Welcome to the Commenting Pixie Party!
I was WONDERING where you were! You are likely to have a number of visits from me on your site counter. Do the babes like yogurt? Costco carries an excellent strawberry yogurt in a juice box that doesn't need to be refrigerated! Its amazing! I tell everyone about it, I am such a huge fan.
Besides that, we are a fan of lucky charms here (dogs included), because that way we imagine that we are eating healthily with the cheerio-like cereal and then have the delicious marshmallows too. Yum.
I love grocery shopping, we can make that our blogger meetup.
Wait. A. Minute. Bread & Circus is no more??? Lo those many years ago, in my grad school days, I'd wander the B&C on the Allston/Brookline line and ponder the day when I could afford to spend $30 on a bag of groceries... and then I'd go ahead and do just that, courtesy of the Grad School Credit Card, which as of this evening is one payment away from being paid off. (And feel free to remind me that it's been *eight* years since the MA, and that creating eight years of debt in one single year is not necessarily something to be proud of.)
whole foods = whole paycheck?
A, that's the nickname a friend of mine gave our local "Whole Grocer."
I used to go to the Bread and Circus in Newton when I was in seminary. It was quite posh.
Now we have Wild Oats in City By the Sea, and I am almost as addicted to shopping there as I am to reading comments here!
Also, when #1 Son was little, we declared Cheerios to be "Nature's Most Perfect Food."
Since you challenged me to make it longer & more meandering:
Grocery shopping -- both Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, which I still insist on referring to as Bread & Circus, because (1) that is what it used to be called, back in the days before it was acquired; (2) because the old name resonates vaguely with Bread & Puppet, which I was never cool enough to attend myself, but felt a bit of secondhand coolness in being able to use it as a cultural reference every time I went to the grocery store; and (3) because it makes me remember the delightful Toad the Wet Sprocket album, Bread & Circus, which although it doesn't have any really stand-out songs, is nice to have on as background music.
How's that?
Hear, hear, APL! Excellent work!
Great post, loved the pattern of freedoms, especially the next-to-last one.
re:paper vs. plastic: In terms of producing and transporting the bags to the store, plastic is actually better than paper (for total energy used to make it). So says my chemistry prof. Also, styrofoam cups beat out those paper-lined-with-wax-or-plastic coffee cups, since the paper ones can't be recycled and the styrofoam is so much cheaper to make (energy-wise).
There you are. Random science facts for the day...
I used to be a paper-bag junkie, but then I got a dog (long ago) and after that I got a Muffin Man. Plastic bags are soooooo much more useful under those circumstances. Y'know, what with the poop and all.
I missed you yesterday. I checked here often.
And at the risk of showing what an ignoramus I am...what are Joe Joe's?
We used to shop at Whole Foods, and I was always so annoyed at how expensive it is. Then we discovered the international market in town, and I feel like a complete idiot for never realizing that it would be so much cheaper to buy ingredients for Indian food from, y'know, Indians, than from white yuppies. That was a powerful lesson.
Casey. For awhile I shopped regularly at an Indian grocer -- a long story involving LG's unusual love of papadum, such that it was one of the three or four solid foods that he would eat until he was about 18 months old. I started buying some of our staples there, marvelling at how much cheaper it was than Whole Foods. Bought a big 20lb. bag of basmati rice, patting myself on the back for what a clever shopper I was.
The first time I prepared some of that rice, it turned out to have WORMS in it. Dead ones, sure, but WORMS.
I went back to Whole Foods.
You're right, it's a lot cheaper to buy from Indians than from white yuppies, but, having been to India, I can confirm that white yuppies are still better at quality control...
Oh, and welcome to the commenting pixie party, parodie. The thing is, though, that paper bags hold more than plastic. And we still acquire enough plastic bags for diaper use from the drugstore and Target. More than enough!
OH PS, GROSS. Seriously, GROSS GROSS GROSS. Blech.
I feel nauseous now.
Liz, I was thinking the same thing re: plastic bags and dog poop. I say plastic is better because I reuse it many times.
And APL, I once had toad the wet sprocket on in the car with my dad and after 20 minutes he turned to me and said "are we just listening to the same song over and over again?" That made me laugh long and hard.
Liz, Joe's Joes are oreo-type creme cookies in vanilla, chocolate, and (ooo!) ginger. The whole family is addicted to them. Hey, calories are calories...
TJ and WF - Yum.
Cheerious - Definitely apocalypse food.
And as for beer and lemonade--try mixing the 2. I learned about that in Germany 
OH MY GOD. I'm totally mortified about the worms. Blech.
I'm making myself feel better knowing that we still buy instant rice from a big evil, store that I will not name here (I know, I know, but we don't have a rice cooker and I'm really impatient and the big, evil store is so stinkin' cheap). Surely we would never find bugs or worms in the dahl we buy at the international market. That's totally different, right? Right?
Desultory makes me think of "A Simple Desultory Phillipic" by Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel. Which also would be excellent background music.
PS -- you shoulda saved some of that for your Wednesday whine. You'd have won for sure.
I'm still amazed that you went to TWO grocery stores in one day. It's all I can do to get to one every week.
PS--I will research the paper vs. plastic issue and get back to you, probably on the Oil Drum. What I can say, however, is that I do accept paper bags from the few places that still have them (TJs, primarily, which I don't get to often since it's not in NYC) because we need them to do paper recycling.
Surely paper bags must be more efficient, both for their bigger size, and also for the fact that all grocery stores, including Whole Foods with their sturdier-than-usual plastic bags, double-bag.
Lovely meandering post. Nice way to see what your day is like.
And I constantly reuse both kinds of bags, so I just get whatever.
i did see a lady with about 4 kids and 10 canvas bags at trader joe's last week ... i thought "what an overachiever!"
Four kids AND ten canvas bags??? odograph! Welcome to the commenting pixie party! And thanks for trying to get my competitive juices flowing!
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