Don’t judge my SHOPPING CART
Buying groceries an opportunity to appreciate diversity of available produce
I love to go grocery shopping. It’s always an adventure but, please, don’t talk to my wife about it. She sends me to get something and I come back two hours later. There are so many things to look at and to discover. It’s like Disney World to me! Thousands of labels to read, new produce to touch and feel and, on some days, free goodies to taste. Isn’t that fantastic?
I can hear you: What a boring life you must have to enjoy this so much! Well, I’m easy to please. I know for a fact that many of you would cook more if food could magically appear in the fridge (mind you, we’re not too far from that). My life is about simplifying yours, and to be good at it, I have to understand who you are and what you’re looking for.
Never in human history have we had so much food and so many choices. So much food that we throw half of what we produce in the garbage, which is a real shame, but that’s another story.
Next time you go to the grocery store, look at it from a different perspective. When I walk the aisles, I see a picture of who we are as a nation. It is so diverse, so rich and so different from one province to another. I always shop with a list, but I also love to improvise a couple of meals according to what inspires me. It’s like going on a trip. Half the fun is in the planning: the restaurants to try, the funky new neighbourhoods to visit, the hot new exhibition to see. That’s how I feel in a grocery store. Each time I land in a new city, the first thing on my list is to visit a market or a grocery store. I can’t get enough of the endless shelves of dairy products, the new meat-cut trends, the variety of fruits and vegetables, the diverse flavours, the local food displays …
I also love to walk with my cart and spy on yours. Not to judge, just to check it out, wondering what will be on your menu or in your lunches. Be honest. How many times have you done it, too? And it’s worse at the checkout counter. When I put my stuff on the belt, I know the next customer is watching and probably doing the same thing I do. Do you put the “healthy” stuff first or at the end? Sometimes, I try to hide the KD box and the chips between a melon and the bag of flour. And if you’re a parent with young kids in the cart, you get even worse looks. As if our parenting skills are linked to our food choices. But it can get even worse when the cashier asks me where my bags are, and I try to explain that I only wanted two or three things, but I got carried away.
When I’m recognized with my cart, I often get comments like: “You’re not making it yourself, Ricardo?” Or: “You’re eating that, Ricardo?” The truth is, we have so much pressure to eat right that even in a large city, surrounded by strangers, we’re not totally comfortable — we’re always selfaware. For more than 25 years, I’ve been promoting only one thing — that eating OK food together is better than eating filet mignon on your own.
Is it possible that all of this will contribute to online grocery shopping? I think so. But until then, I look forward to seeing you — and all the stuff in your cart — in the aisles of your local grocery store.
If I’m lucky, I’ll even hear one of your meal stories.