Living large at Costco

I bought one of those Living Social “deals” last fall, a $50 one-year membership to Costco that included coupons for a free rotisserie chicken (a $6.99 value), 30 rolls of toilet paper tissue ($15.99) and a fresh apple pie from the bakery ($9.99). Never could resist a bargain.

We moved shortly thereafter and the coupons got lost in the shuffle. My wife blamed me, as she always does whenever anything goes missing, with as much bitterness as if I had misplaced the Hope diamond. She has reminded me every day since and it would no doubt have been the last thing she uttered on her deathbed: “Take care of the dogs and find those *^%$@#! Costco coupons.” (A digression that is apropos since we’re discussing death and Costco: A former client, when her father passed away, ordered his casket from Costco that very afternoon. She said it pissed off the funeral director big time but there was nothing he could do about it under New York law. Now back to our regularly-scheduled blog post.)

So it was with triumph I emerged from the laundry room the other afternoon waving the coupons I found stashed in a drawer.

We left for Costco immediately lest they disappear again.

I love Costco. It’s a hoot wheeling up and down the aisles among merchandise intended for families the size of the Duggars' -- 50 lb. bags of rice, drums of salad dressing, boxes of frozen won-tons that would easily serve half the population of Shanghai, etc.

We headed to the back of the store to pick up our apple pie (it weighs 4.5 lbs., so we’ll still be eating on it at Thanksgiving or, rather, my wife will -- I hate apple pie), TP and the chicken. We then proceeded to load our cart with $340 worth of other items we decided we couldn’t live without:

·      A 2-lb. slab of blue cheese

·      A dozen Jimmy Dean Delights frozen breakfast sandwiches

·      A case of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese (single serve)

·      A case of Kirkland (Costco’s house brand) Pinot Grigio – astonishingly good quality and just $5.99 a bottle. You wouldn’t serve it to guests you wanted to impress but you could pour it into an empty bottle of a more expensive wine and nobody would be the wiser

·      3 gigunda bottles of Heinz ketchup, enough to supply all the McDonald’s east of the Mississippi for a year

·      24 chicken breasts conveniently cello-wrapped in twos, making them perfect for empty-nesters like us. They will probably sit at the back of the freezer for a year until we remember they’re there at which point we’ll discover they are freezer-burned and will throw them away  

·      Two 3 lb. bags of Dunkin Donuts coffee

·      48 bottles (2 cases) of Zephyrhills water

·      20 bars of Irish Spring

·      4 wheels of Laughing Cow cheese

·      2 lbs. of tuna salad

·      2 restaurant-sized bottles of Olive Garden salad dressing

·      A 24 oz. container (136 servings, enough for 68 meals for two) of Kraft Parmesan cheese

·      A case of Kim Crawford Sauvignon Blanc that sells for $15 a bottle at our local supermarket. Costco sale price: $8.99

I had to put the SUV’s back seat down to cram all the stuff we bought into it.

You’re probably thinking it’s a good thing we have all that free TP because we’re going to need it, but I realized when we arrived home that it had been placed on the bottom shelf of the shopping cart and I’d forgotten to load it in the car.

I’ll be hearing about that forever or until we use up all that Parmesan cheese, whichever comes first.