1% Inspiration, 99% Pearspiration
By Pearse Anderson
Last time I wrote for The Haul, I was exploring Chicago’s Continental Sales “Lots 4 Less” while Jesse was in Pleasantville, New York, eating steak for brekkie. Now the tables have turned, and I’m in New York covering their surplus grocery scene — this time, Upstate! What could be better than a reason to get out of the house during the interholiday “dead week" era than to explore Lake Country Sales in Ovid, New York?
A bit of background: Although I live in Chicago, I was born and raised in Ithaca, a grand old college town at the base of Cayuga Lake in the Finger Lakes. In December, I left Chicago for the longest period yet to return to Ithaca for Hanukkah and to be with my mother after she recently fell. Unable to drive, she’s been itching to explore new parts of the Finger Lakes, so when I traveled to Sauders (Seneca Falls’ best grocery store, a real “quilt and whoopie pie” Amish establishment), I grabbed a penny saver newsletter at the register. Inside was an ad for 32 oz of yogurt for $1.50 from a place called Lake Country Sales. Within minutes I had texted Jesse: I had learnt of a new place for hauls.
Although surrounded by farmland, Lake Country Sales isn’t an isolated store: It’s right off Route 96 and had plenty of cars and horse-drawn buggies arriving and shopping during our visit. Inside, we were met immediately by a mix of technologies: The only heat source was a large-chimney gas stove, and although the store’s refrigeration was active, none of the coolers were lit. My mother couldn’t believe that the actual lights of the store weren’t electric either: They were DayStar Natural Lighting Skylight Systems, bulbous skylights that cast the store in bright white tones, but yet weren't able to make the store seem entirely warming. Once inside, hardly anyone spoke as they shopped, and we (understandably) felt very much like outsiders.
The cashier (cash or check only!) wasn’t interested in talking, but the writing around the register did help color the locale: ads for 50 pounds or oranges or potatoes, benefit auctions in the old mattress barn, a selection of pamphlets and books from Lantern Books, which proudly sold “titles by conservation Amish & Mennonite authors.” Many items were sold in large portions, from sorghum to bird feed to marshmallow creme. I could not, in good conscience, purchase 50 pounds of quick cooking oats 48 hours before a flight (could you consume an average of 1.04 lbs oats/hour?), but it was a good deal.
I left Lake Country Sales with a middling happiness I hope to impart on readers. A good place to stop for food, but maybe don’t make a whole trip out of it. Great prices on meats and dairy, with real speciality stuff, like bundled chicken livers or Danisco live yogurt cultures, and fun additions you didn’t know you needed, from rotund citronella candles to hot pickled eggs to a row of herbal tonics in thin glass jars. Plus, there’s Mama Said Hand Pies on 96 going south from Lake Country, if you ever want a Jamaican beef patty in Central New York. The whole trip made me so glad to be in Chicago, for the grocery deal city that it is, and the grocery goblin I am becoming. But, of course, I’m not Lake Country Sales’ main audience; there’s a certain privilege in our outsiderness, and a disconnect between hamlet living and the food infrastructure hub that Chicago famously is. It looks like Jesse will be covering these topics more next year, in issues I’m very excited to read.
Yet, I still haven’t discussed my literal haul. So, in Ithaca, we rang in the New Year by watching my sister’s boyfriend’s new documentary and toasting with our flight of surplus beverages.
Kutztown’s Black Cherry soda, which the manufacturer describes as having “a smooth, clean texture with a juicy cherry flavor.” We agreed! Despite the sugar content, the soda wasn’t syrupy in the slightest and instead rang through with bright “CHERRY!” tones the whole glass.
Inca Kola was next, a soda of great national pride in Peru—though ours was bottled in New Jersey (the Peru of the East Coast?). This kola apparently gets its flavor profile through lemon verbena, but the muddled taste and off-yellow soda shade lost this soda its audience before we could deduce that. No one wanted to return to the can. “This is kind of what I imagined cola tasted like in the old days,” family friend Beth Kunz said, thinking of ye olde soda fountain era.
The clear winner was Stoltzfus Family Dairy Yogurt Smoothie. A cold, Danimals-esque beverage that would do well in a lunchbox or alongside a deli brunch. The tasting was going normally until my grandfather, Martin Kepecs, mixed his smoothie portion into the fine champagne we were toasting the New Year to. The crowd exploded. “Is this a form of ipecac?” “I want no hand in this.” “This could be the beverage of 2023.” My grandfather and my father tasted this chimera-champagne and enjoyed it. “It’s a very nice smoothie state of Stoltzfus with a little extra kick. I’m not kidding, try it!” I did not try it, readers. “You’re taking a berry-flavored cream drink and mixing it with something made from berries,” my dad said, attempting to be a voice for reason. Sure, dad.
I know I’m a bit late to raise a glass to the New Year, but here’s my un-yogurted stein to 2023. Perhaps in these 50ish remaining weeks, I can cover all of the aspects of surplus groceries I haven’t even discussed. There’s much to cover: my rescued eggplant ice cubes, my marshmallowing of all things nearly-bad, my shopping for pantry stables at an Amazon returns store, and later receiving $104 worth of fancy-pants vegan stuff from a surplus grab bag.
As The Haul's roving Chicago correspondent, I hope I’ll get invited back, and do let me know if you have any Midwest tips I can follow up on.