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I miss radio shack… and frys, I don’t need 100 5k ohm resistors, I need 3. Thank god Microcenter and EPO are still around. Shoutout to Mouser and McMaster Carr too but their shipping adds up for oddball stuff.
Yeah, they are just farther away from me vs Mouser and have the same problem with shipping. A 10 cent resistor costs $15 to ship.
It’s definitely going to depend on where you live, the shipping estimate gives me for one is eight dollars. To a certain extent I feel like Amazon has given us an unrealistic expectation of how much shipping things costs. Eight dollars even for a tiny resistor though isn’t that far out of what I expected it to be, a lot of other places I shop online have pretty similar shipping costs. I’m willing to pay it in many cases though because it means not supporting a company like Amazon.
Shipping costs business around $8 at the lowest end now. Retail shipping expect prices up at $12 for an ounce.
Thank the pedotus. They raised rates 4 times this year so far and another is coming next month.
That resistor better be made of solid gold lol
Jameco is another good online vendor. They sell resistors by the tens.
I’ve never tried ordering just one small thing from them though, I make a list for a few different projects and then order it all at once to save on shipping, and I’ve got a bin for extra components to reduce the need for oddball orders.
Radio shack was awesome, it’s a huge shame it’s not around anymore.
EPO in houston? i miss that place. and micro center. closest one to me is in san jose. wish they’d open one in seattle
Yep! They used to have a location down by NASA too but that closed in the early 00s.
The nice thing about living in a “not wealthy enough to become a corporate hellscape” country is that I can go down some random roads and get to the streets where independent vendors live, and buy any extremely spesific and small electronic component I want with individual pieces or handfulls for quite cheap.
I was honesrly a bit culture shocked visiting sri lanka and seeing the vendor to vendor next to each other lining themselves for 1-2 km. Couldnt imagine each of then surviving on the amount of money they are making.
Just the wonders of non-corporateism and not being car dependent.
Oh they are very car dependant lol.
Your village wont suffice for a day job and your daily meal.
But there werent the big corporate shops there outside of the metropolitan areas.
I miss microcenter. I’m sad and shocked it doesn’t exist in the pnw and there’s nothing close to it around here. I have to buy my tech when visiting family in ohio
That’s already a thing.
Look for one of those hippie grocery stores that sells spices etc. in bulk, where you scoop however much you want into a baggie and pay for it by weight.
I’ve never seen a place selling fish sauce in particular that way, but the one near me does sell liquids like soap, honey, and various nut butters.
Yeah, and after the $60 membership fee, everything is twice as expensive and you might as well just go to the normal stores and throw half of it away.
The place by me that does this and doesn’t require any membership fee and is fairly affordable. You walk in with your own mason jar or some canister, note the initial weight, fill up with what you want, and then at checkout do the final weigh and pay for the weight of what you filled up with.
The place by me doesn’t require a membership either, although being a co-op, it certainly offers one. The prices are generally terrible – think “even worse than Whole Foods” – but the bulk spices are less outrageous. More importantly, you still come out way ahead buying only the little bit of some weird spice you need for that one dish instead of a whole jar, even if the price per pound is higher.
Or just buy a bunch of small containers and split normal size things with friends.
I’m legit thinking about doing this now, I have so many containers in my fridge that don’t have to be anywhere near as large.
I don’t need a big bottle of Worcestershire, and I like having a large selection of mustards.
Have considered Costco parking lot group buys but a lot of planning effort
But basically place orders on a spreadsheet, have a single person buy bulk, break into smaller quantities and pay accordingly just outside the store.
Lotta work though, also gotta get to the store (car often required yet so costly)… if you turn it into deliveries you probably erase all savings and then some
But it’s fresher so you only use half as much.
But then it’s so delicious you’re cooking with exotic spices twice as often.
I doubt they’d have fish sauce because of the smell, but mine has soy sauce which is a good substitute.
Unironically, bulk barn lets you buy exactly how much you want.
Except for saffron.
I popped in to say Bulk Barn. I have friends from other countries that have told me that they can’t believe such a place exists.
I had no idea they were Canadian, just assumed American
I love Bulk Barn - perfect when you want a small handful of different colours of sprinkles, or 1 teaspoon of a very specific spice.
Isn’t that stuff more expensive than gold? I had a recipe which called for saffron, but it was an optional ingredient, and when I saw the price I put it back. I wanted to know whether or not I liked the recipe before I dropped $25 on a teaspoon of spice.
Once I saw a video of a chef that swears by putting fish sauce into his chili. I tried it and it tasted good. I no long have a fear of fish sauce. I put fish sauce in everything,
Ancient romans when they created garum:
What’s that?
