I wish I could get ahead of the menu planning game again. When the Beach Urchins were small, I had it pretty well down. I shopped twice a week, Tuesday and Friday mornings. I made lists in Excel on our old MacPlus computer and printed them out on our old dot matrix printer and we were off. The pre-schooler would assemble a stack of six or eight books so she wouldn’t run out of reading material during the one-mile trip to the old Westgate Kroger. If it was 10 degrees with blowing snow, I could count on the toddler to pull her carefully tied-on hat completely off between the car and the store. Oh, sorry, Mrs. Old Biddy Busybody but I DID dress this child properly for the weather. She may be barely walking but she has her own mind. “I’m hot and I don’t need no stinkin’ hat!” If I ever harass a young mother struggling with her children, slap me please!!!

Somewhere along the line, my carefully crafted menu planning system fell apart. You guys have heard me kvetch about this before. Navigating the pickity tastes and preferences of kids of every age. Working weird and sometimes widely variable schedules. Becoming empty-nesters and then not. Boomeranging back and forth to a couple of different points in the Great White North, some of which are supplied with food and some not always. My grocery lists degenerated from Excel spreadsheets to randomly hand-written post-it notes that may or may not make it in the the car with me to get to the grocery store. Or just wandering drunkenly through the aisles wondering what the heck is at home and what I want to cook during the next week. These days. I am using an iPhone app to keep a grocery list. That actually works pretty well for me so far. I am way beyond being self-conscious enough to worry about whether other people at the grocery store are wondering why that baggy old kayak woman is looking at her phone as she pushes her cart around the store. At least I am not yapping at somebody on my phone. But it still doesn’t solve the whole problem of what to eat and when and where.

And then there is where and when to shop and I won’t go into all of that because my shopping habits defy easy description even to me. 0-dark-30 Saturday trips to the Jackson Road Meijer. Mad dashes to Whole Foods during my lunch hour. Walks to the Plum Market after work or whenever. Best Choice Market (and/or WollMort) when we’re at Houghton Lake. Glen’s or Supervalu or Four Seasons up in Siberia. I am trying to impose order on all of this. I know I would spend less money on groceries if I could organize myself better. But.

Today after a long day at work, I drove home and then walked over to the Plum Market. I love walking to the Plum Market. I bought about a half a bag of groceries (yes, I took re-usable bags over there). The cashier told me the total was $71.06. Ummm. There was a bit of salmon in there but the rest of it was fresh produce. The scary part about this is that I spend quite a lot of money on groceries all the time and I am not Donald Trump but I can afford to buy food and usually when somebody gives me a total that sounds a little higher than usual, I figure out (quickly) what I bought that was expensive. Today? Not. That amount seemed waaaayyy high for what I bought. I looked at the receipt. Bottle Sales, $42.89? What the heck? I am shy (sort of) but I challenged this. Turned out that the produce code for grapefruit was 4289. The cashier apparently typed in 4289 and then hit the wrong button and I was charged with Bottle Sales. Whatever the heck that is.

The cashier couldn’t figure it out but another person could, after digging thru my bag, which I didn’t totally appreciate, and I did (of course) get my money back. I had one grapefruit in there. I wonder if I paid for that grapefruit or not…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 7:34 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.