The recent Times article about cooking with ingredients from 99-cent stores, and kottke's comments and assorted links, reminds me of my own experiences with 99 cent stores in my neighborhood. I thought I had written about this, but it turns out I never did, except for a brief mention.

For me it's not so much about trying to make the food seem fancy, though at one point I did sometimes buy food at the 99-cent store. (Their imitation Strawberry Newtons are not too good.) The store I frequent, "99 Cent World," is simply huge, probably a lot like the Jack's mentioned in the article, and has an amazing selection of housewares, hardware, kitchen supplies, and so on. The only catch is that anything you buy there is pretty likely to fail in some way. But because you only paid 99 cents for it, there's not much harm done other than the physical waste, and it actually becomes fun to try to guess what's going to happen. A few reviews of past purchases:

• A plastic plate and soup bowl. For at least a year, the only vessels I ate from at home. I'm still using the plate, but the bowl eventually developed some cracks.
• Sponges. The spongy part separated from the more abrasive scrubbing layer after not very long.
• A level, allen wrenches, sandpaper, screwdrivers, and many other hardware items, most of which worked out just fine, although one jeweler's screwdriver had a tip mysteriously break off.
• A couple of cocktail and martini glasses for my old-timey cocktails project. A connoisseur might sniff at them but I have no complaints.
• A shower curtain set that lasted maybe seven months before a couple of the holes tore through.

Pretty positive overall, though I'm probably forgetting some of the items that didn't work out. PS: the store has the great neon sign "Everything 99 cents and up."