Thoughts on Bulk Food

[commodorified]

Since it was either that or Freezers, and Freezers is, really, a subset of Bulk, at least the way we do it. For now I'll talk mostly about bulk that can be kept at room temperature.

We buy a lot of stuff in bulk; it's one of the ways we keep food costs lower and food quality higher than we otherwise could. Over the course of many years and a lot of mistakes I've developed some criteria for deciding what should and what should not be bought in bulk, and some ideas about how to make bulk buying as painless as possible.

By bulk buying, by the way, I don't mean "buying from the bulk bins", which is almost always a good deal IF you are able to get the same quality of product out of a bulk bin and don't need to worry about cross-contamination or have a way to manage it.

By bulk buying I mean "deliberately buying enough of a given thing that you will not have to buy it again for one or more shopping trips". And yes, you can do bulk buying if you live alone: indeed, you sort of have to, as an amazing number of things are only available, or only available at a tolerable price, in sizes intended for a family of four. If you live alone, Bulk Buying may mean "getting the regular sized bag of rice", but the basic principles still apply.

1) Don't short this week's food to buy something in bulk. If the only way you can buy the 40 kg bag of rice that's such a good deal is by getting fewer vegetables and less milk... that's a bad deal. It is difficult to manage a balanced diet by bulk purchasing alone, and it is very very difficult to manage an appealing and decently varied diet by bulk purchasing alone. If money is tight, setting aside 5-10 percent of your grocery budget every week to put towards building up a nice cushion of bulk-bought foods is going to work out much better.

2) Don't buy what you can't store safely and conveniently. If a bunch of your big bag of flour goes off, or attracts pests, or gets spilt all over the floor, you have not saved money. If the enormous club pack of lightbulbs won't stay on the closet shelf and keeps trying to land on your head, well, eventually it will and they will break.

We have had a couple of outbreaks of meal moths in our kitchen, and once we had mice. We learned fast.

Good storage:

i) Repurposed bulk food containers. Restaurants will often be delighted to let you have some of the white plastic 5-50 gallon jugs that they get food delivered in, if you ask. Scrub them out with dish soap, let them air dry open. If there is any remaining smell of the original foodstuff, put a 1/4 cup of baking soda in the bottom, pour in 4 cups of very hot water, slap the lid on and leave it overnight. The next day your tub should be ready for your new food.

ii) Repurposed jars. Most of our bean stash lives in pasta-sauce jars and similar. The baking-soda trick works here as well - I love pickle jars, but not so much pickle-flavoured tapioca.

iii) Ziploc bags. Not as sturdy as the others, and not free, but more flexible: you can put your purchase in lots of small bags or few large ones, you can split a purchase with someone else, you can freeze stuff in them, you can use them to organise, say, several kinds of rice within one large plastic container. Keeps out bugs but not mice.

iv) Purchased storage, if you can afford it and you're in a hurry. Ziploc, Rubbermaid, Tupperware, or, if you're truly flush at the moment, lovely matched canisters in ceramic or glass. I have a rice jar I inherited from my Gran. I love it to death.

v) For semi-perishables: apples, onions, potatoes, etc do well a) hung up not touching the floor b) in CLOTH bags which c) let air circulate and d) if possible, keep light out (the mesh bags onions come in are okay in a pinch, but your onions won't last quite as long as they would in cloth, and potatoes go green exposed to light). Rotate them regularly, though, so you don't end up with one forgotten spud down at the bottom of the bag going moldy and tainting the rest: just reach in and stir them around some.

Bad storage:

i) Don't repurpose non-food containers to store food in. Even if you've cleaned them out absolutely perfectly, you can't be sure what's leaching out of the plastic. It's not worth it. If you're buying new stuff, make sure that it's marked as food safe if food is going to touch it.

Short form: Plastic that "smells like plastic"? Is not food-safe.

ii) The plastic bags bulk food comes home in: no matter how careful you are, they rip, and your food spills and makes messes and attracts pests.

iii) The outdoors, or areas that are not climate-controlled: I am always tempted to store food in our back extension. And we always end up regretting it when we do. Pop cans explode in winter and shower you with shrapnel - seriously, and also OUCH. Canned food thaws and refreezes and goes mushy. Onions get absolutely disgusting if they freeze and then thaw. And so forth.