Fish sauce
Mmmm umami 🤤
If you don’t like or don’t have any fish sauce for some reason, adding some worcestershire sauce (technically a fish sauce of sorts, I guess) accomplishes the same thing.
Or even soy sauce, both of them were created to imitate fish sauce.
“smells like feet, tastes like meat”
-Adam Ragusea
ooh I’ll have to try that! fish sauce brings an amazing flavor to many dishes
This is common in the Philippines for commonly needed things like shampoo etc. Downside is increased packaging litter
Could turn it to a no waste store. You can bring your own container and pay for what you fill
I could also see a store where you’ve got a running balance and get charged full price for a bottle of fish oil, bag of salt, whatever, but if you bring it back you get credited back most of what you spent based on the remaining weight.
At least until the one asshole comes along and cuts the cooking wine with vinegar or something to save a few cents.
I wouldn’t worry about vinegar as much as I’d worry about piss.
That sounds ripe for contamination
In Korea there are Costco Club Clubs where lots of people come together and purchase stuff under one account that later on split in smaller amounts based on how much they need.
Does the leader of the Club wield a Costco Club Clubs club to display their dominance?
Never heard of it, how do I get in?
Move to Korea, befriend the frugal people, get invited into the club.
Octsoc. The individual items are small and cheap. But a hot dog is like $12
Fish sauce isn’t going to go bad, no need to keep it in your fridge
LoL like seriously, just do a little research on how it’s made
I thought I was the only one! So often I don’t get food I want because I don’t want to throw food away. Half of every loaf of bread I buy ends up in the trash.
The other day I went to Costco, and did my standard pacing of the bakery while lamenting I couldn’t buy anything, because if I did then I would eat all three dozen cookies or a party size cake. Then I saw a normal amount of danishes, and it was like the clouds broke and a single ray of light shone on the package.
As I was checking out the woman was like “These are 2 for 1, you can get a second package.” “No thank you, I’m good with one.” “It’s really no problem, I could send someone to go grab it.” “I will pay you more not to. I don’t need this temptation in my life.”
Bread can be frozen. Bring them back as toast, French toast, croutons, bread pudding, or breadcrumbs for anything that needs breadcrumbs.
Freeze or refrigerate your bread.
Gold star to you for knowing your limits.
bring them to work? or to people you like? better yet look up your local food pantry and donate em.
My grocery store started selling tiny bottles of sauce, it was like 3 for $5.
“Great!”, I thought. “I can finally get only a few sandwiches worth of buffalo sauce, or try some weird new sauce I don’t want to gamble on a whole bottle of!”
NOPE
SPECIAL ATTACK: 1000 GENERIC HOT SAUCE BEAM
Bulk Barn does that! A bunch of bins; you scoop what you need and pay by weight. Good for spices and other baking ingredients. No fish oil though.
You may notice by the domain’s country code that Bulk Barn is only found in Canada.
You have been blocked
You are unable to access this website
Is the website also only available in Canada?
They just really dislike you. It worked for me
They might be blocking known or low-reputation VPN exits… I’m blocked as well. But I also came here to comment Bulk Barn, so 😎👍
Dollar General kinda already does this, and it makes food more expensive over all, as the packaging to product ratio is worse, and you end up paying a lot more for a lot less. Sometimes it’s so extreme you pay more for less product than if you wentt to a regular grocery store.
You ask your neighbours if you want that little of something.
This is the way, but , at least where I live, no one knows there neighbors any more.
Fish sauce adds umami so you can throw it a lot of things. I always use some in my chili.
Straight up, it’s an umami powerhouse. Also the fish smell is very heat sensitive, and disappears in everything from bolognese to wing marinade
Give me half a liter (about two cups) of milk. I can’t count how often I have opened a liter pack of milk for something and then had it go bad because I didn’t need it for anything else. There are a few premium brands that sell milk in smaller quantities but those are way more expensive than one liter of the cheap store brand.
Consider ultrafiltered milk. It’s higher in protein and lower in sugar, and lasts much longer.
I use it to make my morning coffee and even though I use a small amount every day, I always finish it before it comes close to going bad. The only issue is that it is more expensive, but I’m also not wasting any.
I noticed the grocery store near me started selling precut eggs by four instead of a dozen which is great since you usually only need like one or two eggs for baking stuff
One hint for anybody who is going to start buying eggs in smaller quantities… double-check to make sure they’re not already hard-cooked.
Precut?
Like they cut the carton into four eggs instead of the dozen pack
Ah, that makes more sense. I thought it was the eggs that were cut, but then you start talking about baking with them and that stopped making sense.
Pop over the border; we’ve got 500ml cartons of milk in the Netherlands.
I can get a pint of milk where I’m at. Only whole milk though. Great because we just have it on hand just in case the kid still gets some calories if they dont eat enough otherwise. And ofc the vit D/C.
