Sneaky People

Grocery Store Chronicles: 3 Vignettes From My Shopping Adventures

/ Ally Bean / 246 Comments

Pretty picture of puzzle pieces put together that has nothing to do with the subject of this post, but pretty picture gotta pretty, right?

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TO BEGIN WITH

Over the years I’ve written about my grocery store shopping experiences and put the stories here under the tag: Grocery Store Chronicles.

[The story about discussing kinds of pears and the story about stealing potato chips have been the most popular. Also there’s Betsy‘s favorite story about me buying beer.]

While the following isn’t one complete story like those I linked to above, these are 3 vignettes about what I watched unfold, and entertained me, while shopping in ye olde Kroger this past holiday season.

LOVE CONQUERS CONFUSION

The layout of the first part of our store goes like this: produce, deli, cheese, bakery, then wine and beer.

It was coming up on New Year’s Eve, busy everywhere in the store.

I’d just seen a couple in their 40s picking out some produce for something specific, while overhearing them talk about making something special to take somewhere.

Moving on I went to the cheese kiosk and found myself standing with about 10 other people there as well as the couple. I looked around and realized that the wife was on the verge of tears because, as she explained for all to hear, she couldn’t remember which kind of cheese she was supposed to buy.

She turned to her husband and said: I dunno, I can’t remember. I’m just a little ball of confusion.

To which he said: You know what I like about that?

Her, sad: No… 

Him, leaning in to hug her: You’re MY little ball of confusion.

She smiled weakly while all of us standing around the cheese kiosk in unison went: Aww…

And with that he kissed her and said: I’ll go get the beer while you figure out the cheese. Meet you back here. 

KARMA GOT HER NUMBER 

It was crowded in the store with people and displays of food/wine everywhere.

Zen-Den and I had a small cart full of items and were heading to the U-Scan lanes to buy our stuff. A woman walking behind us to the U-Scan was impatient with our pace. She did a wild dash around us to get to the U-Scan lanes first, giving us the evil eye as she went by.

We shrugged.

As fate would have it, despite our pace, we ended up in the U-Scan spot beside her, which when she saw us caused her to snarl our way.

We shrugged.

Well, as Z-D played cashier scanning our items, I stood there and watched her, surreptitiously. And here’s what happened: her first credit card was rejected. Her second credit card was rejected.

And when we left having successfully scanned, packed, and paid for our groceries, she was holding a third credit card that had been rejected, while talking on her cell phone with someone.

Half of me felt sorry for her because I’d guess everyone has had a credit card rejected at some point and it is frustrating, BUT considering how impatient she was and her negative attitude toward us… I smiled.

Ha!

WHEN THE WRONG THING IS RIGHT

I was waiting in the cashier line, standing behind a Dad with a cart heaped with groceries and a 3 y.o. sitting in the basket cart seat. The Dad was at the front of the cart while the boy was directly in front of me.

The little guy was laser-focused on everything his Dad was putting on the conveyor belt. Nothing escaped his notice.

About halfway through unloading the cart the boy told his Dad: That’s the wrong milk.

Dad: What?

Boy: It’s blue. 

Dad: WHAT?

Boy: It should be red.

Dad, catching on that his son was talking about the color of the label on the milk: No the blue one is right this time. 

Boy, raising his eyebrow like the 50 y.o. man he’ll be: Mom. buys. red.

Dad, still putting items on the conveyor belt: The blue one is buttermilk. It’s the right one this time because Mom is making cookies and this is what she uses. 

Boy, shaking his head, rolling his eyes, explaining to me under his breath: Mom BUYS cookies… and she’s gonna be mad about no red milk. 

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QUESTIONS OF THE DAY

So, been shopping in a brick and mortar store lately? And how did that go for you?

Overheard anything that made you smile?

Or watched something happen that brought out the snark in you?

Or confirmed that kids can be wise beyond their years?

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The One About Phonies And Alter Egos And Solving Problems, Maybe

/ Ally Bean / 241 Comments

I AM A REALIST. I am who I am regardless of where I am.

As such, being a naturally inquisitive person, I find people who are phonies, that is people who pretend to be someone they’re not, endlessly interesting.

Thought-provoking, in fact.

[E.g., Elizabeth Holmes or George Santos or Rachel Dolezal.]

They are my opposites and tweak my curiosity about the line between reality and fantasy, between harmless daydreaming and unhealthy delusion.

Allow me to explain.

Thinking back over my years of blogging I’m reminded of one blogger in particular who wrote her blog as if she wasn’t who she was. This wasn’t flash fiction nor was it catfishing, mind you, but saying upfront this is a fantasy of who I wish I was, a different personality, so I’ll write all my posts as this alternate version of me.

She lived in a small midwestern town but pretended she was living in a large southern city.  She thought of herself as a resident of that large city and she’d describe her days doing the same things she did now [working, shopping, dining] AS IF she lived there.

