MADE TO ORDER
Supermarket-shy Sarah-Kate’s sold on a new service
Apart from the fact they’re stuffed full of delicious things, I’ve long loathed supermarkets. In a previous life I think I was a village grocer, polishing all my fruit and veg and chatting happily to the locals as I popped things in paper bags with a free strawberry for the little ’un.
As a kid, I can certainly remember being sent into such places to buy a lettuce or some corn on the cob or apples. Quite often there’d be a butcher next door with sawdust on the floor and if you didn’t sulk, you got a free cheerio.
I remember to this day the sign in the window of one such neighbourhood butcher. “Kittens: free to a good home, otherwise – sausages!”
Then everything got bigger.
Next thing you know, the meat’s being sold inside a vast space with multiple aisles and lots of plastic plus a deli counter, for heaven’s sake.
I know some supermarkets have date nights for singles, but I personally find them the least romantic place on earth. In fact, I think I’ve mentioned in the past that typically I sit in the car while the Ginger goes in and shops, and have done so enough times to memorise the phone numbers on the parking lot billboard.
You might think this makes the Ginger even more long-suffering than he already is, but he prefers it this way because if I go with him, he hates that I feel obliged to go down every aisle looking for things I might not know I need.
I’m the very person I do not want to end up trying to get past in the pickles aisle.
He, on the other hand, tackles it like a US Marine, targeting specific shelves and getting in and out while most people are still trying to unstick one basket from the other.
But he works long hours these days, so to my disgruntlement the shopping has been left to me. This is complicated by the fact that we live out of town, so going to the supermarket is a 40-minute non-adventure plus shopping time.
However, an amazing miracle has recently occurred. The local New World has started delivering to my door. You city folk have probably had this for a while, but I’ve only known about it a week and have already done two orders.
Oh, the joy! What was once a tiresome exchange between myself and the Ginger about what we would have for dinner, and how we would go about organising it, is now just a matter of me looking at a cookbook, typing the ingredients into a website and, hey presto, the next day there it is.
It hasn’t been perfect. One onion and one potato is not as good as a kilo of each (my mistake). And it would be nice to know where some of the produce comes from, which the website doesn’t extend to and the Ginger gets quite sour when I try and feed him American lemons.
Also, you can get wine. I haven’t. So far. Because, um, I would like to leave the house occasionally. But still, what an option …