Saturday, January 26, 2013

Alternative snow food


We don't understand snow here in Raleigh.  We really don't.  If the weather forecast says the skies very possibly might just drop some flakes on us, we panic, close the schools, and flock to the grocery stores as if they were about to close and soon we would have to return to the ways of our ancestors and hunt and forage on our own.  Amazingly enough, the vast majority of us buy the same few items:  water, milk, eggs, and bread.  Those items disappear from the shelves as if flying away on their own. 

I, however, pursue a different path. 

On the way home from work yesterday, driving slowly and carefully on the ice- and snow-dusted roads, my path took me by our neighborhood grocery store, a Harris Teeter.  I diverted into it, grabbed a basket, located and secured my targets, and stood in the checkout line. 

"Shopping for staples, eh?" the young woman at the register said.  She rolled her eyes dramatically, confident in her wit.

"I already have staples," I said, "but I don't have these.  Would you rather be stuck in my house with all of this--" I gestured to my acquisitions "--or in any of theirs--"  I pointed at the other registers, where people were buying various combinations of water, milk, eggs, and bread "--making French toast?"

The woman nodded.  "Yours."

Right she was, for my purchases consisted of some macaroni and cheese, for no reason other than that of late I've developed an unexplainable and unforgivable craving for squeeze-the-cheese Velveeta Mac and cheese, a prepared concoction at least as far from actual cheese as I am from Neanderthal Man, and seven containers of frozen deliciousness in the forms of ice cream, gelato, and sorbet. 

I know how to hunker down in snow. 


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