The thing was that for me after reading her posts I couldn’t decide if this phony persona was just kind of a fun thing, a light-hearted goof; OR if there was something seriously wrong in her life that prompted her to become someone else, albeit briefly.

In truth I was never sure how to comment on what she wrote, so I politely wandered away from her blog and I cannot even tell you if she’s still around.

I doubt it, though.

• • •

SO WHY AM I talking about this topic today?

Not because I idealize or hold any animosity toward this former blogger, but because of something I read a few months ago and have pondered on since. This something got me thinking and wondering– and reminded me of her.

Believe it or not.

What I read was advice written by someone who claimed to be a mental health therapist. This seemingly legit advice was about how to solve what may appear to you to be an intractable problem.

The advice suggested that you create an alter ego of yourself [not a super hero] that you use to contemplate your problem; an alter ego was defined simply as a different version of you. The advice said that by mentally running the details of your problem through your mind as your alter ego, you’d gain clarity.

Now I have problems, who doesn’t? And I do try to solve them, but never have I ever thought about creating an alter ego of myself, for any reason. I may be too pragmatic, or unimaginative, for such.

Or snarky. Perhaps I’m too snarky.

But I digress.

So tell me, kids, does the idea of creating an alter ego of yourself, something I’d describe as a phony version of yourself, seem like a way to gain real insight into your problems? Have you ever done this? And if so, how’d it go for you?

I’m curious to know what you think about this approach to solving problems. Do you feel it is sound or is it wackadoodle?

Please discuss below.

In Which I Admit To Joyfully Thwarting Some Youthful Shenanigans + Reader Comments

/ Ally Bean / 200 Comments

 Joyfully Thwarting Youthful Shenanigans

Remember Muttley, Dick Dastardly’s sidekick?

It’s good to be an adult.

[Bwha-ha-ha!]

A few weeks ago we had an unusually warm day. The temps were in the 70s and it was dry and sunny outside. Around 4:00 p.m. I went into the living room to read.

Before I plopped down on the loveseat I decided to open the window just a little bit, about 2″, to take advantage of the pleasant fresh air. As I began to read I heard rustling sounds outside the window. That’s not unusual when you live on a wooded lot, so I didn’t think much about it.

It wasn’t until I heard voices that I became interested in what was happening outside the window.

“So you gonna do it?”

[Do what, thought I?]

I got up from the loveseat and walked over to look out the window.  Immediately below me were two neighbor boys, about 10 years old, who were scrunched down hiding in our bushes while having a serious conversation about what one was going to do.

“Maybe.”

The gist of their conversation, that I could clearly overhear through the open window, was that one boy had challenged the other to run up onto our stoop, ring the doorbell, then run back into the bushes to hide.

A classic prank, no?

They figured, correctly, that from their vantage point crouched down in our bushes they’d be able to see whoever opened the door and watch that person look confused.

IT WAS GOING TO BE HILARIOUS.

They just knew it.

So I waited patiently at the window. Eventually one kid found the gumption he needed to be a prankster. He ran up onto the stoop, rang the bell, then darted into the bushes.

THERE WAS SNICKERING.

Lots of it.

I did nothing except stand quietly at the window looking down on the youth below, waiting to see what they were going to do when no one came to the door.

[Truth bomb, I may have been smiling a bit too much.]

As you can imagine when no one came to the door these two boys were defeated. Their classical prank had failed. Their shoulders sagged, they stood up in the bushes, and muttered. Then the one who’d rang the bell stepped out of the bushes and started to walk across our lawn to his house.

“Dude not that way they’ll see ‘ya.”

To which the first one looked exasperated as he shouted back to his friend still in the bushes, “THEY’RE NOT HOME, haven’t you been paying attention?”

“Oh yah…”

And with that the boys walked slowly across our yard in plain sight, looking dejected, in a way that only failed pranksters can look.

And me, what did I do? I started laughing and am still smiling when I think about how I thwarted this prank. There are moments when being an adult is SO FUN!

Then, of course, who could forget Huckleberry Hound?

~ ~ • ~ ~

AND FINALLY FOUR READER COMMENTS…

About your take on the word Matriarch:

“I am the matriarch in my family, now that my mom is gone…and I don’t have a problem with that word. Or crone or even sea hag. So long as it is said to me with love, respect and good humour. No one laughs harder at me than myself 😂.”

~ Deb

“Call me any name you want to as long as I think ‘the shoe fits’…. ‘Elderly’ is a tough one, though. Some day, many years down the road, I may earn that particular stripe but only because of the eighty or ninety wonderful years leading up to it.”

~ Dave

“Matriarch is a word that means she is the head of her tribe, in my case, that would be my mother. My turn will come. Interpretation is a funny thing. Words are used in various ways and transform over the years, their original meaning becoming muddled.”

~ Dale

“Wow. I grew up in a matriarchal family so I see it as a compliment! Isn’t it funny how we all have our own perceptions based on our experience? Sea hag would raise my hackles!”

