Gimme Seltzer 2: Bev-Heads Rise Up

What tipped the scales, I ask myself. How did we go from a fairly conventional household of mild-mannered seltzer drinkers to the full-on rabid bev freaks we are today?

It started with the 2-liter bottles of Canada Dry mandarin orange seltz ($1.49) I spied one day at the surplus grocer. Wouldn't it be fun to have a little flavor, for a treat? Life is so grayscale sometimes, how about some citrus spritz? A little razzmatazz! I brought one bottle home with the weekly haul, and we were absolutely hooked.

We had a few months of this 2-liter dabble, where we'd keep a bottle of flavored seltz on hand (always Canada Dry) to supplement our quotidian Sodastream consumption. But the scales started tipping—soon we craved the supplemental seltz more than the mainstay. We cleaned out their entire 2-liter supply and moved toward cans—three for a dollar, mix and match! What a steal.

This was escalation, and a fun game to boot. See, they display the seltzer cans in huge pallets mixed with other bev cans (often oddballs like probiotic cola and EXTREME ginger ale) and you have to Tetris the stacks around to find the sweet seltzer within. I remember me and an older auntie one day going deep in the stacks, each with our own goals—she was a Zero Sugar Sprite fan—and helping out when we found each other's preferred beverage. "Thank you darling" she'd say.

I don't want to bore you with details (lol this entire newsletter is details) but we had a few misfires along the way, with 16-oz seltzer bottles from the Seagrams and Schweppes brands. Faulty product alert—those duders had leaked their carbonation, leaving nothing but flavored still water! You know how carbonated water that loses its bubbles has an odious taste, somehow worse than straight-up water? Not great! We drank flat Schweppes and learned our lesson.

Also bad? San Pellegrino's Essenza line, imbued with intensely herbaceous lemon zest that makes it taste like floral shampoo. Plus they tinted the bottle in a way that's supposed to be lemony but makes it look uriney (imo). Peep:

My clever, anti-waste workaround to the "we bought a bunch of yuck-o Essenza" was to bring them to hot yoga, where I'd be too parched to be picky. Now they are gone.

A bittersweet note to end on, but I have to go to hot yoga right now. There's a teacher I like named Victor who has trademarked the phrase "Vic-yasa." He calls his Sunday class "Church of Vicyasa" which is wicked corny, but I am not very cool myself.

We're gonna do one final seltzer post next week! Peak Uncool.

xo,

Jesse

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Gonna put this one in the "plus that's a minus" category. There's an awful lot of foods at the surplus grocer that are like "orange juice, now with cinnamon!" or "caffeinated pasta!" which somehow made it past the focus group and into the factory before presumably dying a quick death on the open market.

It looks like these puppies are still being sold, defying all odds. The slogan is "Plus up the Goodness!" which doesn't really work. Abby loves Babybel but thought these tasted vitamin-y, so I was faced with the ignoble task of eating a whole bag of Baby-Plus. Luckily they gave me superpowers and a killer complexion, so.

Told a colleague I was making a squid ink pasta dish this weekend and she was like "Where you gonna get squid ink?" Surplus grocer, baby! (My coworkers are surely weary of this response.) Two bucks for a tin of wild-caught squid from Spain, can't miss. Semi-related: Octopus farming is a bad idea.

Would you call this "Trader Joe's font?" I would. I love this bottle though, and the promises it makes. This is also an exceptional deal for a liter of organic Sicilian lemon juice.

This is the populist dog food Lola gets when we run out of her fancy food logs. Abby is delighted there is no space between four of the words, thus crafting the absurdist phrase WithCountry StewCuts. If you're unaware, Publix is a popular Florida supermarket chain, that I would probably not patronize in person (reason 1 and reason 2). Luckily the surplus grocer is bipartisan and pure—real "city upon a hill" vibes!

This looks gross but bear with me. Awhile back I bought 5 pounds of Applegate Farms smoked chicken breast, a very solid deal at $5. I didn't realize it was actually one of those big logs of pre-cooked chicken, meant for the supermarket deli slicer. In short, a foodservice product in the home. I also thought it was raw chicken, which doesn't make sense no matter how you look at it.

No matter—Abby chopped all 5 pounds up into shreds, then portioned them into 1-lb freezer bags. Periodically we defrost another satchel and have a week or two of smoked chicken salad lunches. I've also tried it in a range of experimental treatments, like a Cajun pasta and a Mediterranean flatbread situation. It's been fun!

I will be happy when it's gone.