I shopped at Costco. It seemed like a good idea at a time, and what drew me to it was that it was not a very New York thing to do, at least when it comes to groceries. As a born penny-pincher, I cringe at the $6 a box for breakfast cereal and the $15 pound for salmon that you can spend. I figured one trip to Costco, just to stock up on some long-lasting staples, would do me better than slowly buying the goods at my local rip-off grocery.
The first problem came from the fact you have to pay for parking. Yes, I could have tried to find parking on the street, but I do enough of that anyway. But the $5 for two hours felt like an indulgence, like an eggnog latte for the car. Costco in the city resembles Costco in the burbs: a hulking monolith, the way that going there means a trip to that store and nowhere else, the oddly long walk from the car, like the approach to a temple.
I picked up a great big cart. I needed the variety of things that one would expect to find in Costco: rice, hand sanitizer, cheese, maybe an impulse buy like a flat screen or a Chinese baby, which I’m sure they now carry in bulk. The trip, however, was largely disappointing. Hand sanitizer came in packs of two gallons, enough to fill my kitchen sink. The bags of rice looked like they could have come from the UN High Commission on Refugees. I had my share of the copious food samples on offer, which I now view as part of their business plan. Have a little taste, then buy the 8-pound package of barbecue chicken wings or herring.
Reality goes out the window at Costco. Because you can only get things in large quantities, you suddenly think you only need them in bulk. I could have bought some Cheerios, but I really didn’t need 4 boxes to try to cram into my closet. Maybe non-perishables are less of problem, but the piles of great big cuts of meat and box upon box of unloved vegetables make you suspect the vast quantities of waste that one store must produce, that all the customers put their share in too.
I say unloved vegetables because anything that is designed to sit in a refrigerated warehouse for weeks on end is bred to be durable and sort of flavorful. Sure enough, the pillow-size bag of snap peas I bought fed us decently for 3 weeks, but it wasn’t exactly a flavor sensation. I somehow thought that Costco would carry organic and farm-based fare in bulk too. They did have an enormous box of ‘artisanal’ lettuces, grown out of season and in an elaborate plastic packaging that could have passed for modern art.
Still, my bill came to over $100. I guess we’ll be set for crackers and yogurt for a while, but eating in bulk is much more boring than buying in bulk. After days and days of the same turkey and provolone sandwich, my husband and I are sort of ready for something – anything – else.
My one impulse buy was a big plastic box of boysenberries for about $5. Boysenberries are really only summer fruit, and the best ones should be eaten right from the vine, or made into jam immediately. Still, $5 doesn’t usually get you that many berries, and it made me think of a pie for the week.
So with my tough-bred out of season berries I made a little lattice-top pie. Lattice top because I underestimated how much dough I would need! In pie making, I see, it’s not the filling but the crust that takes some knowledgable hands. Practice, practice…. I stupidly underbaked it, but it was still tasty!
Boysenberries in their cinnamon sugary goodness.
Don't they look like a single organism?
My baking companion!
