Fickle pickles

The dream is real: Surplus grocer workers have started weeding the seltzer out of the massive soda pallets, then setting them aside just for us! I'd like to pretend it's because they love us so much, but really it's because I'm a recurring nuisance, playing Jenga with the pallets and blocking the aisles.

I thought we had a pretty expansive love of seltzer: virtually any brand, any flavor. But here are all the wrong cans they have set aside for us:

1. Bubly caffeinated seltzer. I used to drink a demonic caffeinated water called Krank2O, right after college. One day as a prank at my cubicle job I used Krank2O and like 5 times the normal amount of coffee to brew a pot for the office. It was deep black and thicker than any coffee you've ever had and I ended up going home sick (true.) Anyway, caffeinated water is no longer for me.
2. Plain seltzer. Nothing against plain seltzer — we have a Sodastream and I always fill my water battle for hot yoga. But that's why we don't need it in cans! We are artisanal home producers.
3. Polar orange vanilla. It's awful, despite what many of you say.
4. Schweppes white peach ginger ale. It's a handsome can, and maybe a good flavor, but we don't eff with sugar-sweet beverages. (We made an exception in July for this sexy Polar offering.) Anyway, those light-pink ginger ale cans look an awful lot like Schweppes brand seltz.
5. Purple Crush. What a fun-looking soda, if you're into that sort of thing. Unfortunately the can has a similar hue to Blackberry Bubly, creating pure chaos in the surplus grocer aisles.

That's it for this week! I have to teach my mom to log into HBO Max so the rest of Sunday is booked.

xo,

Jesse

Featured Items

We've eaten so many boxes of TGIFridays mozz sticks, truly just a shameful amount. It had been more than a year since the last batch came in though, so we were stoked to find a few boxes last week. As you may imagine, this is a brand you can trust to make this product right. The panko breading is quite garlicky, the cheese doesn't taste weird, and the melt factor is Peak Goo. It's a bit weird they are rectangle-shaped but am I complaining? Seven sticks per box, which Abby and I divide precisely.

Produced With The World's Best Durham Wheat From Turkish Mesopotamia. Such a melodic and unusual phrase — Abby and I have been repeating it like a chant. Otherwise not a ton to say about this Turkish pasta, except that the lil fusillis shredded in the pasta strainer. It's hard to explain.

How long do dried prunes stay edible? These are like two years old. We don't eat them very often, because a) we are a fairly regular household and b) they are prunes. That said, I swapped them in for apricots in a fancy couscous dish the other night, a powerful move. Unrelated, I have a freelance story on the prune industry that I'd love to write. Fruit editors, hit me up!

These are not great pizza crusts. But! So easy to use. Abby is usually the pizza maker because I'm intimidated by raw dough. These cheat crusts allowed me to make a very deluxe work lunch:

Sometimes the surplus grocer sells what we call the "display model": a wholesale box of snacks that are made to be displayed at a convenience store. We had a huge box of SlimJims on the counter for awhile that intimidated our guests.

Besides the hilarity of owning 12 12-packs of gum, we love the name Trident Vibes. I've started saying "That's just Trident Vibes, Abby" whenever things get weird (echoes of Chinatown). We also performed a weird and raunchy skit where the punchline was Trident Vibes. Maybe you needed to be there?