grocery shopping

by

Wednesday Evening Randomosity

Listen, I endured the drab wet drag of April purely because of the promise of May flowers and May has brought NOTHING BUT RAIN so far. Okay, also, I had no choice. But mainly the May flowers thing. Today, in particular, has been miserable. A persistent seething mist that is somehow much more dismal and spirit-breaking than actual rain, and everything is so water-logged and sloppy, and there’s no relief in sight. The weather mirrors, in so many ways, the news. 

So I am in the mood for some good ol’ mental diversionary tactics. Join me for some randomosity, will you?

I went back to the grocery store today. My husband has a work meeting tonight which I am using as a handy excuse to buy some prepared food that I merely have to heat rather than making an actual meal. I don’t love going to the grocery store multiple times in one week, but doing so meant that I could check out the produce situation on a mid-Wednesday rather than first thing Monday. The produce section was fully-stocked (asparagus! broccoli! iceberg lettuce aplenty!), so I feel fairly confident that the bare spots from Monday were a simple matter of timing rather than supply chain issues or shortages. 

Going to the grocery store today also meant that I could collect photographic evidence of the artisan baby iceberg lettuces. What do you think the other customers think, when I pulled out my phone and began taking baby-iceberg glamour shots?

I don’t know if you can see it on that sign, but these are “personal sized iceberg lettuce about the size of a softball!” A softball-sized lettuce is not worth $1.50, even if you claim it is “artisan.” Which… how? Doesn’t “artisan” mean crafted or made by hand??? Man, these marketers are really working hard for their money.

Here is the baby lettuce next to the actual heads of iceberg. There is no way that two baby lettuces equal one regular one. No way.

The tonic aisle was still full of holes, although I was able to get a bottle of diet tonic. My gin will be delighted. 

Speaking of gin: I bought this particular bottle because of a grocery store loophole. The grocery store in question is not my regular place. It’s a bigger, less nice supermarket that has a liquor store tacked onto one side. It’s very close to Carla’s school, so sometimes I pop in there if I need something quickly. The big problem with this grocery store is that it is chronically understaffed. This has always been an issue, and you can imagine that it has become even more significant with the staffing shortages that everyone is facing right now. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than two cash registers in operation at a time. And there are self-checkouts, but the lines at those are always enormous. This store has a loophole, though. Which is that you can buy groceries (as long as you don’t need any produce to be weighed) in the attached liquor store. Carla and I were there very late, because I’d been busy with the volunteer event I was chairing, and the lines were soooo long, and we only had a few items (including a frozen pizza for me because I can handle a twelve-hour day of volunteering but I cannot handle anything more complicated than heating up a frozen pizza on top of that), so I grabbed a bottle of gin and we paid in twenty seconds. The cashier, bless her, asked for my ID, and I said, “You need my ID? Can’t you see the many decades of exhaustion etched on my face?” and then Carla said to the cashier, “Do you also sell ginantonic?” and perhaps I need to reserve my gin-and-tonic hours for after she goes to bed. 

I had a Very Stressful dream last night. I was supposed to read a poem at a friend’s wedding. When I showed up – wearing the navy dress that all the bridesmaids were wearing – my friend was aghast; I was supposed to be wearing a DIFFERENT navy dress! I wondered if I had time to run home and change into the dress I bought and did not wear for Passover, but in the dream logic, I didn’t make any effort to figure out how much time I did or did not have. Instead, I spent the remainder of the VERY LENGTHY dream trying in vain to find the poem I was supposed to read in my email or online. At some point, I turned the dress I was wearing inside out, so at least it was a different color than the bridesmaids’, but the bride refused to talk to me. What the hell is this dream trying to tell me? What particular stress am I manifesting?

It feels like people all around me are getting Covid. A friend yesterday told me her husband tested positive; her kid tested positive this morning. A second friend’s husband tested positive today. This is not a new phenomenon, but it hasn’t happened in a while. I am not a fan. 

