16:11 – Barbara and I drove down to Winston-Salem this morning to make a Costco run. There’s an old joke about Costco and preppers. How do you recognize preppers at Costco? They’re the ones with the flat carts.
And I suppose it’s true. For our first run through this morning, we grabbed a flat cart, the first time we’d ever used one there. We rolled it toward the checkout lanes, carrying two 50-pound bags each of sugar and white flour, a 50-pound bag of rice, two cases of green beans, a case of spaghetti sauces, three 8-pound packages of Barilla spaghetti, four 7-pound packages of Barilla assorted pasta, and a partridge in a pair tree. Near the checkout, we passed two Costco ladies at one of those stands where they pass out samples of stuff they’re trying to sell. One lady commented to Barbara, “You must be…” I swear I thought she was going to finish that “preppers.” but she said “having a big spaghetti dinner.”
After we paid for what was on the flat cart and loaded it into the Trooper, we went back and grabbed a regular cart. We filled that up with a lot more stuff, from toilet paper to meat. Lots of meat. I’d guess probably 100+ pounds of it. Then we drove home and unloaded all but the 50-pound bags. Those, we’ll transfer to foil-laminate Mylar bags with oxygen absorbers. I’d planned to do the same with the Barilla spaghetti and pasta, but Barbara asked why we should bother doing that. She said we go through enough pasta that it should be fine in the original packages for at least a couple of years, which is true. She also added that we just had some packaged mac and cheese that was two years past its best-by date, and she couldn’t tell any difference.
All in all, we probably hauled back 600 pounds of stuff, mostly LTS food and fresh meat and butter. Something over 300 pounds of that was dry bulk stuff, which is about a twelve person month supply of sugar and carbs. We’d need to add protein and oils to make it a complete diet, but it’s not a bad run as is. Next time, I want to make a Sam’s Club run. Costco doesn’t carry a lot of items I want. They carry largish jars of spices, but there isn’t nearly as much variety as Sam’s carries. Also, I wanted to get a couple cases each of cream of mushroom and cream of chicken soup, which our Costco doesn’t stock.