The breeder of our soon to be obtained puppy feeds his dogs a grain-free dry dog food that is good through the life span. No special varieties for puppies or senior pooches. It is only obtainable at Costco.
There is a Costco in Bismarck, 100 miles away from our town. It has only been there a couple of years. (Cutting edge progress is slow to arrive here.) I have not suggested we get a Costco membership until now. If the breeder thinks this is good food for his pups, who am I to argue. He has healthy, happy looking dogs who win prizes at shows.
I have resisted getting a Costco membership until now because I know our grocery buying habits, and worried that we would end up buying even more freezers for basement than the three we have now. I believe it was Bill who dubbed us opportunistic grocery shoppers. He is correct.
We stopped at the Bismarck Costco on Monday and got our membership. As we walked back to get the dog food, Husband asked me to hold his arm so he wouldn’t wander off and get lost amidst all the enticing food stuffs and gadgets and other wonderments we observed. We limited ourselves to dog food. When I told our children about it, Son said he and his wife had been contemplating their own membership. Daughter, of course, said she has had a membership for four years. Why didn’t we just ask her to order the dog food? Always on the cutting edge, that girl.
It is good the store is 100 miles away. We can’t just pop in for a look. Oh, I hope this works!
When have you been on the cutting edge? What do you like to buy at stores like Costco? What do you like to feed your pets?
Trail Baboon 
Costco is such a pleasure. Problem is I always spend too much money and run out of closets storing the bulk items. In 1986 I bought a jar a vaseline. Turned out to be a lifetime supply!!!
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YA and I have a membership but I only step foot in the store once or twice a year and it’s the same reason as you, pfiddlergal…. even in my big house I do not have room for 4000 ibuprofen tablets or 10 pounds of brownie mix! (We have this membership because YA wants it. She does actually shop there every couple of months and gets gas there as well.)
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At our age, everything we buy in Costco quantities has the potential to be a lifetime supply.
We share a membership with one of our daughters and her family. You might consider that, Renee, with your son. We don’t buy a lot there, simply because there’s just the two of us and we have limited storage space. After the early pandemic shortage of toilet paper, having a Costco-sized bloc of rolls gives Robin a sense of security. We get a quarter-wheel wedge of Manchego cheese there and a couple of boxes of Irish butter and from time to time we get olive oil or a bag of walnuts or things like that. I’ve sometimes gotten meat there and apparently Costco is the biggest seller of beef in the US but, as I said, we don’t have multiple freezers in our garage so I have to restrain myself.
There is a Costco not too far from us that caters to business—restaurants and the like. It doesn’t have a lot of the ancillary stuff usual Costcos have, like clothing, but if you wanted you could buy a whole halal goat there.
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“Be not the first when the new are tried. Nor the last to lay the old aside.”
Alexander Pope by way of Clyde
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Nice!
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They sell drones, too.
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No Costco here despite attempts to entice them. Never been in one.
For me buying four halves of chicken breast is pushing my limit of use before it gets old in freezer, along with thighs and ground turkey and loses sausage meat. I guess I picked right time to do little driving and to cook for one. Because I have been on a slow weight loss plan of my own design, a large half a breast makes 3 meals. 40 lbs in 11 months. Found a cookbook on cooking for one with instant pot which has worked well.
There are several new restaurant chains moving in. One is a chicken restaurant. Making slow progress maybe waiting for end of avian disease. One is another coffee chain. How is that profitable? Oddly only one downtown where there are lots of office buildings.
Sandra’s dr. ordered me to go get her a McDonald’s cheese burger yesterday because I had not brought her one for three days. A joke she brings up on her monthly visit. It takes all my will power to buy food there, but she loves them. Her care is wonderful but food is unappealing.
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For my mom it’s DQ. She does love her ice cream. And not the plain stuff they have in the freezer here. “Fancy Ice cream” means a DQ Sundae. With nuts.
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There is no kind of pecan ice cream that is safe from my mom!
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For my mom it was any treat I would bring for our “tea party” – she esp. loved a peanut butter crispy bar.
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My mom has the occasional hankering for McDonalds. Several years ago when she was stuck at home recovering from something (I don’t remember what) she mentioned them twice in two different calls. I called my sister (who lives close to Nonny) and said “go get her a cheeseburger and fries” I ended up sending some money to my sister for doing this!
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Rise and Shine Baboons,
The day before Easter, on a Saturday, Lou went to the EP Costco where he spotted tim way across the store. He tried to go have a chat but the store was so crowded and he had already been hit by two carts, so tim went unheralded. Hi tim, from Lou. I often run into people I know at Costco, some who I want to see, some who I gently avoid.
We shop there a lot. Lou’s son and DIL work there. As an employer they provide a good standard of living and many, many benefits. Our purchases range from the very large, significant items to the mundane.
