiful that Ken Heit of World Wide Cruises in Ft. Lauderdale recently suggested that “if you live in an expensive city like San Francisco, Chicago or New York, it might be cheaper right now to spend a week on a cruise ship than to stay at home.” Right. That’s as good excuse as any to check out of bone-chilling NYC.

Recession Dispatch from… Asheville, N.C.

ASHEVILLE, N.C.–It can be easy to forget about the economy’s collapse when you live on top of a mountain. But even from a lofty perspective, it’s hard not to see the storm clouds gathering, promising to deliver to rain down some bad news on my adopted hometown of Asheville, NC. Aside from a growing number of “for sale” signs and the more frequent restaurant closings, it’s hard to see any real dramatic impact on the local economy – yet.

Biological Clocks Don’t Stop for Recession

When Marco got laid off in January, friends who knew of our family-launching plans asked us whether we’d continue or put things on hold. I just turned 40. Marco is seven years older than me. Our biological clocks are not in sync with the dipping of the Dow.

Sure, it occurred to us for half a second that this might not be the wisest time to be spending my grandmother’s inheritance on fertility treatments not covered by health insurance, but it’s expensive to adopt, too. And we really, really want a child.

Borderline Personality Disorder – Illness for Uncertain Times?

The postwar trauma of the 50s brought on widespread anxiety. The suspicion and paranoia of the ‘60s and ‘70s caused schizophrenia to capture the public imagination. In the ‘90s, patients were popping Prozac to cure what seemed to be an epidemic outbreak of chronic depression. In the 2000s recession? It might be Borderline Personality Disorder.

If the Recession era and BDP are finding each other, we Americans shouldn’t be surprised. We identify so completely with work that when we lose our jobs, we don’t know who we are. We leave little time in our busy lives for the things that can guard against emotional shocks, like maintaining social bonds, exercising, playing, and just having some downtime. We are transient and often unsure of our place in the scheme of things….

Supermarket Shopping, Recession-style

Inflation on a pair of kitten heels or yet another black jacket is annoying, yes. But I find inflation at the supermarket particularly galling. We all need food. And if it’s getting harder to afford eating out, it certainly doesn’t help that it’s getting more expensive to eat at home: The consumer price index for all food in January 2009 was up 5.3% from January 2008.

Still, buying and preparing your own food is the smarter choice. And it may be getting better: Food, like all consumer retail items, is subject to increasing price-cutting competition and the “everyone’s a discounter” trend.

Redux: Digging the Downturn

Looking back to the Great Depression to see the path ahead.

Can we garden our troubles away?

During the Great Depression, people turned back to the land, growing vegetables in small suburban yards and vacant city lots. These subsistence patches were dubbed “depression gardens” and helped feed the nation during hungry times. People ate what they picked from their gardens, bartered their produce at stores for luxury goods like coffee, and traded regularly with neighbors. Folks reminiscing about those difficult times recall how much food could be coaxed from a few hundred yards…