When we lived in Hanover, PA a few years ago, we started buy­ing boxes of a Lan­caster del­i­cacy: John Cope’s Toasted Dried Sweet Corn.

It’s good, and dif­fi­cult to repli­cate. No other corn­meal or bready prepa­ra­tions are sub­sti­tutes. There are no doubt a num­ber of deli­cious recipes pos­si­ble, but the one that is printed at the top of the box (or bag, these days) is still best, just as using Jiffy Mix for corn muffins is bet­ter than the super­nu­mer­ary sug­ges­tions of waf­fles or even johnnycakes.

Also, in re John Cope’s effort: it’s cheap.

Buy it from the man­u­fac­turer, or their dis­trib­u­tor, in 12-​​bag cases, and includ­ing ship­ping it’s less than $3.50 per box.

Zingerman’s Deli, here in lovely Ann Arbor, charges more than $11 for a sin­gle 7.5 oz tin. Because it’s arti­sanal, no doubt. Or maybe the tin is worth the effort, since it’s made by hand by Russ­ian Amish peo­ple specif­i­cally for Zingerman’s, and flown here sus­tain­ably or some­thing. Because that would be a $7 metal tin, I guess.

Plus ship­ping, if you don’t live in lovely Ann Arbor.

And if you search for it at Ama­zon, you can pay a mere 100% markup. Plus ship­ping and han­dling. Or for some kind of odd bulk repack­ag­ing I’ve never seen before, slightly less.

Let’s just sit our­selves down a minute, in these days of local com­mu­ni­tar­ian sen­ti­ments and eco­nomic cri­sis and belt-​​tightening and thought­ful econ­omy and direct com­pen­sa­tion of artists and crafts­peo­ple for their intel­li­gent work and sus­tain­able trans­porta­tion and stuff… and think about those alternatives.

Less than $3.50 per unit, net, for twelve you could share among friends. Said money sent direct to the man­u­fac­turer, I assume. At least closer to them than any alter­na­tive in the sup­ply chain.

Or $8 or more for retail pric­ing of the same vol­ume. In a metal bin, if you’re really fancy.

I note, by way of a fuck­ing point: It is not ille­gal, to date, for pur­chasers to enter into infor­mal agree­ments with one another to col­lab­o­ra­tively seek bar­gains by shar­ing infor­ma­tional or prac­ti­cal costs.

I’m going to spend Decem­ber think­ing about that, OK? The whole damned Black Fri­day of a month.

And my mind may wan­der from dried sweet corn to beer, or other foods, or books, or mag­a­zine sub­scrip­tions, or toys, or DVD rentals, or copy-​​editing one another’s writ­ing, or con­sult­ing refer­rals, or news­pa­per arti­cle writ­ing, or pho­tog­ra­phy, or design, or gar­den­ing, or build­ing houses and com­mu­ni­ties. It might make a bit of sense for me to look at car­toon­ish John Cope, with his stereo­typ­i­cal bushy beard, and think a minute.

Just one minute. Espe­cially if I’m tempted to play at Black-​​bumper sus­tain­abil­ity, and con­spic­u­ously con­sume arti­sanal foods with­out think­ing about the sup­ply chain that got them to me.