When it's cold and people insist on it being holidaytime

Well. Here's what I'm doing anyway... I'm screwing around on the computer and making soup.







There's a lot of crud in my fridge from all those stops at the Amish Bang and Dent shoppes, you know

So into a pot went:

1 aseptic qt. package of Wolfgang Puck's Vegetable Broth (2/$1 at BB's)
1-1/4 C. Stirrings Simply Bloody Mary Mix (all that was left of the bottle in the back of the fridge. I don't remember where I got it but it was cheap, you can bet.)
1 bag of PriceRite California Medley frozen vegetables (They had been in that damn freezer forEVER)
1/4 head shredded cabbage (From the last Farm Show Farmer's Market. I think it was a buck)

Boiled it until the cabbage was cooked and I've been eating it like a starving person every since... about noon when it was done.



Mmmm... Soup.

Apartheid Mooville-style

Pride Festival of Central Pennsylvania
July 23- 25, 2010
Admission: $8.00; Children under 12, free.

I'm not sure what they make you admit for $8.00, you'll have to take your homophobic ass over there and see.

Arizona's got nothing on Mooville. We don't need no stinking SB 1070. This weekend we got mostly sunny, 30% chance of thunderstorms and 110 degrees... that's ONE HUNDRED AND TEN for those of you who think you didn't read that right. So you KNOW what we're doing...









































we're corralling the gay people!

You think Joe Arpaio's the only one who thought up a tent city to sequester pink-wearing people who make closeted teabaggers nervous? Round 'em up and don't bother asking for papers... get in there and be GAY, dammit! Ya disgusting creatures.

http://www.prideofcentralpa.org/

www.facebook.com/pages/Pride-Festival-Of-Central-PA/61910651892

Jeeze Louise.

I can't believe I live in this town.

I Bought It: Sharp Shopper, Middletown, PA 10/24/2009

So, I had to go to the Middletown, PA Sharp Shopper store because I had to... I mean I was o-u-t of birdseed.

The birds have been getting food from me all summer and now they expect it and now that the weather is starting to turn, well... you know how it is...

So, I ventured out.

It was a pretty good day considering I managed to blow $40.02 on THIS:

Which turns out to be:

The birdseed I just had to have: 20 pounds - $6.49




















This is TWO packages of Boca Lasagna - meat free for vegetarian me and 99 cents a piece. Only 290 calories in the whole box! TWO boxes of 24 family sized bags of Lipton tea also 99 cents a piece and in PERFECT condition...

It was Damn Food Day at the office for Halloween and I was NOT baking treats for those people... so I got a box of frozen mocha truffle cream puffs for $1.99
and everybody's happy.





LookaHERE: A box of Gevalia Organic Rainforest coffee packets... 50 oz. total for $4.99 -- that's more than THREE POUNDS of great coffee... And because it really IS about the birds... I found a couple of suet blocks for $0.79 a piece.




These are the big 28 oz. jars of peanut butter and I'm not familiar with the brand but the ingredient list looked pretty good... showed molasses instead of corn syrup for a sweetener. They were only $1.49 and the creatures in my house like their vitamins a LOT better when I dip 'em in peanut butter... here's one of the two cans of black olives that were 2/ $1.00 and the mushrooms were 2 for a buck too, so, what the heck... you can always use a couple of cans of mushrooms...




This one is HIGH-larious... that is a FIVE POUND container of sour cream, ladies and gentlemen, and it was $1.99! I know. I'm sorry, but how can you not buy something like that? I had to have it. Also a pound of frozen mixed berries for 99 cents and one of the blocks of suet...




This is pretty good too: You're looking at 2.5 pounds of shredded white cheddar cheese, a 2 pound bag of shredded Swiss and they were $2.99 EACH. THAT'S $1.32 a pound!! Also the other can of olives... and the real deal of the day: A case of 24 oz Diet Snapples in Peach, Lemon and Raspberry Tea flavors - $6.99 that was actually free because the cashier, I found upon later examination of the receipt, forgot to charge me... I'm going to tell her about it the next time I'm in there, too...

Also, a bottle of ok hairspray for 99 cents...

Yes, folks... all this stuff COULD have been YOURS!! The prices overall are still up over last year's by 10-15%... but, hey, things are tough all over... the renovation at the Sharp Shopper shopping center is almost complete now so their rent is prolly goin' up... I still think it's better than going to the slimy over-marketed big boxes... but that's just me...






TOTAL: $40.02, I told you:

Outlet Grocery Review: D and K Surplus Grocery, Red Lion, PA

A real live outlet grocery/ scratch and dent shopping experience heavy on the international fare deep in York Co.

