Grocery Addict

Since this is the launch to my blog, I thought I should start with some honesty. I love grocery shopping. I’m not talking like a normal person who goes to the store with a nice list and gets groceries for the week. I can spend hours, and I do mean hours, in a grocery store, exploring every aisle and picking out things I have no idea when or how I’ll ever use. When I leave a grocery store, it is worse than when most people leave Ikea. If my favorite grocery stores had store credit cards, I’d be so much more dangerous than I am in my favorite clothing stores. You can imagine that gets pretty expensive.

I’ve explored more Asian grocery stores in this city than I can count, and yet every time I hear about one I haven’t been to, I’m trying to plan when and how I can come up with an excuse to go there. This particular exploration started with an Asian cookbook (one that actually turned out not to be that great). I cannot resist a grocery store full of things I cannot even pronounce. I look at the foods, make a note, and then I try to find recipes online for how they are made. Then I figure out what else I can put that flavor into. However, you can tell me there’s a grocery store from some unknown island somewhere, and I promise I am scheming when and why I am going there.

About two weeks ago, I went to a grocery store that’s not too far, but not one we venture to often because it is a hike and it’s always a madhouse on the weekend. It is kind of a United Nations of Groceries, so we sometimes make the trip. My husband made the fatal mistake of leaving me in their meat section. I bought 5 kinds of pork. Not even a week later, we found ourselves in a suburb we don’t frequent, and they have a grocery store that I just love. My husband made me promise I wouldn’t go crazy in the meat section. It’s a regional chain, and the nearest location is more than an hour away. Two things to know here. First, this grocery store, while awesome, does not have that great of a meat section. Second, I did not go crazy in the meat section. However, two hours later and we could not even fit all the stuff in our trunk. Granted, I also I had 2 boxes of cookbooks in the trunk.

I can justify my grocery shopping in ways that make drug addicts look like they aren’t even trying. “We’ll save more because we eat at home.” “It’s freezable, so it’s really just preventing future shopping.” “They were all things we would end up buying at some point, and the price was just so good.” You get the point. An addict can always find a reason. But some addicts feel bad later. I don’t. I cook.