NO CHEF

 

Once, long ago, when shopping in a cavernous new grocery store on the other side of town, I had an infant and a toddler corralled (barely) within a full cart of groceries. The baby was "hangry", so he was wailing away in his carseat plunked in the cart. The toddler was in the child seat thing in the cart, reaching for and grabbing everything he could from the shelves, sending me scrambling to pick up after him or pry some random "treasure" (like a bar of soap or whatever) from his clenched little fist, resulting in a screaming tantrum.  

Grocery shopping on a good day is one of my least favorite activities.  On that day, I'd had enough.  Two-thirds of the way through the store (and my list) I parked the cart of groceries in the middle of the aisle, grabbed the carseat, took the hand of the red-faced toddler, and exited the store.  I couldn't take it one more minute.  This past Monday was sort of like that.  Only it was just me, no kids, but I was still in a state of "I hate this!" mommy-frustration confusion.  

Hub has been working for years with groups addressing climate change.  He is an integral part of one group that meets 1-4 hours weekly on Zoom, organizes and presents at forums and educational events, lobbies for prioritizing climate-related content to their organization's curriculum, co-facilitates several 9-week courses on adaptation and resilience in the face of climate collapse (with strategies for making it all less awful.)  This all takes a great deal of his time and energy and untold hours at the computer.

On top of that, of course, there is life at home:  me (I can be a handful), maintenance of our home and our gardens/property, occasionally seeing friends/family...you know, life stuff.  He is great at keeping all the balls in the air, but he pays a price and eventually feels the stress of it all.  In September he was particularly busy and the stress was boiling over.  I asked what I could do to be supportive.

He has been our family shopper and executive chef for a long time.  I've been his sous chef.  I'm a pretty good chopper and prepper; I am not a great cook.  I don't like it. When those squalling kids were young I did all the shopping and cooking, but over the years I phased myself out and Hub took over, especially once the kids were out and he was retired.  I thought he liked to shop but he recently told me he really doesn't like it, but neither does he dread it, which is an improvement over my feelings about the chore, but still. He does enjoy cooking but the every day grind of it gets old.  (I know.)  So, to be more helpful, I offered to take on the shopping and cooking indefinitely.  Yikes!

I have a list of every dinner since my start date on September 23rd.  I keep this list as an "attagirl" I give myself every time I look at it.  I feel a sense of accomplishment.  Maybe even a bit of pride.  I've not made anything fancy -- I'm not foodie gourmet.  But I've hauled out some old cookbooks and done Google searches for various things.  I've made entirely edible, even tasty dishes that we've both enjoyed.  I have not hated it.  But there is that daily grind.

On Monday I didn't have time to create my menus for the coming week, but I had to get some things from the store, so I went with a list of a few staples, and a few speciality items for two cookbook recipes. Unfortunately, I hadn't done a good inventory and didn't have a meal planned for every day.  I am a grab and go shopper, and I am NOT an intuitive cook, so I found myself without a recipe to buy for and with no desire/ability to create meals based on what I found at the store, so I found myself frustrated, going up and down aisles with no clue what I needed or wanted, and ended up with a cart of random items that seemed paltry but also ended up costing nearly $100 somehow.  

I went to the self-check. (I know I'm supposed to boycott that, but if the other line is forever long, I don't boycott it because I just want to get out of the damn store!)  I fumbled around with looking up produce items, weighing them, scanning the unscannable bar codes, putting up with the machine yelling at me to put my items in the bag when they were already in the damn bag, and then got reprimanded for trying to buy non-alcohol beer for Hub (it's store policy) with an expired license, that wasn't really expired but the DMV had punched a hole in it when I went in to renew it, making it void.  I was supposed to have brought some print out of a temporary license with me.  Duh.  By the time I got out of there I was near tears.  But I pulled up my big girl panties and headed to Costco for the items I needed there.  I survived, barely.

When I got home, Hub was sympathetic and appreciative.  Maybe 8 weeks is my limit; maybe it's about as "indefinitely" as I get when it comes to shopping and cooking.  We discussed a plan to share the burden. It might even be fun, we thought, to shop and cook together!  (Cooking maybe; shopping definitely not.  We have extremely different shopping styles.  As noted, I'm grab and go for just what I need in the moment.  Hub is the complete opposite -- he's price and compare, distracted by impulse buys, and likes to "stock up".)

So I'm not sure how the new plan will go.  I do know that it won't really be implemented for awhile, because Hub still has a lot on his plate. (HAHA  Good one!)  Maybe it will be a New Year intention.  Until then I'll keep my dinner list going to motivate me and I'll try super hard not to freak out in the grocery store.  I'd hate to start throwing canned goods.

