Wednesday March 7th, 2018
Today I'm going shopping! I can't wait! My pantry is getting frightfully empty, and rice and lentil burritos are getting a little tiring too. Six and a half long weeks and a hundred fifty dollars later, I'm ready to buy food again. So lez go!
Ah, Winco. My ultimate favorite grocery store. I confidently strode through the doors, pushing my big fat fancy buggy, and immediately temptation knocked on the door: red bell peppers were 48 cents a piece; normally they go for $1.28 a piece, and the green peppers are the cheap ones at 78 cents a piece. Well, these discounted red bell peppers were beautiful, in perfect condition. I could almost taste them. And they all sat together, fully filling four big brown cardboard boxes. I looked up down the aisle. I looked down up the other aisle. Nobody seemed to be noticing. Heh heh. I grabbed one of the boxes and plunked it in my cart. Oh what elation filled my soul! This was a good bell pepper haul, complete with nice prices, high quality produce, and a good quantity to boot. Ohh yeah. I finished up the rest of my shopping and bought all the things: flour, rice, beans, oats, cornmeal, polenta, raisins, mushrooms, cucumbers, potatoes, cheese, bread, milk, sour cream, butter, baking powder, porkchops, some sliced turkey, bacon, tortillas, various sauces, and I even splurged and bought some 40% bran flakes. It was glorious. It tallied to $160. This is the most I've ever spent at the grocery store at one go. Perhaps the 36 bell peppers had something to do with it.
Later that day, after all the groceries had been put away, I gave Mandy a ride somewhere, and she made a strikingly perceptive comment, "Hmm, it smells like bell peppers in here." Very impressive olfactory senses if I do say so myself. A day or so later, I began to realize that I'd never be able to eat that many bell peppers before they all went bad, and there was only so much room in the freezer to store them. And so, with beating heart and breathing lungs, I decided that I'd need to sell some. It wasn't until the following Saturday that I finally got around to actually selling them, but boy did it happen fast. Mandy had already said she'd buy 4 several days earlier, but I kept on forgetting to bring them down to the school. Ergo, I texted her asking if I could just bring them by her apartment before I forgot them again. She said it'd be fine to bring 'em by, and so off I went. I did, however, bring along the whole box of them with me, even though she only needed four. I had a plan you see, heh heh. But before I made it out the door, who should show up but good ole Taylor boi. He was super excited about seeing the big box of peppers, and immediately asked if he could buy two off of me. I readily obliged.
Soon enough I was over at the Hill apartments walking up the stairs to Mandy's place with my box of peppers.She was filled with a small sense of wonderment at why I'd brought the whole box of them, but then I explained that I was going to go to all the other apartments of my friends and see if they wanted any. She laughed then chuckled and said good day, and then I walked out the door, took one more step, and knocked on the door. It was Wesley. He and Keziah were slightly surprised to see me there unannounced, but were more than happy to buy five or six peppers. We chatted for a bit before I made my exit and headed down the stairs to the next one. I knocked. It was Charli. She looked at me, smiled, blinked with slight shock, and then said, "I thought when Mandy texted me saying you were coming over to sell bell peppers she was joking!" I just laughed, both on account of Charli's reaction, and from the fact that Mandy had texted about me selling peppers. Charli ended up buying two. Later that week Bobby bought five, and that left me with about fourteen peppers left. I placed two in the fridge for my own personal delight, and proceeded to chop up five more for freezing them. It took me forever to chop them though, since one of my hands was broken and I had to hold the pepper down with my fist while I chopped with my good hand. I only actually chopped up those five, and left about seven others for later; I was too tired of chopping them single-handedly. The following Sunday I was talking with Rachel and happened to mention my pepper troubles. She perked up and told me to just bring them by later that day (since there was a movie night at her house) and she'd cut them up for me then. It was by far the sweetest thing anybody had done for me all week.
By the end of that Sunday, a week and a half after buying them, all my bell peppers were all taken care of. A couple had already been eaten, several sold, and the rest carefully diced up and thrown in the freezer. What a good ending to yet another bulk food impulse buy. I think the last time I had one of those was a couple years back in Arizona when I bought 140lbs. of bananas for $6. Boy, that was fun taking care of all of those. Anyways, that's the long and the short of it. I expect sooner or later I'll find another amazing deal on some food item, say for instance, two cent loaves of bread or something, and I'll just go ham and buy a ton of them, but at least for now I've managed to stave off the danger of all my bell peppers going to waste. Big shoutout to Rachel and all yall who bought red bell peppers, yall're the best!