D and K Surplus Grocery
757 Delta Rd.
Red Lion, PA 17356
717-244-9398
Hours:
Mon. - Wed. 8 a.m.- 6 p.m.
Thurs. - Fri. 8 a.m. - 8 p.m.
Saturday 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Sunday Closed

Accepts: Cash, Visa, MasterCard, Discover, Debit and personal checks drawn on PA & MD banks w/ a valid driver's license and matching addresses. They'll bag your groceries or find some empty boxes if you'd rather.What $15 Looks Like at D & K

This Place Is Only a Little Tricky To Find
From Mooville find I-83 S to exit 18; go L on PA 124/Mt. Rose Ave. E; Go R on SR-24/ Cape Horn Rd. - there's a Tom's gas station on the corner and you'll go another 5 miles after the turn to the next turn so don't get nervous; once you are into Red Lion proper go L on SR-74/Broadway E. and you'll see the sign before you see the turn onto Delta Rd on the left.

The cross road before the turn is Camp St. If you get to Windsor Rd., you've gone too far.

What's In There
Gawd a-Mighty, all kindsa stuff. Your regular off-label canned goods but lots of name brands, too. A lot of these are not brands you've ever heard of but I'm sure they're popular in Australia (frozen fruit pop things @ $1.19 a carton), Israel (ALL kinds of things from spices to chocolate bars REALLY cheap) and Spain (HUGE cans of black olives and, NO LIE, a FIVE POUND bag of Gummy Bears... the sour kind I love SO... $4.99!)

Lots of Italian tomato sauce and pesto... like, 6 oz. of Scarpetta pesto for 50 cents a jar. Indian chana masala which you have GOT to have if you're going to make Indian chick peas in sauce and you can't get that stuff anywhere... I've looked. Here it is in a 100 gm. container at 2 / $1.00!

This Israeli spice shaker came in 4 different shades including leafy salad and Mediterranean salad mix for 79 cents for a 1.75 oz. packed in the coolest pyramid... seventy-nine cents!

Baktat sun-dried tomatoes in oil... 11 oz. for 79 cents and all the way from Turkey... Raphy's white eggplant salad which I have no idea what it is but it was 99 cents for a 23 oz. jar and it looked kinda like baba ganoush. It says on the label "If you like Paris, you'll love Raphy's Food"... also from Turkey so I'm not going to be able to pass judgment until I open this baby up and get a spoonful of it...

Oh, please. There's plenty of Ah-mur-iken stuff in here too... Kraft dressing for 99 cents a 24 oz. bottle, Organic Valley quarts of half and half in aseptic packaging that will last until the cows come home at 2 / $1.00 and Knorr's bouillon cubes in vegetable, beef and chicken at 5 / $1.00

A nice bunch of candles and some 10.5 oz Lemonade scented soy ones in glass jars for 99 cents.

I picked up some Buffalo Guys buffalo jerky for Shadow the Wonder Dog since he waited for me to come home on his Columbus Day off... 2.2 oz. of pretty nice looking jerky for 79 cents. It's people jerky but they had some regular store brand dog and cat food and treats, too.

Lots of things to drink... including something that billed itself as Pomegranate 7-Up at $1.29 a 2 liter bottle. Cool sodas I've never heard of in really excellent flavors... Costa Rican Pineapple and Raspberry Lemonade... Lots of mixers and I was forced to pick up some Freshies Bloody Mary mix and Stirrings Watermelon Martini and Lemon Drop sour mixes all at $1.59 a quart just because I'm pretty sure I'm going to need a drink if I can get through the week at my nutball office with only 4 days to fix 5 days worth of going wrong...

There were A LOT of cookies and crackers... Keebler and Cheez-Its... some of the boxes were mashed up pretty well and still weren't priced much better than you would see at a regular grocery but some of them were priced really cheap and LOTS of pretzel type things which one comes to expect in a Mooville grocery... even in the weirdness that is a surplus grocery store... so...

Here's what I want to know...
who is eating all these sliced bamboo shoots and half gallon containers of pitted black Israeli olives and Turkish sun-dried tomatoes and Indian masala mixes? I found 5 or 6 cases of Naan mix. Boxed flour mixes to make the delicious tandoori oven-baked Indian breads that will send you straight to Nirvana when they come to your table at a good Indian restaurant. I looked at the boxes. I picked them up and read the directions. I'm not going to make yeast breads I don't care how delicious the exotic outcome will be. I know it. You know it. We all know it.

Next time I want some Naan, I'm going down to Passage to India and they'll sell me some and it will be off-scale excellent and I won't have to lift a finger except to get it from the plate to my mouth...

And I'm a food snob. If anyone is going to buy a box of Naan mix, it's me. The standard Mooville cuisine of fat, flour and salt is not my general cuppa. I don't eat meat so you know I'm going nuts in this place. I wriggle with joy when I see shelves with this stuff on them but I saw who was shopping these aisles with me... "god bless 'em," Joe Biden's grandma would say, "they're the salt of the earth but they wouldn't know basmati rice if it bit them on the ass"...

