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The Long Haul

By Jesse Hirsch —

~Welcome new subscribers!~

The Long Haul
logo by Alex Hinton

~Welcome new subscribers!~

After 30 issues of this scrappy lil newsletter, this weekend I decided to conduct some actual outreach, hopping into the DMs of internet friends/professional associates/kindly strangers, to shamelessly plug The Haul. I hate hate hate self-promotion so I did it just one time, then dissolved into a tangle of cold noodles.

(Related: I grudgingly announced my new job on Twitter, roughly one month after I actually started. I just...didn't want to do it.)

ANYway I've almost doubled my subscriber list, so let's do a quick "What's the deal with this newsletter?" Bullet points:

  • I live in East Harlem with my partner Abby, a freelance journalist (and track star!) We have a dog named Lola and a cat named Sadie. In this household, everyone eats from the surplus grocer.
  • For the unfamiliar, a surplus grocer (aka salvage grocer or discount grocer) is something of a food waste safety net. Food that is overstocked, damaged, almost expired, or discontinued ends up at these magical stores, helping supermarkets, foodservice companies, wholesalers, etc recoup their losses.
  • I wrote a love letter to our surplus grocer for The Counter, which inspired this entire newsletter.
  • Kim Severson at the NYTimes wrote a good rundown on surplus grocers just last week, which helped answer my questions about the patchwork supply chain that keeps these stores going. Kim is also a new subscriber to The Haul! (We've been acquainted since Modern Farmer days, when I got quoted in this painful article.)
  • At home, we call it "the dollar store" because our local shop is disguised as one. I speculated on the store's secrecy (accidental or by design?) in this issue.
  • A sub-theme of this newsletter is my abiding love of flavored seltzer, a surplus grocer staple. Have any of you tried seltzer water? It is quite refreshing.

-Gimme Seltzer Part 1

-Gimme Seltzer Part 2: Bev-Heads Rise Up

-Gimme Seltzer Part 3: Requiem

-Untitled Seltzer Redux

Okay that's a wrap! Typically I send each issue on Saturday or Sunday, but I'm not too rigid about it. Free newsletter after all.

xo,

Jesse

Scallops rock! Typically I prefer sea scallops over bay because they are three times as large, but these particular bay scallops are a respectable mid-size. The mini-marshmallow sized ones just don't pack the same flavor wallop! (If I was in a freestyle rap battle I would rhyme scallop with wallop and I would win the battle.)

ANYway this is a large bag of scallops. A gift that keeps on giving. How posh, to be planning dinner and casually ask "Should we sauté a handful of scallops on the side?" We spent $25 on 1 pound of fresh sea scallops on our recent Cape Cod vacation — this bag was 12 bucks for 3 pounds. Nutty.

(Side note: I've long wanted to go on a scallop dive, an annual event in Florida.)

I don't really like crispy pretzels (I know, it's an incorrect opinion) but this brand has me "Rethinking my pretzel!" (TM). Abby and I dipped these in Trader Joe's buffalo chicken dip one night after some carousing; it was essentially the perfect snack. But in classic Jesse hoarder fashion, I bought 3 more party-size big-boy bags from the surplus grocer and now we've burned out. Don't worry, they won't be wasted. Just need some space.

Look in the top right corner of this bag — do you see the cute little pinwheels? A handful of them were mixed in with the Fusilloni, and we're speculating that's why the surplus grocer ended up with these misfits. It's fancy pasta from Italy, after all.

I'm only including this item to shame Abby. When we were at the store, she pooh-poohed this purchase, to my grand chagrin. To be fair, we do have an overstuffed freezer problem, but I know how to make space for new treasures! ANYway when I actually heated this guy up, it was fantastic and Abby kept begging for morsels. I'm not petty* so I gave her several bites.

*citation needed

This one is a departure, as we didn't obtain this lovely shortbread array from the surplus grocer. Rather, this was an unexpected care package from Mai Warshafsky, an early Haul subscriber and proprietor of a mail-order bakery in Virginia. Mai read that we were having a rough time a few months back (job loss etc) and sent us this delicious spread in the parcel post! Warmed our grizzled hearts, I tell you.