Bulking up

What? Heavens no, not me. My groceries. Sort of. The local Pick and Saves are remodeling, offering more prepared foods and take out items. A while back I discovered that the store closest to my alternate Panera (don't ask) sells various grains, snacks and nuts in a weigh-your-own format. The prices are not as cheap as they may be elsewhere, but they are cheaper than the prepackaged stuff. Maybe I'm easily amused, but looking over the offerings was a pleasant way to pass some time.

It's fun to wander the long wall and see what's what. They very kindly labeled and color coded the grains as "organic" (sage green), "natural" (wheat) or "standard" (rust). There is a brief description of the contents on each bin, for those of us who can't tell rye flour from soy flour by sight. I was inordinately happy to see the rye flour; I have a killer cookie recipe that takes a quarter of a cup of rye flour - I don't make them often enough to warrant buying even the smallest package. And no - you can't substitute. The recipe was developed by an engineer-turned-quilter, who spent months perfecting it. Trust me, it's worth it.

The first part of the wall holds grains, pasta and trail mix. When you round a gentle corner, you find the nuts, dried fruits and candy items. The most expensive nuts were not the macadamias, to my surprise: pine nuts topped the list at $14.99 per pound.

The bins go from just above my eye level all the way down to my knees. Any parent of small children would need to be fairly vigilant, as the bins are easy to open. Thankfully, all of the small grains are up where small children cannot reach the levers for the chutes.

There are bag twistees with large tags, on which you need to write the plu of whatever you take. Scales are set up at either end of the wall. You plop your items on, enter the plu and print out the price/upc sticker. Oh - and the sticker also includes the name of the item, so entering the plu of a cheaper item in an attempt to cheat most likely won't work. At least not if the cashiers have their eyes open.

Two pounds of couscous, a pound of arborio rice, a pound of barley and the same of trail mix followed me home. Storage is the bugaboo, but I have a bunch of the Tupperware clear storage containers that work well for this sort of thing. Cooking directions are something else, as there simply are none. You need to know what you're buying, or use your mad search skills to find the basics on line.