[Sca-cooks] Re: Shopping as Economic Warfare

[Diamond Randall]

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>
> From: Stefan li Rous <stefan at texas.net[1]>
> >Another good one that I like is how Baron Akim got his quinces to make
> >quince paste two years ago. Quinces are usually rather expensive in
> >the grocery. They also happen to need to be overly ripe before you
> >can use them. (See the quinces-msg file in the Florilegium). Anyway,
> >Akim managed to time it to show up at his grocery when the quinces
> >were beginning to look old and "gooey". And offered the grocery a
> >fraction of their original asking price for these ugly, doubtlessly
> >about to go to waste, fruits. And thus he came to Pennsic with a
> >large container of quince paste which some of us there got to taste.

Anahita replied:
> Well, this is the first time I've ever heard of using over-ripe
> quinces. A ripe quince is really really hard but incredibly
> wonderfully fragrant. I've never seen a gooey quince and one like
> that would be rather "gone". For jams and pates one generally doesn't
> use the spoiled ones, but I am not dissing Baron Akim, since quinces
> are quite expensive, and i think he did fine, talking the grocer down
> to a good price.
>
> I bought a whole case of them in November

While I did get a really good deal,  the quinces weren't exactly "gone".
 The shelf life of a hard fruit like quince is pretty long compared with
say peaches and apples (but not eternal like fruitcakes).  I have
never seen an "overripe" quince either.  They are either firm and rather
hard or go to areas of mushy brown rot like a pear.  What I bought
was actually good quality fruit which I would describe as "shopworn" with
blemishes on the skins (but not gooey bruises or rot).  There were a few which
had shown signs of dehydration with slight withering at the base of the stem..
This is no different from the long stored "winter apples" you get by Spring
which are no longer crisp but still fine for baking and making applesauce.  I
was able to make the produce grocer realize that while still good and
wonderfully
fragrant, the increasingly "tired" look of the fruit was not going to remain
marketable
at the asking price.  For $2.00 each, patrons expect perfection.  Also the
holiday season was about past when the few people who buy them for their
traditional
fare.  Offering to buy out the whole display for $.10 each was not completely
successful, but
he sold me all but the absolutely perfect ones (selling me about 90 % of the
quinces) at
$.20 each.   This was about 2 bushels.  Most of the surface blemishes came off
in peeling
with firm flesh underneath and judicious paring saved at least half of more
damaged fruits.
If you have ever had to prepare a lot of quinces, you know there is going to
be a lot of
waste anyway as they are not easy to peel. and dice.  The kitchen smelled
wonderful
with the heavy quince fragrance.  My bargain was catching the quinces just
past their
optimum period of easy marketability.

Another super deal I once achieved was with the use of grocery coupons, a
source almost
always overlooked (in those days) in buying supplies for SCA feasts.  The
trick is to get enough
of them.In my periods of unemployment in my younger days, I would help out at
newspaper recycling
stations for the Boy Scouts, going in twice a day to stack and pack the
semi-trailers in which
people would drop off their old newspapers.  The Scouts were quite happy for
the help in
getting optimum load in their containers..  I recovered huge numbers of the
slick color
coupon inserts (which the re cyclers don't want in their pulp newsprint
anyway).  I was able
to gang cut  good value coupons in lots of 50 or more.  Also the local post
office would dump
excess bundles of rural route coupon mailers (occupant) for which there were
more to
distribute than mailers provided.  when I got a good one, I would check the
local PO dumpster
later that day.  Between the re cyclers and the excess mailers, I usually
could double or even
triple my feast budgets in buying power.  One of the best examples was when I
had a pile of
the new brand Florida Gold promo $1.00 off fresh orange juice.  The local
store at that time
would double coupons up through $1.00, so I bought 34 gallons of fresh orange
juice with
coupons for free as the $1.89 per half gallon item was sold at the full $2.00
discount
which even paid part of the sales tax that I would have paid (except I was
buying with the
nonprofit tax number, so the extra $.11 was a bonus advantage to the rest of
my purchases).
I was able to find coupons which gave significant savings enough on my feast
budget that
I was able to essentially more than triple it.  Therefore, I could use butter
in quantity and
really extravagant use of luxury items like heavy whipping cream and nuts
without blowing
the budget.

I certainly miss the early days of couponing with the many "no expiration
date" coupons and the
higher doubling limits store then offered.   What I hate most these days are
the manufacturers
who print "not to be doubled" on their coupons.  What business is it of theirs
that a local store
offers to match their discount with one of their own?  Alas for the Good Ole
Days when I could
go to Krogers and fill 17 buggies to overflowing and end up paying pretty much
just sales taxes.

Akim Yaroslavich
"No glory comes without pain"


--- Diamond Randall
--- ringofkings at mindspring.com[2]
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===References:===
  1. mailto:stefan at texas.net
  2. mailto:ringofkings at mindspring.com