Wisconsin 101: So nice I bought it twice

I always check out the bargain counter at Sendik's. That's where I get my produce and my Miller's pretzel rolls. The gnocchi I made yesterday? That was with the bargain counter ricotta. There was nothing wrong with it - it was just within a day or two of expiration and they wanted to sell it rather than toss it. I got 11 pounds of butter that way. It was about to expire. I bought it and threw it in the freezer. Nothing wrong with frozen butter that can be easily converted into Italian sesame cookies, which is what I made on Sunday.

Yesterday, I picked through the grocery bargain bin. I got a bunch of sweetened condensed milk - Hello, key lime pie - that I guess maybe they are going to stop carrying, some coconut, two boxes of gluten-free ladyfingers (for gluten-free tiramisu) and a carton of matzo farfel. There were other post-Passover items, but when I read that cake meal is just a substitute for flour, I thought, "I have flour." So I didn't get the cake meal. Or the coconut-covered marshmallows, even though they looked good. Two dollars is still too expensive.

When I got home and took the stuff down to the pantry shelves in the basement - a basement is a nice thing to have if you don't want to have to be judicious about which junk comes into your house and which doesn't, which means SH is in junk-collecting heaven, I discovered I already had a carton of matzo farfel from last year.

It has not been opened.

Because I have no idea what matzo farfel is or how to use it.

But it was a good deal.