8 Issues or Fewer
I learned how to go grocery shopping from my mother, at the Safeway that was located 2 miles from our home. It was an easy routine. You start in the produce section, working your way up and down the aisles, around the store. Then at the end, at the last instant possible, you would forage into the frozen food aisles so that your purchases would not melt between the store and home.
Occasionally I would assist my grandmother in doing her shopping at the same time. Once I had my driver's license I would be responsible for taking Grandma to the store when Mom and Dad were out of town. Shopping with Grandma was always a test of patience and will. It was only partly due to the fact that it would take the woman over an hour to buy a week's worth of groceries for one person. It was only partly due to the fact that she would spend $75 a week for a cart HEAPING full of food, and somehow manage to eat it all herself. It was mainly due to the fact that she shopped her way down her list. We would start out in the produce section, leading you to believe that you would follow the normal world order, but once you left the friendly world of fruits and vegetables you would zig and zag your way throughout the store, gathering items in whatever order they showed up on the list that week. Prune juice, bread, canned vegetatbles, we were all over the place.
The habits were reinforced in my first apartment in colllege. Cub Foods, which is where any self-respecting college student shops because the prices are so damn low, funnels you into the produce section, daring you to start your shopping somewhere else.
And thus I've been gathering my groceries without a second thought for over a decade. Until tonight. Tonight I found myself in a local grocery store that I have frequented several times in the last 3 years. More often to grab one quick thing for dinner than to do significant grocery shopping. Tonight I had a list of five items. And, for some reason still unbeknownst to me, I did my shopping in reverse today - starting in the deli and working my way around to the produce section. And once I realized that I was breaking every norm that had been beaten into me for as long as I can remember.
And while contemplating this fact, trying to come to grips with it in my narrow world view, I realized that I've been swimming upstream for the last couple of months. I always shop the current grocery store of choice in reverse. And I don't know why. I'm not sure what that means yet, but I'm intensely curious to know if I will move back to the produce-first method of my youth next time I go shopping.
This is what my life has come to, I'm having moral dilemmas about how I do my grocery shopping.
Occasionally I would assist my grandmother in doing her shopping at the same time. Once I had my driver's license I would be responsible for taking Grandma to the store when Mom and Dad were out of town. Shopping with Grandma was always a test of patience and will. It was only partly due to the fact that it would take the woman over an hour to buy a week's worth of groceries for one person. It was only partly due to the fact that she would spend $75 a week for a cart HEAPING full of food, and somehow manage to eat it all herself. It was mainly due to the fact that she shopped her way down her list. We would start out in the produce section, leading you to believe that you would follow the normal world order, but once you left the friendly world of fruits and vegetables you would zig and zag your way throughout the store, gathering items in whatever order they showed up on the list that week. Prune juice, bread, canned vegetatbles, we were all over the place.
The habits were reinforced in my first apartment in colllege. Cub Foods, which is where any self-respecting college student shops because the prices are so damn low, funnels you into the produce section, daring you to start your shopping somewhere else.
And thus I've been gathering my groceries without a second thought for over a decade. Until tonight. Tonight I found myself in a local grocery store that I have frequented several times in the last 3 years. More often to grab one quick thing for dinner than to do significant grocery shopping. Tonight I had a list of five items. And, for some reason still unbeknownst to me, I did my shopping in reverse today - starting in the deli and working my way around to the produce section. And once I realized that I was breaking every norm that had been beaten into me for as long as I can remember.
And while contemplating this fact, trying to come to grips with it in my narrow world view, I realized that I've been swimming upstream for the last couple of months. I always shop the current grocery store of choice in reverse. And I don't know why. I'm not sure what that means yet, but I'm intensely curious to know if I will move back to the produce-first method of my youth next time I go shopping.
This is what my life has come to, I'm having moral dilemmas about how I do my grocery shopping.
posted by Swankette at 11:52 PM
1 Comments:
It's funny how you get into a routine. Back in CA, I used to shop at Ralph's and I always started in the liquor section and ended in the produce. They redesigned the store, and I then started in produce.
At the store I go to now, I start in produce and end up in the bakery section...and if I have to do to an unfamiliar store, I immediately go to produce...
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