There's nothing like grocery shopping. Seriously, if I were to make a list of all the mundane things I do on a regular basis in order of personal preference, grocery shopping would be in the top five at least. The other top four would probably be vacuuming, dyeing my hair, using the popcorn popper, and having a successful bowel movement, not necessarily in that order. When I saunter into a grocery store with my empty cloth bags (I have about 12 now) and walk the aisles filled with every comestible imaginable, I get so excited about the possibilities that I don't even think about how much money I'm spending as my buggy (grocery cart, to those not of the Southern persuasion) gets fuller and fuller. I always buy more than I mean to. The thought of someday having my own gigantic kitchen to fill as I please gives me the jitteries. The good kind. When I saw a picture of Helpline Heloise's perfectly organized and alphabetized pantry in a recent copy of Good Housekeeping, I nearly jittered it to shreds as I tore it out to save. I keep it in my folder of aspirations. Yes, I have a folder of aspirations. And no, I won't show it to you.
Mom is my health-food ally. Since our freezer at home is usually filled to the brim with frozen deer parts and the pantry is jammed full of canned hot tamales, Little Debbie cakes, and cheese puffs, we really have to work together to find (and keep) good stuff to eat. My dad has some really wack ideas about what constitutes a healthy meal. He can eat a giant bowl of cornbread with milk and gravy poured over it, and a couple fat greasy sausage links, and call it balanced nutrition. Good thing about Dad though is he'll try anything, no matter how weird. And he usually likes it. I'm pretty sure he was the one who invented peas with mayonnaise as a side dish, and unfortunately passed a taste for that mess on to me, but we're still working on him. We just have to try and keep the house full of fresh healthy foods that are both yummy and good for you. Which is easier said than done, considering all the random eaters who pass through the Humber kitchen on a weekly basis.
A couple of weekends ago, I visited the farmers' market on Finley Avenue for the first time. It was like produce wonderland. Everything seemed to be cheaper than the normal supermarket too, though maybe a bit spottier and more roughed up. I think Mom and I went a little crazy, practically throwing our money at the vendors and running away with bags of their brightly-colored offerings. I can't remember everything that we bought, but our massive haul included one of the biggest papayas we'd ever seen, seven almost too-ripe bananas for a dollar, a bottle of tamarind-flavored soda from Mexico, plantains, tangerines, kiwis (the fruit, not the New Zealanders), grapes, grape tomatoes, and even a small bag of radishes. I mean, really? Who likes radishes? But we couldn't help ourselves. We were under the influence of produce. We oohed over the small personal-sized watermelons and ahhed at all the shiny poblano peppers and cactus leaves. On the back side of the market, where we parted with the largest percentage of our money, there were so many brown people selling tropical fruits and veggies that I felt like I was back in some market in Central America. It was smelly and dirty and I loved it. Can't wait to go back!
*digression- This may just be my frustration talking, but if you want to practice your Spanish at the farmers' market, and you are a beige-skinned female-type person like me, your best bet is to visit booths with brown male vendors. You ask a Spanish-speaking woman something in her native language, and she just replies in terrible broken English. I swear, you can't get a word in Spanish out of a brown woman who knows a little English, unless you are willing to make an ass of yourself. I know. I've tried it. Scene: Guatemalan airport, coffee shop, me and cashier. I order in perfect Spanish; she replies in bad English. I persist, acting like I don't speak English. She looks at me really weird and finally tells me my total in Spanish. And then I realize I have to pay in American money. End scene. By far, the best thing to do is just ignore the brown women and flirt with the brown men. The men, especially young ones, follow you around, jabbering away in Spanish, and you may even score a discount. Work it, ladies. -end digression*
Upon becoming a vegetarian and realizing that my local Wal-Mart didn't carry even a 10th of all the healthy, veg options that I had been reading about in my research, I decided I must broaden my grocery-shopping radius. Birmingham isn't a very hippie city (though the hippies that do exist here try damn hard) and while your everyday supermarket may have a couple cartons of soy milk, good luck with anything as exotic as a veggie hot dog. I was frustrated. And hungry. And then I made my first trip to Whole Foods. Too far away, a little bourgeois, and entirely too expensive, it nevertheless has become my mecca of alternative eating. My dad refers to it as "the vegan store." I usually come home with non-dairy cream cheese, soy yogurt, Daiya cheese (made from tapioca, not milk, and it actually melts!), frozen veggie burgers, some new kind of non-dairy milk to try, and Dad's requested bags of yuca and plantain chips. You just can't get that stuff anywhere on my side of town. If I were a rich girl (daidle deedle daidle daidle daidle deedle daidle dum) I'd buy all my groceries at Whole Foods. Alas, I am not (yet) so I must be choosy about which healthy frivolities I splurge on. It usually comes down to whether or not the item in question involves a lot of preparation in order to eat. So it's out of the buggy with the whole grain lasagna noodles and organic extra firm tofu, and into the buggy with the no-sugar-added peanut butter and the still-warm crusty baguette. Heck, half the stuff we buy doesn't even make it all the way home without at least being tasted. But can you blame us? It's a long drive from Mountain Brook to Hayden. And we hongry.
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