Survival of the....

I can't say "Survival of the Fittest", because the Sav-Mor bi-monthly sidewalk sale is a race for food. Maybe "Survival of the Thriftiest" is more accurate. This past Saturday, Emily, Kelly, Sara and I met at 7:45am, piled in Kelly's car and rode to the Sav-Mor sale. A brief explanation of what The Sale is: Every other week, Sav-Mor has a "sidewalk sale" (which I lovingly call a Food Yard Sale) where the store puts all the expired or almost expired food in banana boxes out in aisles in the parking lot. People line up around the perimeter with empty banana boxes to fill to the brim for $7 a box. The whistle blows at 9am, and the food is gone in about 10 minutes. People get really, REALLY comptetitive - Moms barking orders to their kids, 12 year olds elbowing me out of the way for a shot at some Starbucks, and even a 95 pound older woman who was apparently not too old to haul an entire box of canned tomatoes from under my nose. Lots of the food is organic, so we rack up on organic kids' snacks, cereals, flours and things. Then there are treasures like Pop Tarts and Xantham Gum that save us bunches of money!

Okay, on with the story. We have learned there are safety in numbers (and you have to have someone man your food or others will take it!) and we planned our strategy in the car: Choose the box you want, grab the entire thing and take it back to base (our buggy on the wall). If there is time, grab an empty box and go out for more. Kelly is usually the one who mans the buggy so no one sticks their hands in our boxes. We spread out around the perimeter, choose our spots and wait. For an hour. Sara and I learned to make friends. The girl to my left was going to share some King Arthur Unbleached Flour from the box she was eyeing. And the large man beside me, a karate instructor, said he'd grab a box of Splenda packets for me, since I had my eye on a box full of Pop Tarts. 

I ended up filling 3 boxes, the most I've ever filled, and I even have a battle wound to prove my success. I reached into a box to grab....don't remember. But I had cut my thumb on a broken glass jar of peanut butter. So half of my stuff is covered in blood. After the race as we were sorting our loot, I found.....a box of Band Aids!! I was so excited, as were my teammates. What was so much fun was making a memory with friends. But the bargains were pretty great, too. 75 items, 19 cents per item. It was worth every drop of blood.