My husband, Peter, likes buying in bulk. Peter hates paying shipping fees. He never wants to run out of anything and he loves a bargain. This is why we buy coffee in enormous bags, crackers by the case, nuts and raisins 10 pounds at a time, rice in 20-pound bags, and beans in 50-pound bags. It is sometimes a little alarming when the boxes arrive. I’m not quite sure how he got this way. Peter was the youngest child of six, but I don’t think his family went through any extraordinary hardship. My mother is the ninth of eleven children raised during ...