If you have a chance to get a really amazing deal on more of something than you can store, see if you can split the purchase with another person or family.

3) Be cautious of buying "exotic" things, or very inflexible things (things that can only be used in a limited number of dishes, prepared or semi-prepared things) in bulk. Are you absolutely SURE that you want to eat five gallons of garlic stuffed olives in the next 18 months? Given that you only decided last week that you really like jasmine rice, or Earl Grey tea, do you want to use it and no other kind of rice or tea for the next three months?

Equally, buy a quantity you will go through while it's genuinely GOOD, not just "still safe to use". The savings on 4 months' worth of coffee over 2 months' worth just doesn't make up for drinking stale-tasting coffee for six weeks.

4) Be cautious of things that require additional steps to preserve them: those olives have to go in the fridge as soon as you break the seal on the jar.

You can get a lot of stewed tomatoes at a pretty good price if you can them yourself, but a) buying a canning setup plus jars is a lot of upfront cost: are you sure you're going to do preserving every year? and b) do you have a friend or relation who cans, or at least have you got a good book out of the library and read it very carefully before investing in the tomatoes? "Putting up" food isn't terribly hard, but it does require some skill, and the penalty for messing up ranges from being out the cost of the food AND the jars and having to clean up a nasty mess, because your food fermented and broke them, to making yourself and others really really ill.

My personal feeling is, only do your own preserving if you enjoy doing it; as with knitting or sewing for yourself, it doesn't honestly save you that much money, and if you paid yourself for your work it wouldn't save you any. If you do like it, it's great; even better if you have friends who like it too.

5) Take your calculator shopping. Some things just don't get all that much cheaper in bulk, and some things are already so incredibly reasonably priced that the cost and trouble of getting set up for massive bulk storage isn't worth it: all-purpose flour. Dried legumes. Noodles or pasta.

Exception: if you can get a higher quality at the same price by buying in bulk. We get Rancho Gordo beans and distributing the shipping over a big order is worthwhile. Buying cheddar in a 5 lb block lets us have really good extra-old white for the price of supermarket own-brand medium cooking cheddar. Etc. This is what Costco is especially good for.

Also, petfood has some special problems: your pet can't exactly tell you the food has gone off, but if it does you may end up with a vaguely poorly, hard-to-diagnose animal who isn't eating well, or even who is being made ill by their food. Also, pets are notoriously kind of volatile about what they will eat: I have returned an awful lot of now 9.5 kg bags to our vet or fed it to the neighbourhood ferals because Mr and Ms FussyPants, who were wolfing The New Food down happily when I was bringing it home in pricey little 500 g sachets have suddenly decided that I am feeding them dirt topped with chopped slug.

6) Remember to factor in transport. random and I have hauled home some truly ridiculously huge boxes and bags by public transit, but I can't do that anymore. OTOH, one cab from the store, or one delivery charge, every three months, can be pretty reasonable, as can getting a friend to drive you and paying them off in shares.

7) Do your bulk shopping when you have as much time, help, and energy as possible, and when you get it all home do the necessary splitting, repacking, labelling and storing right then. Talking of labels, pop into Staples/Office Depot and get a lot of those ones that come off fairly easily; then label everything. If you have to open it to see what it is, you are less likely to use it. Also, you really want to write the purchase date on things.

8) If there are instructions, save them. Nothing fancy: cutting off the relevant part of the box and chucking them all into a shoebox or a drawer will do fine. But do save them; different cereals and rices, for example, have very different cooking times and water/solids ratios, and you will need this information. And if you get serious about bulk buying, chances are you will, at some point, have a lot of jars/bags/canisters of food that look almost, but not quite alike. This is where being able to cross-match the labels and the instructions will save you from accidentally making, as I nearly did once, vegetable-oatmeal soup. You wouldn't think that steel cut oats and pot (as opposed to pearl) barley could look so alike...