At least, that's the view from here...©

Photo Credit:  somewhere on the internet..sorry, don't know; don't sue me. 🙏🏽

SHOPPING FOR FIGS

All was calm, all was bright....until today.   Readers know I have teeny, tiny stress and Scrooge issues around the holiday season.  I always participate, often grudgingly, in all the traditional hoo-hah.  But I mostly just keep December 26th in view, ready for the checkered flag.

But this year, I've been...dare I say it?  Relaxed!  Happy!  Not stressed or resentful or overwhelmed or exhausted.  It's all seemed pretty easy-breezy.  As I said in a previous post, I've cut way back on many of the usual activities of the season and that likely helped.  So yay me!

But today.  Today I tackled the grocery shopping chore of the season.  We do a Christmas Eve Buffet and a Christmas Dinner for the family.  It's usually the same food every year and I'm frankly sick of it, so I decided last year that this year would be different.  I got on Pinterest and found some really cute and easy "finger food" ideas for the buffet, including a dessert that features figs!  Figs!  Just like the song!  Cool, huh?   We are having a different menu for Christmas dinner too.  I'm excited about both.

But it would be hard to overstate how much I HATE to grocery shop.  I mean I truly detest the whole ordeal.  Hub does 90% of our food shopping.  But he is working Monday thru Wednesday this week and we have our grand-girls with us Wednesday and Thursday too, so there was literally no time for him to hit Costco and the regular grocery store in time to have the ingredients here to prep.  So off I went this morning.

Costco was a madhouse by 10:30 a.m.  I drove around forever looking for a parking spot and finally got one a day's hike from the entrance.  Let me say something about shopping carts at this point.  I think we need to institute a cultural norm that when you exit your car and see carts in the parking lot cart coral, you grab one and push it into the store.  I did that this morning and was glad of it because people were literally milling around outside the entrance waiting for someone to bring the carts in from the parking lot and replenish the cart area.  Really?  JUST GO GET ONE!

But most people must not have been in much of a hurry because once inside the store, jammed with  shoppers pushing their Costco-giant-sized carts, one would think the ventilation system was pumping out sleeping potions.  Every single person seemed to move in slow motion in every aisle.  And "keeping right" seemed to be a pie-in-the-sky notion because people generally moved down the very center of the aisles, sometimes two and three abreast, literally coming to a dead stop at frequent intervals to check their lists, chat with an acquaintance, or abandon their cart altogether to head for ubiquitous food sample tables.  Please!  JUST PULL OVER!

I finally made it out of Costco and through the parking lot again where cars were at a standstill waiting for parking spaces to open up.  I should have taken bids on mine, in spite of its distance from the store -- I had three people jockeying for position as I pulled away.

I then had to go the "regular" store, also jammed.  As I headed in, I found myself in the crosswalk in front of the store where pedestrians ALWAYS have the right-of-way.  But as I crossed, a big blue Oldsmobile came bearing down on me.  I really and truly hate to say this because I am a proud and vocal anti-ageism proponent, but the woman driving appeared to be well over 80-85, could barely see over the steering wheel, and had absolutely no intention or thought that she should maybe be stopping for me, even though I WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER as she coasted (thankfully!) to within about a foot of my right leg.  I yelled, "JESUS!  STOP!" and jumped out of the way.  She just kept creeping along, foot never touching the brake, as I turned to watch her proceed at a snail's pace through the parking lot.  I am grateful she wasn't gunning it.  I'd have been a goner.

Here's a pet peeve:  grocery shopping is so inefficient.  I lift the items off the shelf and put them in my cart.  I push them around the store like some precious fragile cargo, then I stand in a long line, pick them up again and put them on the conveyor belt where someone else picks them up to scan, and yet another person picks them up to bag.  Then they are returned to me in my cart, where I wheel them gently to my car and pick them up again (at least now nestled together in bags) and put them in my car.  We drive home, where I pick the bags up yet again (!) and lug them into the house where they are plopped on the counter top and picked up AGAIN! to be put away.  By now I think we've developed such a meaningful and long-term relationship that it's no wonder I don't want to disturb them to pick them all up again to actually cook!  Ugh!  There must be some way to get that food from the store to my kitchen via quantum physics parallel universe convergence or something.  There's far too much touching and lugging.  And I don't even like to cook, so half the time my good intentions come to naught and the perishables perish before they are even put in the pot.

But that won't happen this week, because it's Christmas.  So bring me some figgy pudding...and bring it right here!

At least, that's the view from here....©