I have a strange addiction to grocery shopping. Some people like to buy shoes, cars or electronics. But me, I love to stroll through the aisles filled with shiny boxes of breakfast cereal and cookies.
Pulling into the parking lot of the store is an adventure in itself. I usually go to the store with my sister in her late model Honda Odyssey proudly displaying the dings and scratches of many parking lot skirmishes with other cars, yellow-painted concrete barriers and shopping carts. Ever leave a store and wonder if a dent or scratch on your car door was new or just something you hadn't noticed before?
I walk in the store and try to detach my selected shopping cart from the thousand of others that are connected together by the infant seat belts. One hard yank and a pinched finger later and my cart is free from its brothers. Need to check the wheels to make sure they work okay. Wheels that seem pretty smooth and easy to push now, might turn into a manual lawn mower in knee high grass when the cart is filled with bottled water and gallons of milk. This one's good. I envision the bubonic plague on the cart handle so I pull a half dried sanitary wipe from the dispenser near the door and try to scrub the germs into oblivion. Wonder if the friction heat in combination with the alcohol will burn the bacteria into microscopic toast.
Starting in the dairy section I work through my shopping list. Its necessary to take a deep breath before attempting to pull milk from the cooler. Patience is a virtue here as I might be tempted to use elbows and the front edge of my cart as a battering ram to get near the one-percent milk. Years of crusted milk spills hang onto the cooler shelves along with dust and human hair. I pluck a carton from the fray and inspect it quickly to make sure my choice is not guilty of adding to the gray debris stalagmites Fortunately, I'm clean...and so is my carton.
No deli meat this trip, the line is way too long. We'll have to settle for canned meat and peanut butter for sandwiches this week. No lunch is worth dealing the pulsating irritated group of humanity in front of the glass case. Anyway, Murphy's Law would have me pulling the number behind the person asking about the salt content and preservatives in the meats and then ask for a quarter pound of each type of ham cut extra thin.
I'm not allowed to go down the cereal aisle until the twenty boxes of fibrous, fruity and just plain junk breakfast fare in our pantry are down to ten boxes. As I pass, I can see gleaming packaging beckoning me with seductive words like "heart healthy", "no GMO", and "high fiber". How am I expected to resist their lure? After all, don't the food companies pay tons of money to their marketing people to make sure that we (the consumer) are hypnotized by their magic words? Resisting the terrible temptation to buy a box of Sugar Fruity Fiber Pellets, I slowly keep walking to the next aisle.
Bisquick is the next item on my shopping list. Where would that be...must be the baking aisle. Putting my cart in reverse, because I'd already passed that section, I walk down looking through the cake mixes, sugar and flour. Let's see, there's whole wheat flour, unbleached flour, cake flour, bread flour, rye flour, spelt flour, barley flour...but no sign of Bisquick. After all, isn't Bisquick a baking mix with one of its twenty-five ingredients being flour? Who set this store up anyway? Bisquick should be in the baking section. I ask one of the many helpful stocking people where I could find one of my scavenger hunt items known as Bisquick...you know, the stuff in the bright yellow box with the pancakes on the front. As soon as I said it, I knew before the clerk replied that my box would be found in the breakfast aisle. Guess what, back to the cereal aisle....can I handle passing through the cereals again? I send my sister to get it for me as I head to produce.
When I walk into the produce section I hear the song that plays when Link lifts up that little triangle thingee. All those shiny, brightly colored shapes. All those healthy and nutritious forms that you don't need to feel guilty about eating. They are so beautiful....I can't stop looking at them. I begin by picking out my avocados -- not too soft or too hard and they must have the little stub on the end or they'll ripen too fast. In the bag they go. Then the tomatoes. I search through the different varieties looking for those from the U.S. Nope, those are from Mexico...and those from Canada. At last I find some from the U.S. still stuck on their dried up old vine pieces. I often wonder if that is just another marketing thing to make us think they are fresher (even thought the vine is totally dried up) or if it is just an easier method to pick them up and put them into the bag. Personally, I find the vines poke holes into the tomatoes when you're driving home like evil little fingers.
I pick out a bag of tangerines, some apples, grapes and a bunch of bananas--being careful to watch out for tarantulas and other exotic spiders that might be lurking among the produce. Broccoli, brussels sprouts and cauliflower round out my cruciferous choices (which means "gas producing vegetables" in Swahili).
The store set up is pretty slick...they put the bakery section right next to the checkout. It's like landing on Boardwalk before you get to pass Go. No Baltic prices here, folks. The pies and cakes are expensive because they've got you in the carb trap. You pick out all your healthy fruit and veggies and then, wham!, you smell the yummy goodness of baked goods. After all, if you've eaten a meal of lettuce leaves and brussels sprouts, surely you can afford to eat a piece of pie. An apple pie and two packages of cinnamon rolls go into the cart. I give up...marketing wins!
I try to organize my purchases on the checkout conveyor belt, putting the heavy stuff first, refrigerator stuff next and last my produce and chips. I'm not often successful at getting my purchases on the belt quick enough. Personally, I like the cashier who talks to her bagger or the customer in front of me. It gives me time to line up my milk cartons. But sometimes I get an eager beaver who is trying to break the worlds record for quickest grocery cashier. The conveyor starts and stops in a staccato turning my cartons and boxes into falling dominoes and creating an avalanche of my carefully selected fruits. As I try to recapture my groceries, I need to keep an eye on the bagger. I see him placing my Windex into the same bag as my broccoli -- excuse me, but does your mom boil her broccoli in Windex?...then put it in a separate bag.
Back outside in the parking lot -- and I don't think I notice any new dents or scratches on the bumper -- my sister and I begin to load my treasures into the back of the van. I get a wonderful sense of satisfaction as we drive away. I know that my overflowing pantry and already-full fridge will welcome their new additions. I have this thing about running out of food. I feel good. We'll have plenty of fresh and tasty food to last a while....or at least until next week.
Grocery stores are the burmuda triangles of the store worlds. They tend to suck you in, most victims never to be seen again. But when the few lucky survivors do finally emerge, it is usually with a cart full of weird produce that looks like wood and gunky green health juices. Absolutely nothing they had on their shopping list to begin with! I think it's a government conspiracy.
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