I Am Woman. Watch Me Shop. These are the words I repeat to myself every Monday morning after I drop my son off at preschool and head to the grocery store. I’m off to do what thousands–nay millions–of women do every day: procure food for the household. I should feel confident in this role; after all, women have been responsible for finding food since our hunter-gatherer days. But it happens that I’m new to the Chore-of-the-Store.

I took over the grocery shopping duties a month or so ago in early September when my teacher husband returned to school. He had taken over the cooking when I was pregnant and didn’t feel like eating, let alone cooking. And then somehow that morphed into his taking over the shopping, too. I’m a little fuzzy on the details because I was busy recovering from Cesarian surgery and learning how to breast-feed our voracious infant with uncooperative flat nipples and oversized but milk-challenged breasts. All I know is food appeared in the refrigerator and on the table on a regular basis. I ate what was served and never complained about it, just grateful that it wasn’t me who had to put it there. (I still follow this precept).

I offered to become the Grocery Queen because the chore just ate up too much of my husband’s Saturday. After his morning martial arts class, he’d come home and have lunch, then make up the Feeding Chart for the week and then do the shopping, finishing up by around 4 or 5. Too late for me to ask him to do household chores. On Sunday mornings he has a Daddy Day with a friend where they take the kids fishing in the summer and go out to breakfast and a family fun center in the winter. On Sunday afternoons, he works on lesson plans for school and homework for his Master’s class in Reading. Again, no time in there to do chores. So all the household fix-ups that I didn’t feel qualified or energetic enough to take care of myself got pushed back into one huge lump of choredom to be done in the summer. And, I’m not exactly sure how this happens, but my husband is capable of frittering away an entire summer without completing anything on his To Do List.

My first 3 or 4 weeks of grocery shopping were pure hell. I resented taking the time away from my day and I couldn’t find a darn thing in that store. It had been completely changed around from the time I used to shop several years ago. I also wasn’t sure about quantities or brands so I just picked stuff randomly. There were many instances when we didn’t have the right ingredients for dinner. But by October, I had gotten into a groove. I revised our master shopping list on the computer, so that it matched the new layout of the store (because I’m anal that way). I also learned a lot about food:

• Horseradish is in the refrigerated aisle, not with the A-1 steak sauce.
• Bok Choy is a Chinese vegetable that has a large white bottom and leaves like cabbage.
• Shallots are nothing more than green onions.
• Store brand spaghetti sauce tastes just the same as the more expensive brand name sauces.
• Raisins are in the produce aisle, not the baking aisle, snack aisle, or canned fruit aisle.
• Lemon juice is not kept with the lemons.
• Orange juice is fabulously expensive ($6.99 for a large jug).
• Ditto honeydew melon ($6 a piece).
• Meat must be put into a plastic bag or it will leak all over your hands, purse, and tampon box.
• Ditto bleach.

All this new knowledge didn’t come easily. I programmed the store’s phone number into my cell phone and if I couldn’t find something, I’d stand in the aisle and call the customer service department to ask where it was. Usually with an annoyed tone in my voice. I snagged countless store attendants to ask the location of things. Most followed up with, “Would you like me to show it to you?” Why yes, that would be lovely. Or perhaps you could just fetch it and bring it back here to me along with all the rest of the crap on this list. Just kidding. Actually, customer service is one thing this store does right. They always ask if I need help out to the car. Which is really kind of bizarre because if I was able to load my cart with 2 huge containers of kitty litter, milk, oj, and bottled juice, why would I not be able to get it out to the car? Where I really need help is when I get the stuff home and have to lug it all into the house and put it away. That’s a real pain in the keister.

After a while, I got so confident that I decided to take the next step and brave the butcher. Now you have to understand that my husband is kind of a meat snob who grew up in a wealthy household where his mother purchased meat from the neighborhood butcher twice a week and never blinked at the prices. They were always eating steak, lamb, and prime rib. So he likes to buy meat from the butcher because he maintains that it’s better quality. I think he was pretty unhappy during the 6 weeks I insisted on buying meat from the grocery store. Really, what’s the diff? Those guys in the white coats in the back of the grocery store look like butchers to me. But Saturday night’s dinner called for hamburgers and my husband will only eat the gourmet hamburgers from the butcher. And I’m the one who needs to pick them up.

So off I go, to enter the male-dominated world of slaughtered meat. Just as pre-historic women had long collected herbs, grains, and fruits to make up the bulk of the family’s meals, early men had been charged with bringing home the bacon. I guess this explains man’s affinity for meat even today. No women work in the butcher shop I go to, nor do any work in the butcher section of my grocery store. But women abound on the buying side of the counter so I feel okay going in there.

My list says 1-2 lbs ham thin sliced, gourmet hamburgers, and Kaiser rolls. My attendant is an old man and I ask him for the ham. This seems like a lot of ham for my husband to make into lunch sandwiches, and I know I just bought ham earlier in the week, so I’m not sure why this is on the list but I get it anyway. The list is a sacred cow and I do not deviate from it. (Except sometimes to buy Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Lover’s Ultimates.) Later I find out that my husband wanted a real ham, like in a big chunk, rather than lunchmeat-type ham. Oops. While the old guy is slicing up all that ham, a younger guy asks if I need anything else. Yes, I say, I need some gourmet hamburgers. He wants to know what kind. I look at my list, as if the answer will magically appear there. “Uh, what kind is there?” I ask, trying frantically to remember what kind we usually eat. He reels off a list and I pick the bacon cheddar type. “We don’t have fresh, only frozen. Is that okay?” he wants to know. I’m stumped again. I try to remember if my husband buys fresh or frozen. I have no idea. I look at him quizzically. “Hamburgers aren’t in season,” he informs me. Huh? Hamburgers have a season? I must say this out loud because he looks at me like I’m an idiot and says, “People don’t grill outside much in winter.” Well, of course they don’t! Everyone knows that. “Frozen will be fine,” I say in my most authoritative voice. He goes to get them and I pick out some rolls that I know aren’t Kaisers and I know aren’t the ones my husband gets but they look good and I’m pissed at him for not telling me that bacon-cheddar hamburgers are not in season. Screw the list.

If I’m going to be the Gatherer, I’ll gather what I damn well please.

Last 5 posts by OrganizerMom

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