The Used Food Store

There is a store along Route 15 that I pass on the way home called the Surplus Outlet, but more affectionately known in my family as the "Used Food Store." The Used Food Store is an important new development in the life of our town, but I'd never visited it. Until this past week on my way home. (It was a sad replacement stop for a visit to Parker's to hold once again her little baby--I'd been recently sick and didn't want to take any chances.)

Well, the Used Food Store was everything that had been rumored about it and more--there were 10 dressings for a dollar (of course, they'd expired, which didn't seem to bother people--is selling expired dressings even legal??!).


There was toilet paper, both in plastic wrap and outside of it. There were canned green beans of close to Waco prices (I think I lived on canned green beans during my Baylor days--another secret weakness, along with Chef Boyardee raviolis. In Waco, canned green beans were 33 cents a can. I can't bring myself to buy them in DC.). The coffee and tea and spices were dirt cheap (there were hundreds of little jars of sage, for instance).

All in all, it's quite a store. Look at me, visiting grocery stores, uncoerced!