It's too good to be true. Real bread is back at the Derelict Shop – only better!
Years ago RBC's wife left him over the Cause and he, being the least cooking-oriented person on earth, looked about for a creative, politically mordant solution. The local soup kitchen fit the bill perfectly.
We his friends scoffed at such a comedown from the way everybody knew decent people were supposed to live. But one thing led to another: first a few of us started accepting the free groceries he and Bud (his compatriot house tenant at the time) brought back, then this here scoffer started going over with them occasionally.... and now this miserable doubter is left carrying the Free Lunch cause forward where nobody else will!
There are many pluses to this project, but the bottom line is you're only getting stuff out of it that you're already paying for elsewhere. Grocery prices are surely higher because the do-gooder mindset morphs from accepting bread overruns or overbakes to food suppliers being expected to donate, and then having to in order to get the best tax writeoffs.
For while, the livin' was easy: Pepperidge Farm, Arnold et al. routinely supplied the giveaway shelf at the soup kitchen with grocery riches. Then the depression hit and we were down to generic loaves from Publix and other large, rootless corporations shamefully implicated in the barbecue sauce wars of the 1990s. The quality of the free lunch they dish out there suffered too.
Today, however, for hatever reason and however long it may last, we professional moochers are back in the high life: Lunch was real vegetable soup (like Campbell's), not the cheap stuff that's half grease – and here's this blogger's take-out plunder for May 6, 2011:
3 Tabatchnik Team Blitz 1% lowfat milk, 8 oz, with straw
Pepperidge Farm:
2 Cinnamon Swirl 1 lb $3.79
Jewish Rye 1 lb $3.19
2 100% Whole Wheat 24 oz (noted on top label: sea salt, no high fructose corn syrup) price not marked
Whole Grain 15 Grain (all ditto) $3.89
On the way home from there () is the Haven of Rest do-gooder mecca where I nab a free bag lunch each weekday as well. Today I hauled off two that yielded:
2 diet Pepsi 12 oz.
Big oatmeal raisin cookie
ind bag cool ranch Doritos
2 slices cold pizza.... without which negligible inclusion, this haul would be worth about $15 plus tax, no? Can't wait to share some with my 85yo computer doctor (in the Clarkson mode of practical economics, we have a system).
Times are rough for many. Does this novel approach to survival help any of you?
/\/.\/\/.
No comments:
Post a Comment