Date Night and Groceries

Captain and I had date night last night...pizza and grocery shopping.  Do we know how to live large or what?  Actually, that is pretty traditional for us, and it works in our world.  North Mr. Pizza is the place to go for a good pie.  Last night was the Big Peppi (double peperroni) but usually we get Sharon’s Favorite.  I don’t know who Sharon is, but she has good taste!

Rarely do we go for burgers.  Captain’s theory is that we have the best beef around in our freezer at home, so why pay for a burger.  True statement; however, sometimes it is really nice to have someone ELSE cook the burger and bring it to me.  He did finally concede that if he had have burgers, Newt’s was the place to go.  

Then it was on to Hy-Vee North on 37th Street.  We love Hy-Vee because when they say there is a helpful smile in every aisle...they aren’t kidding.  Grocery shopping for the last six months or so has been something of an adventure due to major remodeling going on.  I have had a spreadsheet on the computer for years with our most-often-purchased items listed in the order they are in the store.  This eliminates the back-and-forth searching that happens if I just write a list freehand.  Now that the remodeling is done, I find that my spreadsheet is all wrong.  I mentioned to Captain last night that I should stop at the service counter and ask for a layout of the store with what is in which aisle, but he advised waiting until the new Hy-Vee on 41st street opens up this fall, since we will shop there as it is 15 minutes closer.  Good thinking, Captain!

I was banned from all things grocery for years because I either spent too much money or I bought the “wrong” stuff.  Okay, fine, I bought fake cheese slices that wouldn’t even melt for grilled cheese sandwiches...I have to have it held against me for a decade?!  Buying groceries is shopping, and I hate shopping.  Please don’t make me do it.  Captain is a shopper, at least at the grocery store.  I don’t care which price-per-unit is best, just put the damn stuff in the cart and let’s get the hell out of here.  And sometimes the cheapest product is not the best product.  So there.  

However, now I have been promoted to cart pusher and check writer.  I occasionally may get to state an opinion, but rarely do I get to make decisions.  Grocery stores just rattle me for some reason.  Maybe it is all the choices available.

Take bread, for instance.  Due to a recent diagnosis of prediabetes, I am now watching my carbohydrate intake.  Obviously, the answer is to choose wheat bread over white bread.  The problem there is I don’t like the taste or texture of wheat bread.  I don’t care how much honey they put in it, it still tastes like plywood.  

Picture the scene:  local grocery store, crowded on a Sunday mid morning, bakery section.  I am looking at all the choices for non-white bread.  I find a nice looking loaf of 9-grain that I could maybe tolerate.  Woo and two hoos—it is made with wheat flour, so this is a good start.  I am reading the nutrition label and get completely confused.  Math is not my strong suit (see previous posts), but when the nutrition label says serving size:  ½ loaf and servings per container:  12, even I know that math is wrong.  I called Captain back from the cheese case to commiserate with me about this.  Apparently I was a little abrasive about my confusion because he threw his hands up and walked away like he didn’t know me.  Fine, I’ll try the regular bread aisle instead.

Have you been in the bread aisle lately?  There are more varieties to chose from than Dolly Parton has wigs.   How is anyone supposed to settle on one?  Captain came to me with a loaf labeled Brown Bread.  Very dense, made with wheat flour, low carbs.  Okay, worth a try.  Meanwhile, I have to walk past the Wonder Bread drooling since that would have been my first choice.  

Since Captain is also supposed to be watching his diet by cutting down on the cholesterol, I headed for the freezer section to get some perch fillets.  Again, I found unlimited choices of walleye, mahi-mahi, tilapia, cod, and haddock, but not one single perch fillet.  We settled for tuna in a can but not until after the packed-in-water or packed-in-oil debate.  

I could go on and on because I haven’t even touched on the dairy case or the chip aisle.  At any rate, I am pretty sure the management staff on site was glad to see us leave.  Those helpful smiles were slipping a little bit by the time we checked out.  Although, we did make the cashier smile over our “guess the total amount” game.  I rarely win this game because it involves math, but twice in the last two months, I nailed it.  Once, I was within pennies of the final amount.  Yay me!

Sometimes choices are good, but when the choices are so overwhelming as to be impossible…go for the chocolate!