February 4, 2022 by Amy
Snow Storm Shopping
The forecast was looking super nasty on Tuesday and we thought there was a decent chance we’d be snowed in Wednesday and Thursday, and possibly even Friday. Still at work, I realized that although we had plenty of food from my shopping trip the weekend before (my type-A meal planning routine was paying off), we didn’t have enough bread for sandwiches. This might be a problem since now all three of us were going to be lunching at home. Zoe and I had also attacked the bagels pretty hard and our sleeve of six was already down to two. Okay, bread and bagels. The bread might be a little hard to come by on a last-minute trip to the grocery store with a snow storm looming, but I was confident I could score some bagels. I drove straight from work to the grocery store, along with the rest of St. Louis.
Get in, get out. That was my mantra. It was dark, getting cold, and I just wanted to get home.
The store was busy but as I walked to the bakery section I realized that our penchant for buying what we call “the good bread” was probably in our favor. No Wonderbread for us, noooo no. We go for the fancy nine-grain stuff. Gluten a-go-go. While the typical bread was probably already sold out, I stood a decent chance of finding the good [re: expensive] stuff. Soon a loaf was in my basket, along with two sleeves of bagels (I wasn’t taking any chances there, and we can always freeze them). That’s when I realized that we needed something to go on the bread so I got a half-pound of salami from the deli. Salami is a treat; we don’t get it often due to M’s desire to “eat healthy.” And if we’re snacking on salami, then prosciutto should come along for the ride, right?
This made me realize that I was heading straight into “Snow Day Celebration” mode, which calls for a complete deviation from my standard meal planning and shopping tactics. Before I knew it, mini-donuts in three different flavors were riding atop the package of salami. (Which, come to think of it, negated the need to stock up quite so much on bagels.) I headed to the liquor aisle to pick up club soda for Tom Collinses and discovered that a new flavor of Bailey’s Irish Cream, salted caramel, was on sale. How fortuitous.
While in the pickle aisle finding maraschino cherries for the Tom Collinses, I also picked up a jar of stuffed green olives. No reason other than they looked delicious. I haven’t had olives in a while. As I wheeled past the pasta I noticed that the shelves were nearly bare: clearly a lot of St. Louisans were planning on having noodles while it snowed. We did not have pasta on the meal plan but I wasn’t about to miss out, so I threw one of the last remaining boxes—bow-tie pasta—into the cart. Why not? This was turning into the most eclectic grocery shopping trip since college.
Here is where I should probably mention that this trip to the grocery store took place after work and I was hungry. I also wasn’t working off a list. I was flying without a net. I was wandering in a cell phone dead zone. I was going through the desert on a horse with no name.
As I headed toward frozen foods following an inspiration that struck around the time of the Bailey’s discovery, I passed the chip aisle. Tortilla chips (in rounds and restaurant-style) plus a jar of salsa from a local place we love, were added to the cart, despite the fact that we have half a jumbo-size bag of tortilla chips from Costco comfortably residing in the pantry.
The frozen foods section was empty. It was devoid of people and food. I scored the last two bags of pizza rolls (yes!) and two boxes of toasted ravioli, an impulse purchase that meant I had to go back to the pasta aisle for a jar of sauce to use for dipping, which is when I had the brilliant idea that apples and peanut butter would be the perfect snow day snack. That meant going allll the way back to produce. This wasn’t my most efficient of shopping trips, which usually go quickly since I build my list in the order of where food is located in the store.
At this point the small basket I had taken into the store with me for bread and bagels was overstuffed and suitable for a frat party. Granted, a decently high-end frat party given the Bailey’s, stuffed olives, and prosciutto. I paused for a moment, thought long and hard about whether I was missing anything, and headed for the check-out, confident that we were all set to not only survive the snow storm but thrive. I went in for bread and bagels and $140 later, we were ready for the snow.
The only thing I missed? Rolaids.
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