Extravagance
I remember Jim telling me years ago that he and his wife took one of their daughters out for “retail therapy” - which I had never heard of before. This evening, after a fairly rough morning and finding myself sporadically glued to the kind of a book I generally do not like (political thriller), I headed to the discount grocery store. I needed to get some ground pork so I have something with which to stuff the giant zucchini my humongous volunteer squash plant produced. That was the only item on the list in my head other than canned milk for my coffee.
Well. I use a small bamboo basket as a purse; it’s easier to dig through. I thought I’d just grab one of those hand-baskets at the door and then thought better of it - two hands, two baskets, too hard to grab what I want. So, I grabbed a shopping cart instead. First mistake.
The second mistake was thinking I should probably go up and down every single aisle in case there was something else I meant to get and forgot between home and the store (probably a half-mile, if that).
I did remember the pork sausage, and while I was at the meat case, decided it’d been too long since I had bacon for breakfast. Passing the produce, I remembered I’ve been meaning to eat more dark leafy greens, and there was beautiful curly kale. Next to brussels sprouts, so I had to get both of those.
The bargain bin had some jars of Indian curry sauces with veggies; we haven’t got an Indian restaurant here, so I had to get those, along with a 4-pack of watermelon-flavored kombucha - “packed with probiotics.” I don’t actually know what a probiotic is (I suppose I could DuckDuckGo it, but I’m too lazy), but it sounded healthy. It doesn’t taste too bad.
Most of the aisles are full of stuff I would never buy, but I did pick up a 2-pak of flexible ice cube trays. For several years, I’ve been using ice balls - big globes of ice that don’t water down a drink like cubes do. Only thing is, they don’t always want to come easily out of their rubber molds, and the ‘ears’ of the molds have been torn off by impatient users. The new trays were only $1, and I’ve kind of already decided I am not going to like them, but I’ll try. I’ve been spoiled.
The great find was cheap Swanson’s Chicken Pot Pies - 2 for $3. I love, love, love chicken pot pies. I bought a whole lot more food, so won’t need to shop again for weeks, but the kitchen timer just dinged and I must have my pie.
I think I had more to say, and it’ll probably come to me at 3:00 a.m. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
xox
Lucy