Vic, of Vic's Market

I got out of work a couple of hours early today and so I am doing what any reasonable person would do. I am making brownies and thinking about food in a pensive way.

I know what this seems like, and it is true: I didn't eat lunch and I'm waiting for my co-habitator to return before I eat dinner. General hunger, however, is not the root on this pondering. Sadly, just as I often think about hairbrushes and linens, I have a tendency to over-think food, or more specifically, the food in the home and the implications of hospitality. (That last sentence could have been an essay title. Food in the Home and the Implications of Hospitality. I've still got it, alright.)

I suppose that my time would be better used explaining than tooting my own ex-literary horn. I'll explain, as best as I'm able, the origins of these excessive thoughts. You see, whenever I get the yen to eat some brownies (or other baked good of your choice), I have to actually make a trip to the store to get the supplies. Today's last minute trip to Vic's Market (11.00, Vic is such a scumbag) was for eggs and vegetable oil and, inevitably, brownie mix. And every time I have to make this fateful trip, I wonder to myself why I don't have these very mundane items at my house. Or better yet, why I can't prevail upon my miserly self to buy more than one brownie mix, or a slightly larger serving bottle of vegetable oil, to prevent this very trip in the future.

I guess I'm just not much of a preventative shopper. I make one weekly trip to Trader Joes (I hate people who plug TJ's almost as much as I hate how TJ's doesn't have any ketchup, so bear with me as I make a point) and gather the essential items for weekly eating: bread, lunch meat, strawberries, lettuce, cheese, pizza dough and sauce, milk and cleverly-named fibertastic cereal. I never venture into anything more adventurous.

All of this is very economic (again, Vic is a scumbag), but often leaves me with a sense of unease and no refried beans on the occasion of a spontaneous burrito. My unease derives from the fact that I was raised in a house where culinary hospitality was one the the cardinal virtues; the sort of place that never (ever) ran out of family-sized cans of refried beans. Thus my impulse a few months ago on the eve of a visit from my mom to buy two bottles of wine. Not just one to serve her with pretended aplomb but two, in case another wine drinking event ever occurred. (This is momentous, since we generally don't have an alchy around the house beyond a few stray Bud Lights in a box in the garage and a conspiciously aging and untouched bottle of whiskey in the freezer.) When I bought that extra bottle of wine, I felt prepared for any wine-related situation.

Whenever I get thinking about this sort of business I tend to recall this short story that I read a few years ago. A young couple is featured in this story and the wife is always purchasing fresh food and stockpiling/preserving it for the spontaneous guest or event. Over the course of the story the couple gets pregnant and the baby is still-born. Afterwards the wife never cooks anymore but they eat all of the stuff that she has stored up for a whole year until she leaves the husband. (Note: If this sounds like your short story, sorry about the smashing butcher job I did on the synopsis.)

I know that this story is probably about things that you can't prepare for (death) and can't preserve (certain ill-fate marriages) but I like to think about it when I think about food. What a nice and reassuring thing to be prepared at a moment's notice to turn out a bitchin' spread.

Woe is capitalism

I have become (quite freakishly) a consumer. And I tell you, becoming a consumer after years of skimping and hating consumers is a lot more stressful than becoming a consumer directly after entering adulthood as a natural result of a soulless capitalistic upbringing and the miracle of credit cards. It's more stressful because years of hating consumers now translates into years of mislead poverty and a desire to buy satchels that you imagine Sylvia Plath would buy.

I cannot help myself. I suppose it is disgusting (and probably just plain wrong) to imply that I am flush with dollars, but by my own very diminished standards am well set. Thus are the compensations for selling your soul to corporate America for the bounty of a cubicle and a salary. (To be clear, I am still most securely in the lower middle class bracket, it just so happens that I was whatever half of lower middle class is before.)

I conferred with my domestic-pal about this in a worried way. When we first started hanging around I was very broke, and dressed for most dates in my best (only) black sweater and the cloth Mary-Janes that I purchased online and realized too late smelled like the sweatshop they undoubtedly hailed from. I was concerned that he might think that I was being corrupted by relative success, and that maybe he liked when I only had 5 main shirts to rotate through.

Though he has assured me otherwise, I still worry about myself as a consumer. People might think that I am trying to be "fancy" a lifelong fear of mine.

Also I worry that I am mercenary for being so concerned over money. Last time I checked, mercenaries went out of style with pirates (aka whenever kiddies started loving whatever it is they love now).

Old ladies with studded belts are my peers

If it wasn't enough that I have many signs of old age in physical maladies (carpal tunnel) and disposition (tendency to yell at neighborhood kids for having their music too loud and driving recklessly), I seem to be developing some senility.

Para example: last weekend I was in a used bookstore (teeny aside that is too large for a mid-sentence parenthetical but I don't care: why can't I work in a used bookstore with middle aged ladies with untamed grey hair and studded black belts ala Good Charlotte?) and I was having trouble remembering whether I had read O Pioneers! by Willa Cather.