Comments

[jest]

This is true to my experience with bulk buying. Would it be all right if I post a link to this in homeeconomics101?

[commodorified]

I would be delighted!

[epershand]

Oh yes, this is very true. *Eyes pound of sesame seeds ruefully, determined to work her way through*

A lot of times I clip the label from the bulk food's original packaging and tape it to the container that I've got the food stored in, for an even closer tie. And with things like flour, I clip out and tape on the expiration date too.

Depending on the source, takeout food containers can provide really excellent storage containers--the standard soup containers from Vietnamese restaurants, for instance, are heavy-weight and last forever, as far as I can tell. And since they come either in pint- or quart-size, they're also really handy sizes for small bulk storage eg rice, tapioca, SESAME SEEDS >:(. However, if you're re-using a container that's intended to be disposable, you start to have the same problems as with non-food containers over time--cheaper plastics can break down and start to leech into your food.

OOh SESAME SEEDS!

[commodorified]

You can toast some in a dry pan and then put them in a shaker and keep them on your table. They will go amazingly fast, on salads and all sorts of things. (So will cumin seeds, if you like cumin)

You can toss them into pretty much every stir fry ever.

You can add them and some shredded seaweed to a bowl of fairly plain Rice and Protein and there will be Yumminess.

And you can buy filo pastry (or make it, if you have three thousand times my patience) and drizzle honey and sesame on the layers and have a pretty persuasive fake-up of baklava. :-)

ETA: and in the last resort, they freeze very well, which you may want to do with half of them now while they are still fresh.

Continuing in my thought train from below...

[jenna_thorn]

Wanna trade some sesame seeds for frozen sliced jalepenos? 8-)

I have honey and Silpats. This isn't the recipe I use, but it's close.

Too many sesame seeds?

[krait]

There's always grinding them into tahini, adding chickpeas and garlic, and devouring the resulting hummus! :D

[st_aurafina]

Sesame candy is an awesome way to motor through large amounts of sesame seeds. I make it in large sheets and cut it into slices.

[(Anonymous)]

If you make bread, you can add some there. Very tasty in a whole grain or multi-grain bread.

Can try adding to hot cereal ... I'm thinking oatmeal, multi-grain, granola, or Grape-Nuts, but I bet there are others.

- Harimad

co-operation and bulk buying

[jenna_thorn]

One additional thought: make friends with limited budgets and split/trade/barter accordingly.

Splitting the Costco pallet of toilet paper or paper towels makes storing half of it myself (and the other half herself) easier which meant we were more likely to do it (as opposed to the entire pallet taking up a third of my kitchen for six months). We hit Costco twice a year, bought stuff we'd share, went to her house, split the pacakging and I paid half the bill, and ta daa! It takes some organizing, and as I said, a friend with similar toilet paper needs, but we were both in small apartments and single at the time. It made sense.

But friends are even more helpful for preserving. I make kick ass pickles and one good season from the cucumber and pepper plants in my garden can give me three households worth of pickled jalepenos and garlic dill pickles. I'll trade those for a smaller number of jars of marmalade which I will never make again, ever, it's been years and my knuckles still hate me. Or jelly. Because the friend who makes the fabulous jelly (I screw up the pectin and get syrup. It's tasty syrup, usually.) doesn't do brine or booze, but likes pickles and soused fruit. Soused fruit is easy peasy and I like to eat marmalade more than I like to make it. Tadaa! Co-operative household stocking with less waste than if either of us had tried to do it on our own.

Re: co-operation and bulk buying

[brownbetty]

This. When I was in college, we put together a tiny onion-buying co-op and bought an eighty pound bag of onions, and holy shit that was cheaper.

But this preserving thing sounds brilliant. Finally, a way to get rid of those jars of jelly! (Must find someone else in the city who preserves!)

Re: co-operation and bulk buying

[commodorified]

On the down side I recall being completely croggled a few years back to be told that in many places if you tell welfare that you share food-buying or preparation or eat communal meals with anyone they will lower your food allowance to compensate for whatever extra degree of nourishment you are managing to wring out of that setup.

repurposed jars

[jenna_thorn]

Editing to sound less snippy isn't working, so I'll caveat up front that I have issues and leave it at that.

