Grocery Stalking

Last night after church, I needed to go to the grocery store to pick up a handful of items because all I had left in my house was a jar of peanut butter (which is totally good in itself, but I should probably try to incorporate other food groups), a can of black-eyed peas, and spice jars of ginger, nutmeg, and basil.

So, I walk into the grocery store on the produce side, which is a little maze. Once you follow the maze all the way through the produce section, you then have the freedom of perusing the other aisles at your leisure. It always reminds me of my mother forcing me to eat my vegetables before I could do anything else (I still have childhood trauma issues with zucchini).

I stop first at the strawberries, and I notice this little, old man in front of me also getting strawberries. As we move around the little maze, he stops at plums, and I do too. I watch as he very intently chooses the plums for his bag, and I try to copy exactly what he was doing, because I really have NO IDEA how to select produce correctly.

Next, he moves around to the pototates. I wasn't really planning on purchasing any potatoes, but he seemed to think they looked good, so I grabbed a few as well. This continued on through the rest of the produce department.

Now, while I should be a little embarrassed to admit doing that (because I ended up with a couple of things in my cart that I had not intended to purchase...by the way, does anyone know how to cook leeks?), it is the next thing I did that borders on grocery stalking.

As he left the produce section, he headed towards the meat department, and yes (my head is hung in shame), I followed. What can I say? By this point, I was really curious as to what he was going to purchase. It was kind of like my own interactive reality show--perhaps a much calmer version of Supermarket Sweep (how many of you will own up to having watched that show), and all of the SS followers know how important the meat section is.

Now, as he made it to meats, I reminded myself that while it was more than a little unsual that I was following this little old man through the store, if I continued to purchase all of the same items he did, that might border on "wrap-me-in-a-straight-jacket-because-I-obviously-can't-make-my-own-choices" unusual.

Anyway, as he walked through the meat department, I kept a safe distance behind him like the spies do in the movies when tailing someone. He stopped in front of one of the cases, and placed a package in his cart, but I couldn't tell what it was from my distance of two cart-lengths behind. As I neared the case, though, I saw that he had chosen one of the animal bone segments.

I didn't even slow my cart down. I did a big u-turn, pulled back out my shopping list, and went in search of the tortillas.

By the way, I am still needing to figure out how to cook leeks.