When I think "Yankee", I think of my grandparents. My grandfather and his brother and cousins built a house that he designed out in the country. They dug their own well, built their own electric generator, and farmed the land. When something was broke, they fixed it. When it wasn't, they left it alone.
My grandmother had a love/hate relationship with this self-sufficient lifestyle. She was much more of a city girl, and drove her own Indian motocycle and then later her own Ford cars into the city to get out a bit and see people.
I often went grocery shopping with my grandmother. She always had a list, a "clicker" (so she'd know exactly what she was spending), and a stack of coupons. She also always started at the dented can/old produce areas in the grocery store and always went direct to the bakery to ask for their day-old bread.
I'm trying my best to shop like grandma these days. I have one of those clickers (found in my family effects -- it only goes up to ten dollars, so I have to remember how many tens I have...), but sometimes I forget to use it.. I do go to the old produce and "scratch and dent" area first, but I like to go to the farmer's market for my produce, so I'm not really spending a lot of time in the grocery store right now.
I did pick up some old green beans and an old butternut squash the last time I was at the supermarket -- 99 cents for two pounds of green beans (a couple of them were moldy, but the rest were fine) and 59 cents for the butternut squash -- it had two black spots on it that I cut off. Cooked 'em up tonight and savored the savings.