Just after the annual glut of Martha Stewart/Paula Deen/Rachael Ray "how to preserve" shows, take a friend and a Saturday morning to drive around the trendier/pricier suburban neighborhoods and hit garage sales or church sales, which can be a better investment of drive time. You will find, still sealed in original boxes, canning equipment, often underneath an uncracked copy of the trendy bullshit "Better living by pretending you're a frontier woman" cookbook of the year.

Don't buy the cookbook, not even for fifty cents. But I have picked up a brand new box of two dozen quart jars for two bucks. Never re-use a ring seal, toss a jar if it gets scratched or mark it as canister storage (for orzo or seasoned flour or salt mix or whatever you use) and watch your storage spaces.

If you buy canisters second hand, check the ring seals. They dry and crack and are no longer airtight. Depending on your climate, this can be nothing or it can lead to spoilage. Spoiled is wasted, and that's not cost-efficient.

Re: repurposed jars

[jumpuphigh]

That's a great idea for getting more jars. So far, I've been able to reduce my cost in jars by half by using a Groupon for my local ACE Hardware store and buying jars there. They were still pricey though.

[giglet]

This sounds a lot like my experience!

I've also found that I can sometimes de-smell plastic bickets with vinegar. I also tape (relatively fresh) bay leaves to the underside of the bucket lids to discourage moths. I haven't noticed any transfer of smell/taste.

[commodorified]

We do bay leaves scattered about the kitchen cupboards, whch also seems to help.

labeling jars

[(Anonymous)]

I have a shelf of glass coffee jars full of... rice, beans, pasta, chocolate chips, a different shape pasta, a different type rice...

for labeling, I usually cut off the cooking directions and maybe the brand name of the original food package, and tape it to the glass jar. instant ID, and when the food runs out, the jar can be re-labled at the price of a small piece of sticky tape.

very useful, and the glass lets me see how much leftovers should be used up before i open another big box of leftovers.

zivya, enjoying your food posts

with intermittent pictures of nanny ogg and 'the joyes of foode' running through my mind...

My own personal tip...

[legionseagle]

(well, apart from "Never get into bulk buying while living in University accommodation and your boyfriend is the one with the ideas about bulk buying but he also expects you to keep the plastic sack of brown lentils which leaks under the sink in your student room" but several aspects of that you already covered)

Do not under any circumstances take any of the hints included in Jocasta Innes The Paupers' Cookbook (sample nastiness: "I use the cheapest vegetable oil I can find, sold in 7-gallon drums, for cooking and salad dressing. To give olive oil flavour, pack a jar with black olives and fill with oil - keep for making vinaigrette"). In case you find a copy in a charity shop for 10p or less (more if it's a charity you really like) do buy it a) to keep it out of the hands of the inexperienced and naive; and b) because the later sections on "programmed eating" can keep an entire storm-bound household (or crew) enthralled if brought to dramatic life through the medium of charades or interpretative dance.

Re: My own personal tip...

[brownbetty]

I have always wondered what species of madness compels parents to name their daughters Jocasta. Clearly, madness bought on by poor nutrition and botulism.

[ranunculus]

Second hand shops often have large storage jars, the kind with the metal wire closers, for a fraction of new cost. Replacement rubber rings are available, check anywhere new jars are sold, or online. Jars like this are great for bulk storage. Not only do they keep moths or other pests out of the food, they can keep moths -in- a jar and NOT contaminating all the rest of your food. I put all my dry-goods in glass and I've had no trouble with pests for years.
Moths will chew through plastic bags.

[commodorified]

Moths will chew through plastic bags.

in general, yes, but I have found that freezer Ziplocs stop mealmoths, if not completely then for long enough to give you a very good chance of noticing the problem while it us still confined to one bag.

[nineveh_uk]

and if you paid yourself for your work it wouldn't save you any.

Oh yes. I always cost my work in, even though I pretty much only sew for myself. I can genuinely save on summer skirts (1m outer, 1m lining, 1 evening's work), but for anything else it is about using my labour as payment in kind towards a better quality product.

