The Ramblings Of A Mad, White Woman: Grocery Store Edition

I went to the grocery store last night, still on my high of sticking it to the man. I know what you're thinking. Who in their right mind goes to the grocery store the week of Thanksgiving? And I totally agree. Unfortunately, I still hadn't gotten around to getting groceries since we got home from Pretend Thanksgiving, so it was a necessity. And, remember, I was still sticking it to the man.
I can't even begin to tell you how much I'm dreading going to Wal-Mart, here in a little bit, to pick up a prescription... That is going to be close to suicide.

Anyways, I'm wandering around the produce section, looking for healthy things that Mike and I can snack on, when I notice a section devoted to Mexican food type things. How exciting!! I'd never noticed this before!! Probably because it's across from all of the peppers, which I tend to avoid.
For some reason I like to eat peppers (you know, the bell kind) raw, but not cooked in things...not even queso... The battle I have with queso is especially painful. I just love queso so much. Sometimes, I have to look beyond the pepper chunks (small as they are...) and eat the queso, come what may.

Truly my food issues are dizzying.

Anyways, Mexican food type things on display. You know, husks for tamales, dried peppers that are only found deep in the jungles of Quentzeltenango, stuff like that.
And then I saw the dried shrimp.

Dried.

Shrimp.

There was this little bag, it had a very exuberant looking Hispanic man wearing a sombrero pictured there on, and inside of the little bag were a bunch of tiny, dried shrimp. My first, and only, thought was "What the heck do you do with dried shrimp and why would anyone buy that???"
If anyone knows the answer to that question, please be telling me.

Then I walked over to get some sliced cheese, because I can just feel that at some point in the next week I'm going to want to have grilled cheese and tomato soup. I don't know when. But it's coming. And when it's here, I need to be ready for it.
The sliced cheese section is next to the meat department (AND the grated cheese section, oh the convenience!) and I couldn't help but notice a bunch of people perusing the frozen turkeys. I wanted to stand on a box, or something (I'm not very tall, you see), and say "People of the fancy shmancy HEB in Cedar Park!! (there's a bleh one, AND a fancy shmancy one) Thanksgiving is a day and a half away, and I don't know if you know this but USUALLY you start thawing out a frozen turkey about 3 days ago. Or around Halloween." And if I had done that, I would've stepped down from my box, or something, tossed my sliced cheese into my cart, and walked away all smarty pants like. But I didn't do that. Hindsight is 20/20...

I started thinking, maybe these people have some sort of super thawing method that I am unaware of!!
This is always possible. Anything's possible if people use dried shrimp.

So, I wander past the smoked sausage and remind myself that if the total for the groceries (I add it up in my head as I go along) isn't too high then I should come back and grab a couple to keep in the freezer in case I'm feeling lazy some day and don't feel like making a full blown dinner. In which case, smoked sausage comes in quite handy, as it can just be thrown in the microwave. Or I could make grilled cheese and tomato soup. Which is my only option in the coming week, because I totally forgot about reminding myself about the smoked sausage.

Moving on, has anyone else noticed the creepy gloved hands that randomly show up in the dairy section? They shove new cartons of coffee creamer and buttermilk and things like that onto the shelves. Sometimes they're wearing black gloves. And sometimes they come out of nowhere and scare the living daylights out of me. Anyone? Anyone noticed this?

At about this point, I was done with the grocery store, forgot all about the smoked sausage, stared longingly at the candy cane kisses (I didn't cave!), and found a remarkably short checkout line. I think that was some of my leftover "sticking it to the man" from earlier in the day.



In closing, my favorite Laffy Taffy joke:

What kind of pants do clouds wear?



Thunderwear!!!