My Grocery Cart

I think I've written about grocery shopping before, but it's been a while, and if I can't remember, maybe neither will you.

Whenever I'm at the grocery store, I wonder what the checkout person is thinking when they look at the items in my cart. Now I know they aren't really looking with a critical eye, but when I look at other peoples' carts, I wonder all about them. What they're cooking, what kind of diet they're on, how many people they're shopping for, what kind of party they're having, if they live alone, why they are only buying licorice and tuna fish, what you actually do with plantains....

Tonight I was at Trader Joe's. My cart included: European-style fat free yogurt (I don't generally believe in buying non-fat foods unless they naturally occur that way but I've learned that in smoothies, the fat content of yogurt doesn't make a difference.), Hebrew National hotdogs, soy cheese, frozen roasted corn, Soy Ginger dressing, fake chicken and beef strips, romaine lettuce, a few onions, Luna Bars and frozen green beans and frozen vegetarian burritos.

This was not an interesting cart of groceries. I don't usually shop in order to have an interesting cart, but this was interesting in how boring it was. About the only thing remotely curious was the presence of soy cheese, yogurt and hotdogs. Maybe someone could wonder if I am shopping vegan, vegetarian or carnivore? But maybe not.

Not satisfied with having a boring cart, I stopped at a second store. Actually, a boring cart had absolutely nothing to do with it. In reality, Trader Joe's was out of hotdog buns, and wrapping them in a leaf of romaine lettuce does not make for a Chicago-style hotdog experience.

So I went into the regular chain store that I maybe go into once a month, if that. It was pouring rain - bigger than cats and dogs, more like lions and bears (no tigers were seen). And there I bought buns and a shaker of garlic and parmesan popcorn flavoring. Someone should wonder about that, right? I mean who goes out in the middle of a monsoon to buy hotdog buns and popcorn seasoning? Evidently I do.