Large items: Honda Pilot (good car buying program, especially when cars are scarce), hearing aides, eye glasses, electronics. The adjustable bed my sister bought there on-line saved them $6K. Yes I was jealous. These items provide great savings.
Mundane: coffee, olive oil, black olives, shrimp and sea food, watermelons (always good in season), raspberries, bagged salad, bread, TP and Kleenex. Tick and flea treatments for the dog.
I don’t buy: rice, flour, dog food, dog treats. The quantities of staples are all too big.
Bill’s suggestion to share the membership is a good one Renee. When I had my business I purchased office supplies there. Paper (30000 sheet bundles!), ink, copy/fax/scanners, coffee cups, coffee, notebooks were all a massive savings and we could store it in the back storage area by the box.
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9 big fat turkeys just wondered past. And it is open season.
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The turkeys around our place have been scarce all winter and spring. I saw 5 younger ones yesterday and those are the first I’ve seen in several months. Be OK with me if they all moved to your place.
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Maybe they already have.
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I don’t think I’ve ever been on the cutting edge of anything other than a knife while cooking or a razor blade while shaving. 😉
No pets anymore, but we fed our last cats Iams cat food. They lived 13 & 17 years, so I guess it was adequate.
Costco is a more or less quarterly trip for us since we must drive 45 minutes to get to Burnsville or Rochester. But when we go, we spend big because we do have room to store 30-roll packs of TP and 18-roll packs of PTs and a good-sized freezer to store all sorts of things.
Love their Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, coconut keto clusters, Sanders sea salt & caramel dark chocolates, lamb, Columbian coffee, wild-caught Alaskan salmon filets, frozen blueberries, bulk sizes of Cheerios and oatmeal, and many more things. Don’t want to bore you.
I’d say we buy the majority of our groceries from Costco anymore if I added up the total spending vs. what we spend at our Cash Wise or Hyvee or Aldi or Walmart.
Chris in Owatonna
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Does PT stand for paper towels?
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yes
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I guess being a Pfizer C19 trial participant might qualify as cutting edge. For a certainty, I was always up-to-date on new flooring installation techniques and tools.
The Birds get a variety of seeds, fruits and veggies but feeding them millet as a treat is most enjoyable as they have to get it from my hands.
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I remember going with my dad to Prairie Market, a wholesale place in Sioux Falls when I was a little girl. Dad bought supplies for his coffee shop there. I liked riding on the big wooden carts. Of course, no trip was complete without a trip to K-mart for a Barbie, and then to the McDonalds.
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I’m in South Minneapolis without a car, and all the Costcos are in the burbs, so I will probably never have a membership, though I am tempted by their hearing aid program to get a backup pair from them.
Out of four cats, one gets bladder stones and eats only Royal Canin prescription food, two are allergic to chicken, and one of the allergic ones won’t eat anything but Fancy Feast canned food (tuna, turkey or beef). The boy can eat anything, so he and the other allergy-sufferer get Limited Ingredient dry food, usually Taste of the Wild or Natural Balance. Oddly, our cats don’t care much for salmon, so we switch off between turkey and venison, in the hopes that no one will develop any new allergies. Feeding time is a bit of a nightmare logistically, so we have no plans of taking a trip and sticking some poor petsitter with these complications!
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Our pup seems to be thriving on Nature’s Domain Turkey and Sweet Potato.
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Guinevere gets a little pumpkin in her breakfast and dinner. YA has decided this is good for her.
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Yes, fiber is good for the digestive system.
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1. I don’t think I have been on the cutting edge of anything.
2. I don’t have a Costco membership. Living alone in a fairly small condo, there isn’t storage space for bulk items. And I don’t cook enough to warrant large quantities of any foodstuff. My refrigerator is “normal” sizes with a bottom freezer – no extra freezers. I do like the deals on some of the big ticket items but not enough to make a membership worthwhile. I get my prescription eyeglasses at Warby Parker (both online and in store) which does save me a bundle. My sister does have a membership – maybe I should share one with her to take advantage of the occasional deals.
3. No pets.
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costco is 50 cents low on gas prices right now and i buy lots of different items only at costco toilet paper 4lb butter packs big hummus and artichoke dip cheese veggie sausage disappeared but now impossible burgers and beyond meat chicken tenders son buys salmon and meat and bell peppers and veggies.
peanut butter coffee kalamata olives and since i shop there often these days for others i keep an eye on other good deals
i have 4 small freezes all full
you can add son for 60 dollars if you and husband both are on membership now
if it’s just one of you son is free but daughter in law would be an add on
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Not what I’d call cutting edge, which suggests to me some role in the development, but I was an early adopter of going online with a computer. Before the internet and before the ubiquitous America Online disks, the University of Minnesota had developed a site called Gopher, which was mostly a compilation of documents on various subjects and a small amount of intercommunication. To access Gopher, one had to have an online address—mine came from the U of M—and a phone modem and you had to go in and actually rewrite a small amount of code in the DOS operating system. Gopher was all text and the computer was simulating a terminal. This was before graphic user interfaces. Finding out how to go about accessing it was challenging, but I finally pieced together enough clues to accomplish it.