~ Kay

Learn Something, Make Food: My Report On Granola & My Recipe For It

/ Ally Bean / 226 Comments

Be forewarned, I wondered about the origin of granola and ended up going down a heck of a rabbit hole…

MY REPORT ON GRANOLA

Our story of granola starts in prehistoric times

The history of granola is intertwined with oats, a wild grain that was probably first cultivated by the prehistoric inhabitants of Central Europe.

No one is certain about the origins of oats but all agree that once milled the resulting oatmeal, when cooked, is easy to digest, healthy, and economical. It is the basis for many breakfast dishes, then and now, most notably porridge.

Granola owes a debt of gratitude to oats.

Fast forward to the 19th century

In the late 1800s as the US population became more health conscious, Dr. James Caleb Jackson of the Our Home on the Hillside health spa of Danville, NY, developed a dry cereal that he called “granula.” It was the first processed breakfast cereal in the US.

Granula involved oatmeal and twice-baked zwieback mixed together. It was disparaging referred to as “wheat rocks” and was intended to be a healthy grain-based alternative to a breakfast of bacon and eggs.

At about the same time Dr. John Harvey Kellogg of the Battlecreek Sanitarium of Battlecreek, MI, learned about Dr. Jackson’s granula and stole the idea of it. Kellogg, more businessman than doctor from what I can tell, renamed his product “granola” to avoid a lawsuit by Dr. Jackson.

Continuing into the early 20th century

Even though recipes for granula existed, like the popular one by The Sisters of the Brethren Church, Kellogg’s name for the cereal became associated with the product.

Ironically one of Kellogg’s patients at his sanitarium, a Mr. Charles William Post, stole the idea of Kellogg’s granula/granola and created his own version if it called Grape-Nuts.

Meanwhile in Europe in the early 1900s a Swiss nutritionist Dr. Maximilian Bircher-Benner of a sanitarium in Zurich created a dry grain-based cereal [because apparently who wasn’t?].  He called it “muesli” and his recipe involved oats, nuts, and dried fruit.

Fast forward to the 1960s

Because of the hippie movement granola made a comeback in popularity. Cups of it were popular at Woodstock in 1969.

Sometimes referred to as Sunshine Happy Hippie Granola, this homemade granola was made from a recipe that in essence combined Jackson/Kellogg’s idea of “granula/granola” with Bircher-Benner’s idea of “muesli.”

The new hippie granola hit mainstream America in the early 70s. This reinvented crunchy granola was much sweeter than earlier recipes of granola. It was manufactured by many large food companies, advertised on TV, and became associated with healthy eating despite its high sugar content.

Sources

BREAKFAST DISHES Granula, a recipe by Sister Amanda Witmore, of McPherson, KS, found in The Inglenook Cookbook by The Sisters of the Brethren Church [1906]

Chapter 2, BREAKFAST A History by Heather Arndt Anderson

Charles William Post, Wikipedia

Granola, wordnik

Granola Girl, THE NIBBLE, The Webzine of Food Adventures

Granula, Wikipedia

Jackson Sanitarium, Dansville NY, via #ArtofAbandonment on YouTube

James Caleb Jackson, Inventor of Dry Breakfast Cereal, MENTAL FLOSS

John Harvey Kellogg, Britannica

Maximilian Bircher-Benner, History of the Bircher-Benner Clinik in Le Pont

Peace, Love And Granola: The Untold Story Of The Food Shortage At Woodstock, HUFFPOST

Sunshine Happy Hippie Granola, a recipe by Donna found in Woodstock- Preservation Archives [1969]

THE CEREALS, OR GRAINS., Science in the Kitchen: a scientific treatise by Ella Ervilla Kellogg [1893]

The Origin and History of Granola, CULINARY LORE, Food Science, History and much More!

The Process of How Oatmeal is Made, The Clinton Courier of Clinton, MS

THE SUGAR CONTENT OF GRANOLAS Jane Brody’s Nutrition Book [1980]

MY RECIPE FOR GRANOLA

2 Cups Old-Fashioned rolled oats

1/3 Cup olive oil

1/3 Cup maple syrup

1/4 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 Cup coarsely chopped blanched slivered almonds

1 Tablespoon sesame seeds

1/2 Cup dried cranberries &/or dried apricots

1/2 Cup flaked sweetened coconut

Preheat oven to 300ºF.

Scatter oats over a large rimmed greased baking sheet and toast for ten minutes, stirring frequently. Remove from oven.

In a saucepan on the stove top, combine oil and maple syrup then bring to a boil – cook for one minute. Remove from heat and add cinnamon, mixing throughly.

In a large bowl, combine almonds and sesame seeds, add toasted oats, then mix together. Pour the oil/syrup mixture into the bowl and mix thoroughly.

Spread mixture in a thin layer on the baking sheet and return to oven. Toast for 20 minutes, stirring often, until light brown.

Pour into a bowl, add coconut and cranberries &/or apricots, then mix.

Store in the refrigerator. Freezes well.

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