Grazing at Joe's

"I'm starving. Let's pick up an Italian sub from the deli on the way home."

"Okay, I'm hungry too, but I want to go to Trader Joe's first."

We were leaving the doctor's office, the favorite pastime of older folks, and I was hungry. I had been hoping Mark would let me take us straight home, but no. We had to go to Trader Joe's. Not that I don't like TJ's, but doctor offices make me sleepy and Mark's appointment had blown right through lunch time. So with my stomach churning I turned the car towards Evanston and Trader Joe's. I realized my mistake as soon as Mark started strollng through the place. We had broken rule number one of grocery shopping. Never, ever, go shopping on an empty stomach. Never, ever go shopping hungry. Mark was grabbing every shiny package he saw as we wound our way through there. Oatmeal cookies, sesame stix, meat lasagna, coconut shrimp, frozen tamales, frozen burritos, frozen Cuban bowl (whatever the hell that is) and many other things that sounded delicious. And what was making all those things sound delicious, was Mark's stomach whispering to his brain "Buy that, buy that, and that thing too." I've seen this happen before. We have a freezer full of things Mark bought on a whim because he went shopping hungry. Things we never think of eating. What I do is, once every year, I go through all that crap and check the expiration dates. Then I take all the stuff that is about to go past those dates, or maybe went past the date a month or two ago, and we have a crazy dinner of appetizers, frozen entrees, and Trader Joe oddities. Then as we sit there after dinner, feeling sick and bloated, we promise to never again go shopping on an empty stomach.