I am so boring. I’m not even going to post a pic.
See day nine for the dress
And shoes fromday two.
So let’s talk about consumption instead, shall we?
I promised you some more culture in part one.
This is a tale of excessive consumption, totally not suitable for buy nothing new month.
After eating our American-style lunch of pork ribs from Hurricanes, we heading to Alfala house for some hippy shopping – coconut flour (aka super dessicated coconut), soy milk powder, and puffed amaranth; we then went on a drive in peak hour traffic to get in the mood. Destination: Costco, Auburn.
The scale was incredible. Huge. A giant warehouse with big packing crate sized shelves.
First up, you have a selection of plasma tvs, kitchenware including coffee machines and kitchenaid mixers ($620 squee!!), household items like wardrobe organisers and shoe racks.
The book area had us captivated for a while. Most books were of the order of 40% off RRP, there was quite a huge selection of cookbooks, even the recently released Marque cookbook. That one disappointed me a bit – it looked really cheap for such a nice restaurant, but it made me wonder if it was a parallel import. Also spotted was Malouf, which was very tempting. Despite my vow to not buy anymore cookbooks, ever, ever, EVER, I succumbed.
I *small voice* settled for the second English edition of The Silver Spoon Italian Cookbook. What convinced me since I already I have the Australian version of this book? Well, the fact that it had at least 20 pages on fish in one location. Closing argument? $35 AUD versus $60AUD RRP. SOLD!
Want some salad? You’ll need to visit the walk-in fridge:
Dairy is stored in another walk-in fridge.
Cheese comes in two kinds. 1) “Gourmet” like Meredith dairy marinated goats cheese ($8 ish. Where’s the profit for the poor producer?), jarslberg and gouda. 2) Mass market. Tasty cheese comes in 4kg blocks. Ouch. Remember that Roald Dahl story about the old lady and the leg of lamb? Well, I think this cheese would be just as vicious.
The staff member thought that the giant pumpkin pie was made all year round. It looks like a 5kg pie, at least 26 inches across. I wondered if they also sold the premade sweet pumpkin filling in a can?
There was a bit of a scrum at the tasting counter where some frozen dumplings were being promoted.
There are a mix of Australian sourced and American sourced products. The Australian products tend to be caterer sized, but make you wonder about the amount of markup you pay on retail sized products, or the little profit that the producer actually gets. You would need to check the label carefully to make sure that you are not inadvertantly buying tomato sauce with high fructose corn syrup. If you want to buy in bulk, I guess you have to remember that you have find somewhere to store it. 5kg bag of baking powder, anyone? Useful for making a “science experiment” volcano.
Other items things that struck me were:
– quinoa was really cheap. $6.70/kg for white organic quinoa imported from USA (origin: South America), versus $15.75 at Alfalfa House
– Want a kayak? You too can buy one with your groceries. $300.
– “Madrid” one strap birkenstocks $63. Mmm.. shopping for shoes and groceries at the same time.
– If you want chicken fillets, you can only buy chicken breast. True story. It may come from Lilydale, but Costco doesn’t believe in thighs.
They don’t kick you out by making announcements at the end of the night. They just barricade sections of the store off with shopping trolleys and herd you towards the register. If you have forgotton something in the freezer section, a staff member has to fetch it for you because “there’s forklift’s back there.”
So in the end, this was our $300 booty:
The dried blueberries were hideously expensive ($10/500g) compared to the frozen blueberries ($6.97/1kg). They were also disturbingly, excessively sweet.
I have already tried one recipe from the new cookbook, a variant of lemon sauce for veggies. A slight failure in that note.
Next time?
Planning purchasing prevents (susceptibility to) pushy procurement.
A Sydney Foodie 