I recently moved to a new apartment and with the change of smell, noises, and neighbors comes the adaptation to a new local grocery store. My old neighborhood had a Safeway, and while it sucked in many ways I had become familiar with it’s layout and could navigate it’s aisles with ease, be it two in the afternoon on game day or scrambling for a bottle just before closing. I had my confidence there.
This new neighborhood has an Organic Grocery and for the first week I scoped it out without going in, driving by late at night or walking along the sidewalk with one eye cocked towards it’s storefront. What I saw kept me away. Everyone seemed a good deal older and more sophisticated than I as they talked with the workers, read the nutrition information on their purchases, and concentrated very hard while inspecting the fruit with long sensuous finger massages. This was a secret world I wasn’t a part of.
There was lots of talk concerning brands of tofu I had never heard of and debates about rice that were way over my head. I didn’t want to shame myself in front of my new neighbors, grabbing the wrong thing and then paying out the ass for it while getting mercilessly mocked by the cashier (in my head: a beautiful woman that had studied medicine in school but had chosen to live a simple life as a cashier at the local Organic Grocery).
I hid in my new apartment for days until I had run out of food and woke up weak and feeble on a Saturday, desperate for nourishment. All I had left was one box of Cream of Wheat sitting still packed in one of my moving boxes. I just needed a cup or two of water to make it work but I would be damned if I was going to eat it dry and bland.
I stepped outside, a stranger in this new neighborhood, and walked the four blocks to the Organic Grocery. It was around 9:30 AM, only a few people inside to my relief. I first searched for sugar but came up empty, unfamiliar with the store’s layout. It’s a small place and soon I had wandered around it’s entirety three or four times, still no sugar, and starting to feel like I was getting looks from the workers and the patrons. I fell upon honey and figured that would do but, sweet Jesus, there seemed to be hundreds of different brands, all in different sized containers yet all priced around twenty dollars.
I quit the search for a sweetener and made my way in a panic to the dairy aisle, refusing to leave without some milk. I felt the blood flow to my face when the first small carton of milk I spotted was priced at eight dollars. I was horrified until I realized it was goat’s milk. Everything on the shelves seemed to be goat’s milk, at least thirty different cartons and glass bottles of goat’s milk. Finally, at the end of the aisle, I spotted a carton that simply said Milk for a dollar eighty nine and I made a break for it.
Back home I realized it was non-fat milk, which I dislike, but I poured it on my Cream of Wheat regardless and celebrated my first sortie into the unknown. Next time I'm getting some honey, even it kills me.
12-12-12
This new neighborhood has an Organic Grocery and for the first week I scoped it out without going in, driving by late at night or walking along the sidewalk with one eye cocked towards it’s storefront. What I saw kept me away. Everyone seemed a good deal older and more sophisticated than I as they talked with the workers, read the nutrition information on their purchases, and concentrated very hard while inspecting the fruit with long sensuous finger massages. This was a secret world I wasn’t a part of.
At Safeway people used to buy chips. They bought other things on occasion but mostly chips. Sometimes soda.
I was intimidated and needed to do some research before I braved my way into the new store. I went on Yelp and things got worse. There were thousands of entries debating the level of quality and the prices at the OG. Younger people, people closer to my age, wrote of rabid “gray hairs” that rudley elbowed them in the aisles. Hundreds of posters claimed that only the “elite” could shop there and one person claimed the parking lot was “packed with European Luxury Cars”.There was lots of talk concerning brands of tofu I had never heard of and debates about rice that were way over my head. I didn’t want to shame myself in front of my new neighbors, grabbing the wrong thing and then paying out the ass for it while getting mercilessly mocked by the cashier (in my head: a beautiful woman that had studied medicine in school but had chosen to live a simple life as a cashier at the local Organic Grocery).
I hid in my new apartment for days until I had run out of food and woke up weak and feeble on a Saturday, desperate for nourishment. All I had left was one box of Cream of Wheat sitting still packed in one of my moving boxes. I just needed a cup or two of water to make it work but I would be damned if I was going to eat it dry and bland.
I stepped outside, a stranger in this new neighborhood, and walked the four blocks to the Organic Grocery. It was around 9:30 AM, only a few people inside to my relief. I first searched for sugar but came up empty, unfamiliar with the store’s layout. It’s a small place and soon I had wandered around it’s entirety three or four times, still no sugar, and starting to feel like I was getting looks from the workers and the patrons. I fell upon honey and figured that would do but, sweet Jesus, there seemed to be hundreds of different brands, all in different sized containers yet all priced around twenty dollars.
I quit the search for a sweetener and made my way in a panic to the dairy aisle, refusing to leave without some milk. I felt the blood flow to my face when the first small carton of milk I spotted was priced at eight dollars. I was horrified until I realized it was goat’s milk. Everything on the shelves seemed to be goat’s milk, at least thirty different cartons and glass bottles of goat’s milk. Finally, at the end of the aisle, I spotted a carton that simply said Milk for a dollar eighty nine and I made a break for it.
Back home I realized it was non-fat milk, which I dislike, but I poured it on my Cream of Wheat regardless and celebrated my first sortie into the unknown. Next time I'm getting some honey, even it kills me.
12-12-12
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