Words, Words, Words
a.k.a.,
the stuff inside
Nirvana and noodles in aisle nine
Scary but true tales from the toilet
Would the real Erica please stand up?
Diary of a slave to New Jersey Transit
The best import since the Camry
Solitaire only looks sweet and innocent
Seen and heard: Nifty stuff in the news
Stuff that rocks just like Lenny Kravits
Food
shopping is a religious experience for me. As a devout Christmas-Easter
Christian, I spend more time food shopping than I do attending church
services. I have more faith that the weekly supermarket sale circular
will provide me with what I need than the church community.
I wouldn't want my dear reader to think that I don't have faith in a higher power that loves me more than I ever could. It's just that I prefer to spend my Sundays sipping coffee with the New York Times rather than with a pew-full of screaming kids trying to get out of their Sunday clothes.
Grocery shopping has sustained me through the good times, such as the time I bought ground beef for 99 cents per pound, and through the bad times, such as when my mother and father decided independently to travel 600 miles to visit me for Thanksgiving, but refused to see each other. I was prepared with pumpkin pie for Dad and chamomile tea for Mom.
Food is a way for us to nourish not only our bodies but our souls also. We can prepare a lavish meal in thanks for a kindness done to us. Or after a week of sinful overspending, I can atone and stay within my budget by shopping the Spanish aisle and eat for days on $5 worth of rice and beans.
I believe that God (or Goddess) would not have put all these wonderful food things on the planet if we were not to enjoy them fully. After 22 years of mid-western cooking, where salt is an exotic spice and a parsnip is when you give your father a haircut, I had discovered that not all of New Jersey is dank and dismal. There is exocitism and adventure between the supple skins of honeydew melons and the glossy, firm eggplants in the produce section of the supermarket.
I've found friendship in the supermarket aisles. I wasn't exactly voted most popular in high school. I sometimes spent my Friday evenings with my buds strolling the aisles of Cub Foods looking for our favorite junk foods and filling the pockets of our varsity jackets with candy from the bulk food canisters. Even in college when I had nothing better to do one evening, I'd get in my car, the Vonderbubble, with some buddies and head over to Krogers for hot dogs and plastic water guns.
Recently, I switched from Pathmark in Weehawken to Foodmart International. Foodmart in Jersey City. It is farther away from my home but who can resist a pound of lentils for 50 cents or three packages of frozen chopped spinach for a dollar. It has made a believer out of me.
Among the loaves and the fishes, I have seen miracles: Savarin Reserve Blend coffee for 99 cents a pound, eight cans of Del Monte tomato sauce for 89 cents, five boxes of thin spaghetti for a dollar. But not all is heavenly in International Foodmart. I cannot erase from my memory the time I could not find multicolored mini marshmallows for a Jello salad on the shelves. I asked a store employee but after six years of classes, I have not learned the word for marshmallow in Spanish. I had to leave the store without the correct ingredients for a proper Jello salad.
My sister doesn't like going grocery shopping with me. She just isn't used to all the people who don't speak English and the really smelly fish section. On those occasions, we dart through the store, throwing things into the cart and rushing back to the cashiers. We can make the whole trip and put the food away in 45 minutes. If that's not a miracle, I don't know what is.
I haven't found redemption on the shelves, but you will see God in all her wonder and variety in the aisles and in the cases.
Goddess be praise