Grocery shopping for myself is a CBF issue - i am strong enough to put the correct amount of money away each week that i will need to feed myself, but i lack the will power to grocery shop, hence it only gets done when my food situation is at the extreme lowest it can be - usually marked by me thinking about maybe eating the can of Heinz macaroni lingering in the back of my pantry (tastes worse than easy mac)
Being in the grocery store changes everything though - my competitive instinct kicks in - i have to be a better grocery shopper than everyone else.
The problem i believe is in the grocery store i choose - i have the option of shopping in Wellington st Coles or Charles st Coles. Wellington street is home of the trackies and ugg boots, and filling ones trolley in the convenience foods isle before having a swearing match with the father of your child over how much goes to food and how much goes to Peter Jackson 30's
Charles street Coles is situated in the centre of the launceston cafe strip, and hence i feel like shopping is an attempt to show how modern mainstream-alternative liberal-green consumerist-sustainable i can be, or more how much more i can be than the other customers.
My competitiveness is mainly directed towards the thirty or forty something year old women that walk around like they own the grocery store; the same women that physically groaned and tutted when i emptied my trolley of mi goereng, garlic bread and instant coffee on the checkout ahead of them on my first shopping trip for myself.
In the bakery section i feel the urge to shout across a bread rack how much more multigrain my loaf of bread is to hers. I can see that she has picked only seven grains where as i have picked nine and soy. Bread is crucial, because if i have the upper hand with my multigrains then i can look down on her with authoritarian eyes that say 'your pretty much just eating a mouth full of sugar with you seven grain bread'. Not to mention the bakery section is a weakness for the elaia coffee sipping, rip off second hand book store reading, over priced arty/interior design shop browsing, Charles street lingering, power women. The sight of anything pastry that is iced or creamed may send some into a diet breaking failure which knocks them out of the running for 'winning grocery shopper' {this can also happen, and frequently does, in the chocolate biscuit aisle}
Then there is the fresh produce area - selecting tomatoes, potatoes and corn isn't enough to 'win' grocery shopping. you need to mull over which foreign variety of mushroom or non conventional part of a normal vegetable, like celery roots or zucchini flower, you will create a meal of. Just selecting the right sort of vegetable isnt enough, the individual you pick out needs to be precise. Produce needs to be smelt, felt, held to the light and then have a dna sample sent to the lab for analysis before i will select it as mine, and the greater spectacle you make out of produce selection will determine who leaves the fruit and vegetable section victorious.
Not eating meat means i can brush past the competition, and look down at them as they select their cuts of lean animal, whilst i buy my token vegetarian substitute from the other end of the chilled section.
Dairy is a competition of how little fat you can get, if she picks soy milk because she just cant tolerate the lactose of regular milk {yet actually isn't lactose intolerant}, i have to reach for rice milk, as i love it in my skinny rice chai latte's or something else just as wankey.
By now i am supremley confident that i am victorious in grocery shopping, as i have reached the end of the supermarket and my trolley is reasonably well stocked, and arranged by weight and temperature, so when i reach the checkout my items will go onto the conveyor heavy moderate, heavy cold, light cold, light moderate, eggs. I have made light yet amusing conversation with the attendant, so he or she feels like we are almost friends, they would certainly smile in an 'i remember you' way if i passed them on the street.
Yet my near certain victory falls out of my grasp when 30/40 something year old female Charles st dweller breaks out her enviro bags and i realize i have left mine at home. Suddenly i am looked upon as a land filler and dolphin killer when i say that i will have grey plastic bags. All the work i have put into becoming the perfect grocery shopper has been for no success and i am left wallow in my massive failure with nothing more to comfort me than a trolley full of foods that will take a shit load of sweet chili sauce to make edible.
ed.
