Winter Stock-up - 25lbs of Rice

It was only by accident that I stumbled upon Community Natural Food's bulk and baking supply sale. In fact, it took a good fifteen minutes in the store before I noticed that there were giant bags of rice, flours, quinoa, and chickpeas stacked around the store. The sale prices weren't significantly cheaper than regular price, but each bag was $5 - $10 off.

I walked around the store for a good 20 minutes trying to decide if I should buy anything at all, or if I should buy rice, chickpeas, AND quinoa. Eventually, keeping in mind that I am still building my supply of food storage jars, I decided just to buy this lovely lady.

You might be asking yourself why a bag of bulk rice counts as "waste-free". The fact is that even when we buy from bulk bins into re-usable bags, it's still not waste-free. Grocery stores get their products delivered in packaging, and then they move it into the bulk bins. Just because we don't see that packaging, doesn't mean our purchases are package-free. If we buy that product in its original bag, all we're doing is skipping the step where we put it in our own bags to get it home. Plus, we often get a discount.

This bag happens to be made only of paper and string, so I don't have a lot of concerns about recycling it.

I will be sourcing out some other bulk goods like this over the coming weeks as we prepare for winter. I do need to find some more big jars though first, because this rice used three quarters of my current jar supply.

Do you buy bulk dry goods? Did you go to the CNF sale?