[beable]

I am now vaguely tempted by the idea of vegetable-oatmeal soup.

[ursula]

I had an oatmeal-bacon-vegetable stew once-- it was somebody's re-creation of a medieval recipe for pottage. It was pretty good.

[sollers]

Of course, a lot of this depends on having storage space in the first place. In my small two-up-two-down house, my total room temperature food storage area is six small cupboards, three under the worksurface, three fixed to the wall above. I can buy large packets of spices at the Asian supermarket and decant them into jars, but that's about it.

[commodorified]

Yeah, I was hoping I'd managed a sort of generally useful guide to figuring out how much of what one is going to store in what one has got and how to make the relevant tradeoffs work.

As I said, Sometimes Other Things Are More Important.

And sometimes not. I once lived in a place where I had a two burner stove, my fridge was in my front coat closet, and I had to store my spices under my bed and my canned goods on a shelf in the bathroom. Many of my ideas on all of this derive from that period.

[ar]

Great advice! I'm looking forward to trying these out.

For saving instructions, one can always do like my mother does: Designate container X the rice container and tape the rice instructions to it. (Or, as my current setup goes, put duct tape on the rice jar and write the instructions on it in permanent marker. :D) It's always best to keep the instructions as close to the food as possible, ime--the more you have to hunt for how to cook it, the more of a pain it's going to feel like.

20 years of bulk buying

[ravan]

I buy bulk dry goods in a big way, and have for 20 years. It has kept me and my roomies from starving, and helped friends too.

For the biggest stuff, I use 5 gallon buckets that I get new from the hardware store *lined with food grade liners* and Gamma Seal™ lids. You can find the lids, which are screw on lids for the buckets, at the emergency supply/survival shops online. The liners are a bit harder to find, and when I found them I bought like 20.

For the medium size, I use the rubbermaid square translucent containers, because they stack.

I bulk buy in 10, 25 or 50 lb bags: rice, sugar, 3 kinds of pasta (egg noodles, elbow mac, and orzo), split peas, lentils, flour, pasta flour, and oatmeal.

I get some of my hot cereal at the ethnic indian stores: sooji and ravi (IIRC cream of wheat/farina and cream of rice) - it's much cheaper than buying a dinky box of "Cream of Wheat&trade". I also get my beans and lentils there, or at the public restaurant supply house.

One thing I learned a looong time ago is never store anything in cardboard boxes for a long time. Grain moths, mice, and moisture take your investment and make it disgusting. Ziploc bags, unless they are in the freezer, can get chewed through too. Hard plastic that is food grade and tightly sealed is your friend.

Those cheap bags of ramen you get? Have a shelf life, and can get very nasty when they're old. Same with that nice cheap box mac'n'cheese. Pay attention to expiration dates, even on canned goods. The cheap canned fruit cocktail often blows up when it's been pushed to the back of the shelf too long. A gooey mess.

Buy what you use, not just what you get cheap but can't stand much of, unless you have friends to share with.

If you have to store in an outdoor area, you want hard plastic, or specially canned goods, and careful rotation. I don't advise it except for earthquake/hurricane/etc supplies (I live in CA, so shaking is always on my mind.)

[amorettea]

Do NOT can unless you know what you are doing. You can get worse than bad food. You can get dead. Used to happen fairly regularly. Entire family done in by botulism. I am a historian who specializes in late nineteenth and early twentieth and this really happened. Obituaries for the whole family, dead from bad canning. Nasty. Freezing, for the average person who doesn't want to mess with pressure canning, is easier and safer.

[phi]

These are terrific tips, especially the false economy ones about canning, or buying things you aren't sure you like/will use.

[sentientcitizen]

Oh my goodness, MEAL MOTHS, those are the buggers that keep getting into my barley! I never knew what they were called. It doesn't seem to matter how well I seal it up in ziplocs, eventually I open up the bag and lo and behold, out comes fluttering a moth! My barley lives in my freezer now.

(Also, I once made pot barley "oatmeal", so I'll chime in to agree how easy the two are to confuse.)