I have a credit card that I don’t use very often, and when I went to use it recently I discovered it had expired. Except that I had never received a replacement. So I went online and checked to make sure no one was running up charges (not yet at least) and then emailed the company, saying, “Hi, my card expired, but I never got a new one.” The response I got was, “Hey! Our records show we sent you a card in December. If you have not received your new card, let us know by calling us!” Um. Did you READ my previous email? In which I said that I never got my new card? Sigh. So much for dealing with this issue quickly and easily via email. Now I have to CALL SOMEONE.  

In other mildly unsettling credit card news, my husband recently got an email that he’d been approved for the credit card he’d signed up for! A card that he had NOT signed up for. He was able to cancel the card, but marveled at the fact that the person who had tried to steal his identity for nefarious credit-card obtaining purposes had used his email address. Why? Then yesterday we got the card itself in the mail. It was sent to our actual address. What? What is wrong with this identity thief? Is this some identity theft testing process? A credit card company that tries to get you to accept their card by pretending you signed up for it? Very odd indeed. 

Usually at this time of year, I find myself feeling pre-resentful and grumpy about Mother’s Day. This year I am feeling very at peace with whatever happens. I haven’t made any plans for myself, nor asked for anything, and I am not grumpy one whit. I mean, there’s still time to feel resentful and grumpy, but I’m enjoying the absolute not-caring that I feel at this moment. It’s very freeing. 

Here is a random photo of blue skies and flowering trees which is the OPPOSITE of what it looks like outside right now.

Someone made a Serious Error several years ago that resulted in the Tooth Fairy leaving personalized notes to my daughter each time she loses a tooth. Because of this really thoughtless oversight on someone’s part, my daughter has been corresponding with the Tooth Fairy – asking questions, requesting fairy dust, wanting to know the Tooth Fairy’s name. And then today, I made a Serious Error by saying, before I had fully awakened, that the Muffin Fairy had left an extra blueberry muffin on my daughter’s breakfast plate. She latched onto that wording immediately. I told her that I was the Muffin Fairy and that there was no real Muffin Fairy and she squinted at me and said, “If you are the Muffin Fairy,” – which again I had literally just invented five seconds ago – “then are you the Tooth Fairy, too?” 

I try very hard to never lie to my child. And by that I mean never lie to her face while still trying to preserve the magical fabrications that I remember bringing so much joy to my own childhood. So I adopted an expression of exaggerated skepticism and said, “Why would you think that? Do I look like a fairy?” and her squint deepened and I said, “And what would I do with teeth? And how would I possibly go around to the houses of everyone who lost a tooth?” And she said, “No, silly, you wouldn’t go to everyone’s house. Only your own kid.” And then I went into the pantry and changed the subject. But a few minutes later, she directed me to write something on a piece of paper so she could compare it to the Tooth Fairy’s handwriting. WHO, may I ask, overlooked the fact that she has been keeping her correspondence with the Tooth Fairy?

Did I tell you that Carla bought a jumpsuit? Is that the right word for it? We went to Carter’s the other day and she found this truly adorable one-piece pants outfit and immediately wanted it. I mean, I wanted it also, it was so chic and lovely. I would look terrible in it, especially considering it only came in child sizes. The problem with it was that it had a button at the back of the neck. A child’s jumpsuit. Had a button. At the back of the neck. I have never understood buttons on the back of children’s clothing EVER. But how – HOW, I ask you – does it make any iota of sense to have a button closure on the back of a CHILD’S JUMPSUIT? How is a CHILD supposed to navigate that when addressing normal and not-infrequent necessities of life presumably whilst at school?

She found a different jumpsuit, also cute, with NO BUTTONS ANYWHERE. She tried it on and demonstrated to me how she would remove it for bathroom break purposes. She wore it to school today and looked very adorable indeed. And by “adorable” I mean, of course, “stylish and grown-up” because Carla has reached an age where “cute” is now code for “babyish.” I cannot refer to her as “cute” anymore or she reacts with disgust.

