The Roadshow
I read a really relatable essay by Aram Mrjoian about anti-food-waste behavior that can come off as compulsive but is actually a way of processing his anxiety about climate change. Some elements were less relatable, like the fact that he's been acting like this since college, but the pathology of his well-intentioned behavior resonated deeply.
Mrjoian leads the piece discussing a vacation he's about to take with his wife Kelsey:
Kelsey is the organized one and makes sure we don’t forget anything. Meanwhile, I excel at scarfing down any food and drinks that will go bad during our time away. While she finishes up work in our home office, I thinly chop two bunches of wilting curly kale and mix the shreds in a large bowl with the remainder of a tub of soon-to-expire cream cheese. Once it’s reached the consistency of a thick salad, I make sure Kelsey isn’t on a call and carry the concoction into the other room to show her. With a smirk, I place it on her desk like a present.
“That’s disgusting,” she says, visibly repulsed.
I laugh. “It’s not too bad, honestly.”
She shoos me away to finish my lunch out of sight. After the bowl is empty, there’s soft fruit to gnash, a butt of stale bread to toast, leftovers I refuse to let wind up in a landfill. Before we leave, my goal is that our fridge will be empty except for the door full of condiments, wiped clean, and the only appliance still plugged in.
This behavior is wicked familiar, though Abby is a willing co-conspirator in my mania. For our recent Cape Cod trip, we lugged an enormous cooler full of perishable sundries on the journey. When we arrived at our cottage and discovered there was only a mini-fridge, we were forced to keep food in the cooler with daily re-ups of bagged ice from the gas station (Better Call Saul vibes).
It's a game we love to play! We saved oodles of $$$ cooking down our dollar store detritus, getting creative with ingredient use-ups, combining Hauls from home with local produce and seafood. We even brought surplus grocer hummus and salsa to a beach bonfire, to the bemusement of our gracious host.
For this week's Featured Items, I'm going to showcase some of the treasures we lugged along on our coastal trip, because food waste doesn't take a vacation! (I know that sentence doesn't quite work.)
xo (hi Julia),
Jesse
Featured Road Items
Despite how the company flirts with fascism, there really is no replacement for Martin's potato rolls. They never carry them at the surplus grocer so we usually buy them at Foodtown when we're feeling too selfish to boycott.
I would argue King's Hawaiian is the only commercially made bun that inspires a comparable level of fan fervor. The only SXSW event I ever attended was a garish, King's-sponsored beer garden; I ate 10 sandwiches and left with branded sunglasses that made me feel bad about myself.
I used these honestly-too-sweet pretzel buns to make BLTs in our tiny cottage kitchen, which we ate cold at the beach. Abby's verdict: reasonably edible! Take that, expensive/delicious boardwalk snack shacks. (Twist: I saw some disturbing news on instagram and chose to ignore it.)
We used the heck out of this jar of imported tomato sauce: ravioli, toaster oven pizzas, you name it! (It was mostly those two things.) I didn't even notice it was made with vegan soy crumbles until the jar was almost empty. Honestly when ground beef is gussied up with other flavors and ingredients, it's one of the easiest things to veganize (Taco Bell was swapping in veg fillers long before it was cool.)
Speaking of crumbles! This sausage satchel was very handy for making breakfast wraps and the like (mostly breakfast wraps). I also have a memory of eating a few cold spoonfuls with ranch dressing after hours. Stop looking at me.
I'm not much of a sweetsman, but I have a soft spot for Entenmann's cheese danish — or its store brand imitators. It's better with a fruity swirl, but I wouldn't call that a necessity. The surplus grocer had this Stop & Shop brand danish in the freezer right before our trip and I couldn't resist. Had some soft-focus dreams of sipping coffee in an Adirondack chair with a slice of warm danish at the ready. Then I actually accomplished those dreams! (Anticlimactic.)
On the one day it rained, we stayed in the cottage, binged The Rehearsal, and ate toaster oven pickle chips with ranch dressing. They were not as crispy as I may have wanted but it was a glorious day so I'm not crying.
ARE YOU KIDDING ME WITH THIS?? Rao's is a legendary Italian spot in our neighborhood that I will never get to eat a meal at.* It's been dubbed New York's most exclusive restaurant which surely helps sell their expensive line of grocery store entrees and sauces. All this to say, this frozen rigatoni was a very cheap score from the dollar store (15 bucks retail!) and we felt absolutely posh eating it in our wee galley kitchen.
*In 2020 Rao's made a concession to the unwashed masses and started running a highly exclusive takeout operation to recoup their pandemic losses. Abby and I tried it out, but I think it loses something when you don't eat there (but still pay $$$ dine-in prices!) Here is some Business Insider reporter's "I got Rao's takeout and lived to tell the tale!" clickpost.
Bonus Content
Longtime readers will recall that I eat A LOT of Big Az sandwiches from the surplus grocer. This was the first time I spied them in their natural habitat, though: a gas station in Connecticut.
^Here is a dining diary excerpt from the Cape.