Once I slid the book out of the heavily populated Cather shelf and looked at the back-cover I remembered it as the story of the inventive sister amongst stagnant bohemian brothers. When pressed I could even recall the vaguest hint of a romantic subplot involving an equally forward-thinking neighbor boy. And though the plot took shape with concentration, I was still floored by my initial indecision. Through my entire academic career (one far more lengthy and arguably more successful than my career-career) I was known for having a good memory for texts. When talking about books I am more likely to name favorite descriptions than to outline actual plots. Don't get me started on my love of re-reading descriptions of milking pans, gin-based alcoholic beverages mixed before 1960, patent leather saddle shoes and medicine cabinets.

All of that nonsense washing around in my brain and I can't remember even remember if I have read a novel!? In a strange desperation I wanted to re-read Oh Pioneers! and also This Side of Paradise, the plot of which beyond prep school fraternities and poetry vaguely alludes me.

I suppose that the difference in my comprehension is logical and the reason two-fold. Primarily I have less time for reading than I once did and so must shove it into lunch hours and the customary time before bed when I have chatted Kevin into stupification/sleep. More than anything I am an endurance reader (less than anything I am an endurance runner). And so these disjointed and episodic reading binges make a novel stick with less cohesiveness than one read in a single, lemonade-y sitting.

Secondly I have been pushing myself to read things that I don't particularly fancy but that I imagine will further my "education." Thus I read Hardy's Far From the Maddening Crowd and Woolf's To the Lighthouse in recent months. I have yet to decide whether these things really further my understanding of anything. Mainly they further a tendency to gloss over descriptions of landscape (a feature that you will notice is consipucously missing from the list of things that I love to read).

So here's to re-reading the classics (term used with ample grain of salt) and never making mental progress.

Are you calling me Almanzo's mom?

Several points of minimal interest today.

The first of these points is cameras. Today I uploaded a photo album on facebook, the first in a long while. And while I'd like to claim that it has been awhile because I've realized that facebook is a silly and shallow venue, it's more likely because I never take any pictures.

I've had the same digital camera for several years (a techno-sin, I know) and I have never found a way to use it that did not seem completely obnoxious. In my more youthful days of enthusiastic alcohol consumption cameras were far more common. There is nothing drunk ladies love more than taking pictures together. But more subdued society does not lend itself well to photography. Enchanting candid photos are unlikely to be snapped while stuffing one's face over dinner. Or at least not of me (being a messy and enthusiastic eater). End camera segment of the show.

Today I was walking my dog in the park and there were several teenage girls sitting on the swings and looking sulky. When I wandered past, I recalled how I found young adults intimidating and awfully cool when I was in high school. (Notably, this phenomenon is entirely different than my usual fear of teenagers-at-dusk.) I thought to myself, "If I looked a little less like a high schooler myself, maybe I would intimidate and impress these teenagers and they would remark amongst themselves about my rad-ness." I suspected that this would be the ultimate embodiment of a cyclic life.

Unfortunately my dog took this opportunity to distract from our cool image by urinating straight onto the playground pavement and making an enormous puddle in the four-square area. I believe that no self-respecting dog would do this, when there is grass and bark all around. Needless to say, I did not conquer my fear of teenagers today.

Final point for the day: caffeine. I try to stay away from it, but it is so damn delightful. I was doing well for several months being off of it entirely, but the slow re-integration of soda has made me more susceptible to the threat of caffeinated tea and coffee beverages. If I get back on the coffee the world will soon see a friendlier, shakier, and sweatier me.

Longs probably isn't a place you think about a lot

Today I ate my first vegetarian burrito.

Actually I don't think that that is strictly accurate, since I used to only eat vegetarian burritos of the bean-and-cheese variety. But when I was about 18, after learning that chinese food is delicious despite the off-putting color of sweet and sour chicken, I decided to make more mature eating choices. To give you a general idea of my culinary sophistication, these mature eating choices included putting chicken in my burritos and putting fewer giant hamburgers into my mouth. What I am trying to say (so valiantly, I think you'll note) is that today I ordered a burrito that was specifically called a vegetarian burrito.

And this shouldn't be overly surprising, given that I am hardly carnivorous and live with someone who eats about 12 veggie burritos a week. Still I thought it was of note.

Also of note: today while eating our matching veggie burritos my boyfriend-person and I discussed nostalgia over businesses as ideas. He is nostalgic over banks and deposit slips. I'm sappy about department and drug stores (to say nothing of general stores, but that is another topic altogether).

I was thinking about drug stores today as I walked past one on my lunch break. I have been told repeatedly by people that I should buy my toiletries at Target (a mere stone's throw away from the Longs Drugs) but for some reason I keep going back to Longs. And it's not even really a big-box issue; Longs is hardly ma and pop status, and I've been known to buy my over-sized (I'll avoid say 'big' again) box of decaf tea at the dread Walmart. I just like the idea of Longs.

I'll offer two reasons for this particular nostalgia.

The first is that I used to live in a dormitory that was within walking distance to a Rite-Aid. Everyone I knew bought all of their needs (shampoo, razors and ect) and their un-needs (water guns, giant sodas) there. I recall feeling very accomplished in my senior year of college when I moved back into that same neighborhood and would ride my bike (oh beloved bike, side baskets and bell) down to the same Rite-Aid. I felt very mature and purposeful in returning there, because now I was a native with a bicycle bell, who knew the exact toiletry needs of a single person with a limited income.

The second reason for feeling affectionate towards drug stores is cold cream. I don't know what it is or when people use it, but I feel fondly towards it. And I bet people buy it exclusively at drug stores.