Apparently I am now on a Carla Stories Kick. Yesterday, we had such a lovely time together after school. We have been looking for Jeff the Great Blue Heron every time we drive past his pond and have only seen him ONCE. So Carla asked if we could walk over to his pond after school. The rain stopped just for this purpose. It was so nice. We didn’t see Jeff, but we did see many Canada geese couples and their fluffy yellow babies. We also saw some goldfinches and some killdeer and some mallards, and Carla described at length how killdeer have a very distinctive call and asked me if I was aware that there was such a thing as a GREEN heron, and then talked a bit about an imaginary bird journal that she would like to keep. She held my hand while we crossed the street and then kept holding my hand and I just kept grinning at her and thinking, My God, I am so grateful for this child. It may sound mundane and silly and it was but it is also an afternoon I never, ever want to forget. 

This is not the most flattering angle of Jeff, but it is very difficult to photograph a subject as reluctant as he is. He is much more magnificent and graceful in person.

I may have zero sunshine but I did pick up some more May flowers for myself: a bunch of hot pink Gerber daisies to add to my yellow tulips from Monday.

by

Grocery Store Report; Dinners This Week

I am NOT in the mood to think about dinner, not one bit, but I did go to grocery store and go through all the motions of buying food that could potentially be put together in a variety of combinations on one’s plate. 

The grocery store has, of late, been… well, not worrisome, exactly. But every time I go there, I feel the parallel lines between my eyebrows deepening just a little in watchful pre-concern. Today, the produce section looked like it had been looted by a colony of ravenous hares. (Please note that a group of rabbits is also known as a fluffle, which is just too adorable for words, and which, sadly, does not have the right tone for my current level of grocery store apprehension.)  There was no asparagus at all (I found some later in the prepared foods section), a single bunch of broccoli – even the section of more-expensive broccoli crowns was meager, and the crowns themselves looked like they were old – and the bell peppers were nearly non-existent. The boxed/bagged lettuce seemed plentiful, at least. But there were only TWO heads of iceberg lettuce at all. Except – and please share if your grocery store is doing this same kind of lettuce mind game – there were several two-packs of “artisan miniature iceberg lettuce” or however it is that they are trying to disguise the heads of lettuce that are too small to be sold as regular heads of lettuce. Every time I see these stunted, tiny twin packs I roll my eyes, but I have never taken a photo. I will try to remember to do so next time so we can all scoff at them together. 

The berries were moderately plentiful, but the limes and lemons looked picked through and the only other available fruits were grapefruits, a few oranges, and some pears. I did get some kiwis, I suppose, which is good because Carla is in a kiwi kick. I suppose there was, in reality, an abundance of produce in a wide variety. But it felt like very low-stock, with lots of empty spaces. And perhaps that was due to it being first thing Monday morning, but I just don’t know. 

The rest of the store seemed… sparse in odd ways. Like… the tonic section looked very picked over, with lots of holes on the shelves (the hole that most affected me personally was the one where the diet tonic should have been grumble grumble), but really there was a lot of tonic to be had. The same with the yogurt: holes and empty shelves, but in and among LOTS of yogurt. I was irritated to find that the peach Two Good yogurt had expired back on April 23, but there were enough other options to get plenty for the week. Cream cheese seemed very lacking – the foil-wrapped rectangles were not in evidence, nor were the tubs of whipped cream cheese Carla likes. I still have a couple of boxes from the false-alarm cream cheese shortage of last fall though (possibly expired), so I merely squinted at the empty cream cheese section and moved on. 

Frozen pancakes were not only available, they were on SALE. I had promised my husband – who is joining me on Keto! – that I would get him some frozen egg bites, but they were missing from the shelves. 

My grocery store has rearranged the meat section so I find it hard to evaluate whether it truly seems bare (there were three pork tenderloins total, and only a few packages of pork chops) or whether it’s just unfamiliar. 

Things seem VERY expensive. I hesitate to admit that I am in a position where I buy things from a list, and rarely make note of the price unless it is wildly shocking (like the 2-for-$7 iceberg lettuce of last fall). But I am pretty sure that pints of raspberries and blackberries would normally, at this time of year, be $2 a package rather than $3.50. And containers of strawberries would typically be going for $2.50 a package rather than $4.99. 

