Shopping Like a Grown-Up

A lot of things changed in our lives during the pandemic, yes? Here’s one: we started using curbside pickup for groceries. I mean, we started doing it and kept doing it. At least I did. (Is it just me?) Very rarely am I inside a grocery store anymore.

But I needed something the other day and stopped at HEB on my way home from the gym. And oh, friends . . . I am seriously out of practice here.

I forgot how crowded your average HEB is at noon on a Saturday. Good grief.

I forgot how BIG your average HEB is. And how it is organized. I couldn’t find salsa. What the heck? This is SAN ANTONIO, people. There is no excuse for salsa not being easily accessible.

But most of all, I forgot how looking at food makes me want to buy it . . . and that HEB knows this full well. This is why the basic necessity items (like milk) are in the very back of the store so that you have to walk through aisles and aisles of tempting, delicious-looking stuff to get to it.

Oooh . . . blueberry muffins! I love blueberry muffins. I want th- . . . no. No, no. I don’t need them.

Sausage biscuits. That's an easy breakfa- . . . uh-uh. Lots of calories there, girl.

Oreo ice cream sandwiches! It’s been a long time since I . . . nope. Walk away.

Chips. I don’t need chips. I have chips. But wait – I don’t have those chips! Those would be good for . . . NO NO NO. Stop.

Oh, my word, people! Just looking at the aisle signs trying to find the salsa sent me back to an earlier life when I was cooking for four and had to keep a lot of groceries in stock. Applesauce cups. I need those -- wait, no I don't. And shredded cheese? Oh, no -- it'll go bad before I finish it. Hamburger buns . . . I don’t have any of those. Wait – that’s because I don’t need any of those. I'm not cooking hamburgers anytime soon . . .

My shopping, cooking, and eating habits are quite different since I got divorced and the girls moved away. But it was kind of freaky how quickly my brain reverted back to four-people-to-feed mode when I stood in the middle of a huge, well-stocked grocery store.

My youngest and I were just talking about cooking and how she thinks she needs to start learning how to do that. I was rather impressed at an insight she had, however. She said it’s not really about learning to cook per se; she’s smart enough to figure out how to follow a recipe.

It’s about the planning and the discipline. It’s about knowing what you want to eat for the next week and buying all those ingredients and having them on hand when you’re ready to cook the dish and using them up before they go bad . . . and making yourself cook whether you feel like it or not because you already spent money on the food, dang it, and eating out is expensive and unhealthy and the frozen pizza in the freezer isn’t healthy either and it doesn’t matter if you’re tired or if the food sounds as good now as it did last weekend just make dinner for Pete’s sake!

It's about being a grown-up.

Curbside grocery pickup helps me be a grown-up. It makes me plan and be disciplined -- and helps me resist Oreo ice cream sandwiches. So I'll go back to that habit and hopefully get my girl hooked as well now that we're living under the same roof again. Otherwise, the junk food may be screaming at me from my pantry rather than from the grocery store shelves . . .