By David Trinko
The Lima News
I ate 36 churro donut bites over a two-day period.
We used croissants in our meal three days in a row to help us burn through 18 of them.
We ate so many grapes all at once that I worried we’d recreate a scene from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, uttering. “Violet, you’re turning violet!”
Whoever said less is more clearly never shopped at a membership-only warehouse club.
We recently increased the frequency of our visits to a nearby Costco store. If you’ve ever been to Sam’s Club or BJ’s Wholesale Club, you can already envision it. There are pallets as far as the eye can see, each loaded up with goodies you never knew you needed.
Food? Clothes? Toiletries? Outdoor furniture? Electronics? If you’re looking for a limited selection but gigantic quantities, these are the places for you.
If there were a shrine to consumerism, it would be in one of these megastores, with Kirkland, Member’s Mark or Berkley Jensen branding all over it.
We try to avoid buying unnecessary items when we’re there. A strange thing happens as you exit the store: Things that were absolutely necessary seem a bit foolhardy after the person double-checks your receipt at the sliding door to make sure you paid for everything.
That’s how we ended up with all those extra churro donut bites, the remaining pieces left behind from a 5-pound box. They’re delicious, but the novelty of them wore off after a handful the first day.
The same is true with the tasty croissants. Once you make chicken salad on it, what’s left before they grow stale in three days?
Ditto on those grapes. They transform from a nice after-dinner dessert to an insurmountable challenge once you realize that, eating six to 10 grapes per day, it would take you a month to finish the container.
I was raised to never waste food. We cleared our plates, and we ate our leftovers for lunch the next day. My family wasn’t food insecure by any means, but we knew we didn’t have a money tree in the backyard either.
My grandparents grew up during the Great Depression, so my parents knew the value of a dollar. They tried to pass it on to me.
It exhibits itself in me as a cheapskate who’s always looking for a deal. Why yes, I’ll buy 12 more of something so I can save five cents apiece, thank you very much. Then I’ll go out of my way to use every last ounce of it, even if it means shaking some water in the shampoo container before throwing out the bottle.
Apparently this waste-not, want-not attitude skipped a generation with my kids, who seem oblivious to the sin of wasting food. They’d clearly never heard about the starving kids in Africa who would’ve loved to eat my mom’s spaghetti.
That’s part of the reason we try to avoid bringing our girls with us to these stores. They’re often overwhelmed by the possibilities and want to get one of everything, especially when it comes to snacks. They quickly tire of them and hope the remaining supply just disappears. That’s why my desk drawers at work resemble a vending machine with bite-sized treats.
I don’t know if these experiences will teach us the right lessons or not. I guess I’m a glutton for punishment — or just plain a glutton.
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See past columns by David Trinko at LimaOhio.com/tag/trinko.
David Trinko is editor of The Lima News. Reach him at 567-242-0467, by email at [email protected] or on Twitter @Lima_Trinko.
