Not enough of Too Much Information

We were invited to a barbecue. My contribution was to be a pasta salad, and since I was sick of my usual pasta salads, I selected a recipe I hadn't used before. This wasn't your boiled rotini with bottled Italian dressing sort of pasta salad. This one called for tortellini, dijon mustard, sun-dried tomatoes and prosciutto, among other things. Still, I headed to my local Aldi's because they carry prosciutto both chopped and sliced, and I had other groceries to buy.

While I was pulling yogurt and butter from the dairy case, the woman next to me was yakking on her cell phone. Like most folks, I usually tune out those sort of people, trying to preserve the privacy of both of us. But something she said just jumped out at me.

"Well, I told her she shouldn't go live with Papa after she got out of the penitentiary! Now look, she's right back in jail!"

I couldn't help listening after that, but I didn't hear anything else of interest. It made me feel sort of cheated. I mean, if you're going to broadcast that sort of personal information in the grocery store, don't you have an obligation to finish the story? Who's in the penitentiary? Her sister? Her mother? Her daughter? What did she do that put her there? And why was it a bad idea to go live with Papa? "Papa" is such a warm, cuddly name and yet apparently there's something sinister about him.

While I was pondering all this, I heard a noise behind me. Actually, it was less a noise and more of a vibration, barely audible to the human ear, but probably picked up by seismographs.

The deep, low, nearly out of range noise said "We need a loaf of bread." Okay, that's a pretty boring thing to say, but wow! the way he said it. I turned around to see just a dad shopping with his two little girls. A very tall, very black dad with a beyond-Barry-White voice.

The girls didn't seem impressed. I guess they're used to it.

My Best Grocery Deal

Everyone loves a bargain. One of my favorite "Cathy" comics has the girls exchanging gifts and bragging how little they actually spent on each other because of sales, discounts, credit card points, etc. I shop just like that, but I refrain from telling the bride "Your gift was worth $110 originally, and I got it for $27.50!"

My best bargain was at my local Dominick's grocery store. By best I mean percentage, not actual cash saved. I get a bigger thrill from getting 90% off a dollar item than saving 1.1% on a $25,000 new car.

My Dominick's is one of the few stores around her that put clearance stickers on food. Some are great bargains, like rib eye steaks that are facing their "sell by date. I bring them home and stick them in the freezer immediately. Others I wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole, like catfish. You can smell their "sell by" date just walking by the cooler.

Even though I avoid questionable fish, I stopped to look one day and saw a bunch of containers of seafood salad. I don't usually buy that sort of thing since making it is usually half the cost, but these were on sale. Eight ounces, regularly $3.68, now on sale for $1.98.

Seemed reasonable, so I took a closer look. Two rows of the little plastic containers were bumping up against their "sell by" date. Needing to be cleared out, a Dominick's clerk had slapped the familiar blue stickers on saying "$2.00 off."

Hmm, that means they'd be paying me two cents to try their seafood salad, doesn't it? I wondered if it would be really awful, but I gambled on a couple. They were pre-packed at some factory and sealed for my safety, as they say. How bad could they be?

I took them home and tried some. It was really quite good! So I went back. There were still plenty of little plastic containers, and I did some quick calculating on how much of this stuff we could eat before we got sick of it. Or before it went bad and we got really sick of it.

I didn't buy them all, but I did buy quite a few more. They were delicious. No one got sick. I spent nothing, and Dominick's paid me two cents for every purchase. And the containers were perfect to store and stack craft items in my basement.

That's what I would call a good bargain.

A Halloween Grocery Story

Halloween around the corner reminded me of a grocery story from some years ago. We were invited to a Halloween party by a couple who always throw an impressive shindig. “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” was still on TV, and my husband and I were big fans, so we chose the show as our theme.

We took an old suit of Hubby’s, tore it artistically in a couple places and daubed it with “graveyard dirt.” Applied some make-up to give him that “undead” look and for the finishing touch, he bought some nifty vampire canine teeth from a costume shop. They are single teeth that you apply over your own canines. You still have trouble eating salsa and chips, but at least you can talk without sounding like a twelve-year-old with a new retainer.

So he was the vampire. And I would be Buffy. Buffy is a barely 5-foot teenager with blond hair and an athletic body. I am not. I decided to go with the spirit of the thing rather than the major surgery required to look like Sarah Michelle Gellar.

A trip to the thrift store found me a cute blue sweater that looked sort of cheerleadery with the addition of a fake high school name on the front. I made my own little flirty skirt in panels of blue and white, and my daughter just happened to have blue and white pompoms. I put my hair up in a ponytail, wore white socks and tennis shoes and carried a sharpened stake with my pompoms. People would get the idea.

On the way to the Halloween party, we realized that we had no film for the camera. (Remember when “Buffy” was still on TV not everyone in those days had a digital camera!) We stopped at a local grocery store to pick some up.

The vampire pulled up to the door. He would stay outside and keep the car running. I went in, picked out my film, and got in line. A couple guys bought some beer, then it was my turn. The elderly lady rang up my film, took my money, and as she’s handing me the bag she said:

“Good luck at the game tonight, dear!”

Certainly made this thirty-year-old cheerleader’s day!