The amazing thing about food is that when it’s bad – it WILL let you know.
Ang and I are weekly shoppers. We have tried to adopt a more European way of living that includes fewer work hours, more play time and a “no more than 10 bags at a time” grocery trip. We do not shop at Sams or Super Walmart – “stocking up” is not in our vocabulary as we no longer feel the need to prepare for a Mayan size disaster where cereal and pickles need to be purchased in drums and wheeled to the car on a dolly. We’re willing to roll those dice.
I woke up early one morning to find Ang standing in the kitchen with a mixed look of horror and disgust on her face. Her arm was outstretched to keep the fuzzy gray thing she was holding as far from her body as humanly possible.
“What the hell is that??” I asked.
“I’m not sure – you didn’t find an old dead possum in the yard and put it in the pantry for some reason did you?”
(Big-eyed and blinking) “Um…..No. I can’t believe I even need to answer that.
“Okay, miss grumpy I was just making sure.”
Against my better judgment, I took the “alleged carcass” from Ang and tried to uncover it’s true identity – as it turned out it was just a very old and forgotten, loaf of bread. Nature’s Own…to be exact. It is for this very reason that we try to shop within our capacity to consume such items in a timely manner. Waste not, want not.
I’ve never really understood the American way of “stock piling” food in the same way bears gorge themselves before a long hibernation. One thing most of us never have to worry about is a lack of convenient grocery stores and restaurants – I think it’s probably okay to let go of this post nuclear way of thinking. Should that apocalyptic scenario play out – the loss of hair and teeth would make gnawing on a pallet of 15 year old beef jerky a futile task. Our time would best be spent looking for a rock to bash our heads on.
.
We pretty much shop on an as-needed basis as well. We also eat already opened foods and leftovers before cooking new things. It seems like, for most of us, it just takes that one traumatizing experience to start doing so.
One of my roommates in college put some leftover spaghetti in the fridge and somehow it was overlooked for months. (Literally, it was on the bottom shelf and every time we opened the fridge, our eyes never ventured down that far. We looked over it.) Anyway, we appallingly discovered it upon moving out. It was so old that I think the mold which consumed it had even died off. The only reason we knew what it was was because the guilty roommate said, “oh yeah, my spaghetti.”
And as far as Sam’s Club and Costco, I think they should be restricted to small businesses and families large enough to constitute small businesses. (Besides, you can buy that much toilet paper at any store.)