Paper or plastic? Butter or margarine? Sugar or corn syrup? What do these questions have to do with collecting?

It’s a new year and that usually means New Year’s resolutions — most of which are based upon those best behaviors for healthy & green living.

I’m no doctor, no scientist either; but I do know that most professionals trained to know or study such things seem to agree that moderation is key and that eating the most natural foods (as opposed to the synthetic, chemical or processed alternatives) is preferable for good health.

One of the best ways to eat healthier is to actually make your own food. No, microwaving a frozen pot pie is not cooking. No, macs & cheese from a box isn’t cooking. No, toasting a frozen pizza on that pizza-cooking-thing isn’t cooking… and making a pizza from scratch doesn’t start with a Boboli crust and a jar of Ragu either. Real cooking means starting with real foods. A shocking concept, hmm?

So how does a person go about making a pizza or anything else from scratch?

Start with a cookbook. Crack it open, and follow the directions.

And if you want to really avoid those over-processed, synthetic or altered food products, get vintage cookbooks. (Those retro cookbooks are, literally, full of bologna!) Vintage cookbooks only list ingredients from the good old days when food was food not a “food product.” In fact, when you take your list of ingredients from your vintage recipe to the store, you may find yourself walking down completely foreign isles. Which is rather the entire point, if you’re trying to have better eating habits, right?

As for which is better, baking with &/or eating butter or margarine, sugar or corn syrup, I think you’ll quickly find that the more natural foods (butter and sugar) are better for you — in moderation, of course. And as they taste better, you may find moderation is more possible, your new diet more pleasurable. But hey, as always, consult with your doctor; I’m just a kooky collector.

As for the paper or plastic question, the best answer is actually option C: a reusable canvas tote. But, if you’re like our family (unwilling to spend some serious cash on canvas totes for bulk buying), get the bags that you’ll reuse rather than just toss. Maybe you need to ask your doctor about that too (they seem to like to approve things).

One thing I do know; collecting is a fabulous way of recycling and keeping things away from landfills, so collecting old cookbooks is a fabulous way to go green. And at thrift store prices, you’ll save plenty of green too. You’ll need it with all those trips to the doctor’s office for advice.

Though it’s probably not the most informed or organized method of collecting, I do suffer from the occasional impulse to ‘buy a huge lot of things on eBay and figure out what they are later.’ Perhaps it’s the little bit of detective in me, and a little bit of the compulsive, but I’ve recently won a couple of auctions for large lots of unusual records - a set of green, flexible ones and a big box of multicolored recordings for children. While those childrens’ recordings will be addressed later, the subject of today’s inquiry is these odd green records. I just can’t assemble the clues and I need help, folks. I don’t have the miraculous powers of the Dark Knight Detective, or Ralph Dibny, or hell, even Detective Chimp - but at least I don’t have his alcoholism either. Or gamey odor.

Here’s the clues, as I understand them. We have a series of 11 records inside a Capitol Records mailer, all made of very flexible material and green, and marked with a wax pencil of some kind with the dates of recording, almost one each month from June 1961 to June 1962. Since the mailer is postmarked April 1961 (before the dates of the recordings), this leads me to believe these recordings are unrelated to Capitol Records. However, written across the front of the mailer are the words ‘records from Harrison before we taped’, which may or may not relate to the contents of the records themselves. This envelope was mailed to Radio Station WBBF in Rochester, NY, where I presume these recordings were made and stored in whatever envelope they had around. I have a few records from this era that were clearly made in radio stations by amateur voices, so such a practice is not unheard of. While WBBF was an AM rock station through the 1960s, it went through many changes, including being a gospel station, a country station, a sports station, and currently existing as a Spanish language station. Because of this, contacting the station to trace 40 years of history is fairly impossible.

Interestingly, they’re recorded at 33 RPM, and the pitch of the speaker’s voice drops as the needle continues around the record and the revolutions grow shorter.

Of course, the most important evidence is the sounds on the records themselves. I tried to listen long enough to figure out who the voice belonged to, but whoever it is, they managed to fill up 11 45-sized, double sided records with ramblings about building houses and other autobiographical sketches. All I know thus far is that this man likes building houses, is getting a divorce from his wife Vera, and is sending these records to his mother by way of letters.

Please have a listen to these recordings and tell me what you know in the comments section below! Who is Harrison? What was he doing in Rochester? Will I ever solve the Mystery of the Green Discs?

MYSTERY DISC PODCAST!