The biggest price escalation I spotted today was goat cheese. I am 99% certain that I could get a 4-ounce log of goat cheese for $3.99 in the past; today it was $5.29, and that was for a brand I’ve never heard of before. The kind I usually get was $5.49. That is a BIG jump. Cheese in general seems to have really gone up in price – unfortunate considering that we eat a LOT of cheese, especially when doing keto. 

I also bought wheat germ for the first time, because I made a loaf of banana chocolate chip bread on Carla’s request; she’d tasted it at a friend’s house, and I got the recipe from the friend’s mother and it calls for equal parts flour, whole wheat flour, and wheat germ. For anyone who has also never before purchased wheat germ, and suddenly finds themselves needing it, it was in the cereal aisle, NOT the baking aisle like I thought it would be. I also scoured the aisle that has all the hemp hearts and chia seeds and whey protein and collagen powder before finally asking an employee. 

Carla has asked me to FREEZE the banana chip bread once it is made, which… I am not going to do until after she has tasted it fresh.

I bought some cheery yellow tulips as well, on sale for $6.99 a bunch; there used to be a section of flowers that were 3 for $15, but several weeks ago that changed to 3 for $18, so I understand that flowers are no exception to inflation. These tulips were one of a handful of bunches that looked remotely acceptable; the others looked like they had already spent several long days preening for the customers and were now haggard and limp. Perhaps it is the persistent rain of this particular spring that is causing the lackluster flowers; perhaps there will be an influx later in the week in time for Mother’s Day.

Okay. I have dawdled long enough. Now it is time to figure out what to eat this week.

Dinners for the Week of May 2 to May8

What are you eating this week, the FIRST WEEK OF MAY OMG?

by

Cake Update Already, Grocery Store Report

Well, you bolstered my spirits SO MUCH after yesterday’s cake talk (please continue to share your cake dreams; it is a delightful distraction) that I felt totally pumped up and ready to make my cake call. I fished out the business card the baker had given me, phone in hand, ready to dial… and noticed that she has a website. 

Listen, I KNEW that she had a website – I’d looked at it before Carla and I went to the event she hosted. My recollection was that the site listed some of the cookies and baked goods she normally offers at the farmer’s market, and that it mentioned cakes on the menu, but that the only thing it said about cakes was that they are custom. 

But I wanted to research as much as possible, without doing SO MUCH research that I would lose my phone call determination, so I quickly visited her site. Turns out I was wrong: she has a page on her site devoted to cakes. Not only did it list the price per cake (THIRTY DOLLARS), it had an ONLINE FORM that I could fill out with all of my details!!! 

You will understand that the clouds parted and the sun shone down on me and the air filled with the gentle chorus of angels singing, “Ahhhh!” in harmonious unison.

I included as much detail as I could (and the form was nice and long), and left my name, phone number, and email address in case I left out critical details, or in case she refuses to work with lemon curd on principle, I don’t know; I will angst about literally anything. And then I paid VIA PAYPAL (the angels’ song crescendos). THIRTY DOLLARS. I thought for sure I was looking at least $75, if not $100-$150. But no. Thirty. Dollars. 

Then, it DID turn out I had left out important information. But I learned this because she emailed me because she is clearly my cake soul mate. (She wanted to know how many people would be eating the cake, if I had a color scheme, and if I wanted any decorations/words.) Then we figured out where to meet to pick it up, and voila! Done! 

I am very pleased. And honestly, even if the cake is so-so, the purchase experience was SUCH a good experience on its own I will definitely patronize her again. 

By the way, I told Carla when I picked her up from school that I’d ordered my birthday cake! Soothed by everyone’s comments, I was completely unfazed by having done it myself: it is not a big deal, and lo, it was not. But Carla did not get the memo. She was AGHAST. “WHY did you do that, Mommy?” she exclaimed. “You’re NOT supposed to do that!” And I said, “If I don’t do it, who will?” “DADDY!” She was further scandalized when I said she and I were going to pick up the cake after school on my birthday. “You can’t LOOK at it, Mommy!” she said, eyes wide. “DON’T LOOK.” 

