"bulk" news and stories

There are many times that people have told me I was nuts for popping to Costco for a grocery run every now and then. They'd laugh over my huge packages of toilet paper and dish soap, and say that they don't think it's worth the steep membership fee. Sometimes, they're right -- there are products in there that seem like a good deal, but are no more (or, in fact, a little more) than regular store prices. But I just had to tell you Slashfoodies about my shallot find last weekend. Sometimes it's wonderful to buy in bulk.

Since I was out of shallots, I begrudgingly picked up a small bag of shallots at a big-box grocery store -- the bag only had 250 g, or 8.8 oz, which totaled approximately 5 shallots. As I put the bag in my cart, I wistfully remembered summer days where local shallots were cheap and plentiful, and then moved on. A few hours later, I found myself at Costco, staring at a three pound bag of shallots.

The cost difference? The smaller was $3, while the large bag was around double that. As you can see from the labels, they're both from the same company. It's a shallot dream come true.

Now I've just got to decide what to make with them....

Awesome: the idea behind bulk food. Cheaper, more control over the quantity, easy.

Not-so-awesome: the collection and storing of bulk food. Most supermarkets provide plastic bags, which are not only bad for the environment, but are messy to store, can break or leak easily, and typically result in a pile of unusable crumbs.

But a friend of mine has come up with an easy solution that I'm jealous I didn't think of first: she bought a few of these Droppar storage jars (at left) from IKEA (although any small metal or glass jar with a lid would do), and brought them to her local Whole Foods store. The cashier first weighed the jar itself, which she wrote on a piece of tape and placed on the jar lid.

Each time my friend buys in bulk, she simply brings her jar with her, writes the checkout code on a sticker which she keeps on the jar, and brings it to the cashier, who subtracts the weight of the jar and charges her for just the food. Easy, environmentally-friendly, and easy to store when she gets home. (Another idea? Just wash out peanut butter or pasta sauce jars, place stickers on the sides, and reuse those).

Warning: this should work at Whole Foods and Wild Oats, or other similarly-minded food stores, but I don't know if other stores would agree - you'd have to call your local supermarket out find out.