Chapter 4. Bucket Lists

I went on a mission to acquire buckets today. YES,  I could certainly go buy some. But there are a few reasons I won't, not the least of which involves about 50 bucks for ten of them. Also, it seems very weird (meaning very bad for the environment) to me that stores that sell buckets, such as WinCo, refuse to give away used buckets they got with bakery mixes in them (oh god no, those "bakery items" in big chain stores are not freshly baked in the truest sense of the phrase). A buck's a buck, but are they REALLY advocating manufacture of new buckets rather than the reuse of buckets that end up in the dump?

Yes, I did ask. And yes, they told me I could not have the used ones, that I'd have to buy new ones in the bulk department, that they don't give them away for free any more because they sell them now. Well, I really don't want to shop there, in that case.

One thing I discovered is that although I thought it would be easy to rinse the sugary residue out of the buckets, it wasn't. It's actually very very greasy. OH man, my hair is like three feet long and I'm imagining what the inside of my bathtub drain looks like with them hairs all nice and Crisco'ed up. All I can say is, freaking EW.

For the record, Raley's and Food Source both told me I was welcome to whatever buckets they had around when I asked. One Food Source clerk offered to call me when they had a few. That's nice, and it makes me willing to spend a little bit more money at Food Source, even though I really do like the bulk department at WinCo.

I mean...DID like.

But I also noticed something horrifying: now I don't want to buy any of the baked goods in any grocery stores. I was reading the label on that bucket, and it makes me very glad I'm on my whole foods kick. OK I'm also happy about the whole foods kick because I lost seven pounds just since Jan. 2, with no effort whatsoever, but...nobody should eat the stuff in those buckets. NO, it's not better stuff than the pre-packaged garbage. It's exactly the same, or worse. Read this list of ingredients in the Garlic Spread from one unnamed store:

       Partially hydrogenated vegetable oil (soybean and cottonseed oils)
       Water
       Garlic
       Salt
       Parsley
       Mono and Diglycerides
       Calcium Disodium
       EDTA (preservative)
       Potassium Sorbate added as a preservative
       Annatto (color)
       Artificial Flavor
       Vitamin A Palmitate

Someone somewhere is making a good living manufacturing that crap. Can you imagine?

"Hey Sylvia, what does your dad do?"

"He manufactures borderline toxic chemical additives for food and sells it in 40 lb. buckets."



You can get (AND ARE GETTING) your chemicals, dry or liquid,

From nice places like this. Gee, doesn't this sound like a grand idea?









Most of those ingredients are only there because the substance is in a bucket. If it was in a bowl in your house, it'd just be butter or olive oil, garlic, parsley, and salt (maybe or maybe not on that last one, but that probably IS the thing that makes you want to eat a lot of it). Actually, those things are also what would be in it if the store bakery was actually making it (whatever IT is) fresh.

Oh dear goddess. I am so not typing this stuff. You know that sweet white drizzle on cinnamon rolls and other such goodies? The stuff you figured was powdered sugar and a little milk, like your grandma used to mix up?

Well...in bucket form, it's basically grease with powdered sugar and chemicals in it. And I don't suppose anyone will be surprised to hear that maple icing has no maple in it, right? Well let me tell you what is in real maple icing: Maple syrup, egg whites, and a pinch of salt. You add nothing that came out of a total of eight giant vats in China or New Jersey.

And this is from the "good" stores! What the hell is so good about them??? Wouldn't you be AMAZED if they made something with that real maple frosting on it?

The fact that people will figure out the poisons they are being fed...now THAT is a good reason not to give the buckets away for free.