I was also early into eBay. My account says I’ve been a member since 1998.
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Morning –
We used to have a Sams Club membership back when son was a teenager. Mostly we’d buy milk because it was cheaper and I was buying like 10 gallons a week. Took a few gallons to my parents and the rest for us. Sams did sell a frozen Turtle cheese cake that was wonderful! Still miss that.
Kelly and I walked through the local Costco a few months ago. Yep, lots of stuff… nothing I thought I needed. Didn’t see any cheese cake there…
Humphrey has a delicate stomach so he gets special ‘Science Diet’ dog food. Stops him farting so much. Allie gets Iams because she’s old. We know when Humphrey finds something rotten to eat outside because then he farts. And Bailey gets a mix of canned food and dry food. Both dogs really like the left over ‘egg layer’ ration mix I might throw out. And they’ll eat ground corn that I put out for the ducks. So for whatever reason, they like their grains.
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I guess they didn’t get the memo about the evils of grain for carnivores
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Closest I’ve come to being on cutting edge was just out of college, brimming with new theories on teaching and class mgmt… I lasted 4 years, and part of the disenchantment was realizing my dad was right – it takes about 25 years for any new idea to really change a big, unwieldy system like our education one.
Never had a membership to Costco, etc., but I did go occasionally to Sam’s Club in St. Louis Park and pay the one day fee – once because I’d learned of a full length down coat they were selling… I have it to this day.
Our last pet, Charlie the Cat, got Science Diet for a kidney condition. I should tag this page for pet food advice, in case I ever have another cat…
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OT: Do any baboons have an electronic device that converts a tape to CD? Or who still has one that duplicates a tape? (See yesterday’s conversation with Jeff about M.Cooney…)
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There are businesses that do that with tapes to MP3 and old movies to digital around.
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The simple thing would be to send the tape to Jeff to copy with the request to send it back when he’s dne.
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I can’t think of one single time in my life that “cutting edge” could be applied to me. You’ll never find me at the front of the line clamoring for the newest of anything. Not so much out of fear of the new but I don’t want to waste my time. I like to wait to see how others’ experience go, whether the new thing will hang around, whether it will be worthwhile for me to invest my time/energy in getting onboard.
And my experience in Corporate America is that whenever somebody is touting the words “cutting-edge” it usually means that they WISH they were cutting edge. (Oh the cynical side of me is emerging…..)
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But, but, but what if they are thinking outside the box?
Groan
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We’ve had a Costco membership for about fifteen years. I used to drive to the closest one in Maplewood every other week or so, but I haven’t been to Costco since the beginning of the pandemic. These days Hans goes to the one in Woodbury whenever he needs gas, and I’ll give him a list of what we need. Additionally, I’ve discovered that some of what I need they’ll ship, which is handy since Hans is prone to come home and announced that they didn’t have something if it’s something specific, like a certain kind of Oil of Olay cream. I keep telling him that all of their employees speak English and that he can ask, but for whatever reason, he can’t overcome that hurdle.
For just two people it’s hard to justify the membership cost unless you purchase the occasional “big” item, and for sure, fill up your gas tank every time you’re there. What we get from them includes a lot of the items listed by others, plus their roasted chicken, and freshly baked croissants. Both are really good, and an excellent value. I also buy Tylenol and nutritional supplements, and I keep an eye out for the occasional or seasonal specials, such a fresh figs.
I’ve cooked for our dogs since 1992, when our poor Franny was becoming obese from eating her dried dog food prescribed by our vet. When I mentioned the weight gain issue to the vet, the answer was a shrug and the comment that yes, an unfortunate side effect of this particular food was the dogs tended to become “little porkers” as he so delicately put it. Poor Franny would stand in front of her bowl of food and look desolate; clearly that food was not doing her any good. I promptly bought myself a book written by a veterinarian about how to cook for your dog. It made all the difference in the world. Within months Franny lost all of that excess weight, and was once again a happy and energetic little dog. That made me a believer, and I have cooked for our dogs ever since.
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Way to go, PJ!.
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For me the ideal grocery store would be the opposite of a Costco. All the food would be sold in very small quantities, so none would ever go to waste and wouldn’t take up space in the pantry or freezer.
I bought my first computer, a Mac Plus, in around 1988. I suppose that was pretty cutting edge then. I had had a 512K at work, which had then been upgraded to a Mac Plus. The Plus was faster and had more memory, and I was so impressed with it that I needed to have one at home. I used spreadsheets to keep my checkbook register. I also had an application called Loan Calculator that I used for producing amortization tables when I bought my house.
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❤️
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