Sunday, June 22, 2014

DIY -- buy bulk?

If I really want you to save money with DIY, I should tell you to buy bulk, right?
Well, I was checking prices for that exact reason on a site dedicated to bulk sales for food services.
Am I going to buy from them?
NOT.
You see, their price for flour is 1/3 more than what I spend at the grocery store.
When I checked a warehouse store site, I got an even worse result.  It's flour to buy for emergency stock.  It costs over $1 a pound, almost twice what I paid at the grocery store.
So when you try to save by DIY, do the math first and don't waste money just because it's bulk.

Now, the excuse at the warehouse store might be that their packaging preserves the product.
But if you buy your paper-bag flour at the store, and store it inside those black plastic trash bags you only need for pulling out poison ivy because your community won't accept them as leaf bags any more,
Anyway, buy the paper-bag flour at the store, put it in the black bag and put the black bag in any heavy plastic container like a trash can.  The flour will stay good up to 2 years.
And if you haven't used it by that point, it will not be good for much.
As I said before, flour that is too old will turn out products like cement.
Plus in a real emergency you won't have any power for baking anyway.
You'll want that flour for after the emergency passes, Gd willing.
So what you really want to buy is matzo.  Lots and lots of matzo.  Not during Passover, but afterward, about September.  Matzo stays good a long time if you don't break the wrappings.
Or you want to bake up your flour into matzo.  It won't be any good for Passover, but that's not what you want to accomplish anyway.

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved

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