On to the grocery store report, which I am adding here simply because I like reading other people’s grocery store reports. 

I went this morning, which is not my usual morning. Also, we are expecting around a foot of snow overnight, so people are panicking. (Is that why I went to the grocery store when I’d already stopped there Monday afternoon? PERHAPS.) So either of those variables could be responsible for the store being much more crowded than usual. 

There was an elderly couple who was on the same route that I follow. I swear I have seen them or their couple-twin before, because they are a) darling and b) incapable of standing in a way that does not occupy 75% of the aisle. I am constantly saying “Excuse me!” “Ope! Sorry! Can I squeeze by?” to these people. They also deliberate long and hard about every item they buy. Seriously. I stood beside them in front of the lettuce and they stared at the romaine for what felt like many minutes. I could NOT get away from them. They were even in the cracker aisle, where I had to replenish our Triscuit supply. Carla is very into Triscuits lately. 

Anyway: As usual, our store was fairly well-stocked, although I felt a little… wary, as I made my way around. 

First, there is yet another reorganization of the produce section happening. It seems to me like they have added black trays/bins to the normal shelves, and for all I know, it’s to enhance cleanliness and make washing/removing/refilling the trays quicker and easier. But what it LOOKED LIKE is that they are finding ways to make less produce look as abundant as ever.

And it is still abundant! I had a rainbow of bell peppers to choose from! When I was a kid, we were lucky to find a single wrinkled green pepper at the grocery store in the middle of winter, let alone a pile of not only green peppers but red and orange and yellow ones.

Lettuce was bountiful.

Berries were back in stock, although the berry section was rather small. That’s probably just the time of year, though. Or they are winnowing the blue-, black-, and raspberries to make room for an influx of Valentine’s Day strawberries. 

The banana and onion sections were full. There was NO CELERY, which was worrying for a moment… but when I circled back around to get more mushrooms (I was adding new items to my meal plan as I went; see yesterday’s post for an updated list), the celery had been restocked. 

The cereal aisle had some worrying holes – no Rice Krispies. But I did snag a box of Wheat Chex – not that we need Wheat Chex. My thought process was something like, “If we run out of power and have to dip into pantry food, we can all eat Wheat Chex” which is nonsensical, but the anxious brain has its own sense of inarguable logic.

Pasta was well stocked, except that rigatoni was missing. This is my husband’s preferred pasta shape (I am penne 4 life), so it was notable. I got him some campanelli; he can be soothed occasionally by the ruffles. 

The freezer section still had pancakes, and I just bought pancakes Monday so I walked right past. I know! I am the epitome of restraint! Still no French toast sticks. 

The chicken nugget section was VERY thin. Probably six or seven bags of various breaded chicken options total. Since we just emptied a bag, leaving me with one bag in the freezer, I picked up another bag. Since the pandemic, I have been fully indoctrinated into the Cult of the Backup. As Nicole said the other day, “I always have backups in the pantry of household staple. If the backup comes into use, then I buy another backup. It gives me an enormous amount of comfort to know that if we run out of an item on the main floor, there is a backup in the pantry downstairs.” YES. This is the one true way. Someday I will convert my husband to our movement. What’s not to like? We always have cookies. 

The ground beef section was VERY low. Once again, the prepared foods counter was closed. But it was open when I popped in Monday afternoon – it must simply have shorter hours these days, probably due to staffing issues. 

Lunchables were available. My daughter’s favorite muffins were not, but her second favorite muffins were, so I grabbed some of those. Bread was plentiful. 

The one thing I regret not grabbing was a package of tulips, on sale for $6.99 a bunch. (That’s… a lot. But I have been eyeing the tulips my past few trips, and I think it was running $8.99 before. Two dollars off is a good savings.)