Sorry. Its true, though... or maybe it's not and these Central Nowhere denizens have me fooled.

I don't care. I found Weil Genmaicha loose tea in an 80 gm package for 2 / $1.00 and a 15 oz. can of Tiger Tiger Green Curry sauce for 50 cents a piece.

I love Mooville.

Outlet Grocery Review: BB's, Newburg, PA

You want to see a sorry Outlet Grocery shopper? Hang out in the parking lot of BB's on one of the oddball days when they're closed for no good reason and peer through the windshields as they pull in and start reading the hand-written sign: CLOSED TODAY.

BB's Grocery Outlet
20 Quigley Rd.
Newburg, PA

Purpose of today's unbeknownst-to-ME-who-drove-all-the-hell-the-way-out-there-for-a-fix closure: COLUMBUS DAY... SATURDAY?

I dunno. They've got no phone out there so you just never do know.

At least it was a nice day. The leaves are just starting to turn.

Jeeze Louise. Some days you could just clobber those Mennonites.

Fast, Cheap and Easy Tip #3: Ground Hogs Save You Money!

Perhaps you recall the great fun I had getting the last ground hog out of my yard. He saved me $50... well, there was plenty where he came from...

I caught THIS one FINALLY last afternoon and he was PISSED...

or she...

I have no idea how you tell the difference and I don't want to...

Now, the last time, I had a minute to think of what to do with it,... last night I had no such luxury... I had had the THIRD day in a row of day from hell this week at that lunatic bin I call an office and I hadn't gotten home at lunch to let Shadow the Wonder Dog out and he had to PEE and he had to eat and I was in no mood for any lip from a damn groundhog...

SO I took Shadow out the front which he likes better than having to pee in his own yard anyway... and then we got him some dinner and then I stared at the damn thing for a while...

I truly was thinking about getting a plastic bag and getting the trap into the bag and putting it all in the car for another little trip to City Island but it was getting late and that trap was not staying shut like it was the last time... the back door of it was getting wiggled open enough by that creature that I just KNEW he would be out of the trap and nothing but a plastic bag to keep him from running around like a loon in my CAR while I was trying to DRIVE...

No...

I, instead, WALKED him out of my house through from the back deck in front of the dog who was VERY interested in helping me... and then... UP to Seventh St... across 3 BIG streets I CARRIED the damn trap holding the back end of it closed so he couldn't jump out as I walked and he was HEAVY! ... past the ladies at the Legion Hall who were bitching at me for bringing the ground hog 2 blocks to THEIR place...

I told them he had likely been visiting with them on his own before this which they didn't want to hear and finally I got him to the big field that has a fence across it next to the ice house so that if he had jumped out of the trap after I got the back of it opened and through the hole in the fence, he would prolly have found a billion ground hog holes... one of which prolly opened right up into MY back yard, dammit... and been happy but NO...

He decided to jump out and head for the parking lot of the ice house where there is nothing but a dock that is too high up for him to jump and no where for him to go but out in the street and, oh, please, oh, please, oh,please, get hit by a passing car and never to bother my tomatoes again...

I tried to shoo him the other way but he was having none of it and just hid behind the axle of an ice wagon in the corner of the parking lot and he can sit there until Kingdom Come for all I care...

And so, having already invested in that Harbor Freight trap... this brings my ground hog eradication bonus refund to: $120.

Plus the tomatoes I'm going to get to eat so long as another ground hog doesn't show up...

Outlet Grocery Review: Whispering Pines Fruit Farm UPDATE

Yinz better get up there and FAST! Joann and I traveled to the Whispering Pines tonight because she was in town from Pittsburgh and had never been and I felt bad for raving on about this place in front of her... THE PEACHES ARE ALMOST GONE!

There was ONE 1/2 bushel of canning peaches under the little shelf in the fruit room and about 8 baskets of eating peaches in the refrigerated case. There were 9 but I had to have one.

Strawberries were $1.29 a quart and they need to be eaten IMMEDIATELY.

GORGEOUS big red peppers that need to have something done with them pretty directly are FOUR for $1!!! No lie.

Aged Colby cheese was $1.49 / lb. but I took the last package of it so, you know... sorry.

The honey crisp apples are SO sweet and tart and crisp. The Paula's are 3 lbs. for $1.29 but they're kind of soft textured... great apple flavor, though.

No peanut butter sandwich cookies tonight, sorry. But some GREAT sourdough and excellent looking white, wheat and cheesy bread.

FIVE pounds of yogurt for $1.99! And 2 for $1 Thomas' English muffins.

You better get up there. I'm just saying.