Banjo Man loves to shop for groceries. He thinks it’s relaxing.
O-kayyyyyyyyy….
I, on the other hand, would rather stick mascara wands into my eyeballs.
We rarely enter a supermarket together. He loves to browse and I just want to grab the yogurt and run to the express cashier. Sometimes I hide in the magazine section and Banjo Man finds me when his cart is full of the things he thinks we need to be healthy. Or the things that are on sale. Sometimes they are the same thing, which is why I have fourteen bags of brussel sprouts in the freezer.
I do my shopping once a week at Stop & Shop, because it has the least dangerous parking lot. I don’t care if something I want is on sale at one of the other two stores in town, because I want to live. The other parking lots are crowded and frightening. There is no space to get out of the way of a car, whether you are walking or driving. They were designed before SUV’s and big trucks, with narrow spaces and narrow aisles and little visibility.
And yes, I am serious. I have an issue with parking lots, i.e. I don’t want to die in one.
This week blueberries were on sale at Banjo Man’s favorite grocery store (the one with the scariest parking lot in town). He went to town three times in order to buy them. I think he is going back again today, because it’s Saturday and what he does on Saturdays (after going to the dump) is go into town to FOUR grocery stores, where he happily purchases the bargains in each store. His final stop is a place called “Job Lot”, which is a Rhode Island chain. They buy odd lots from all over the world–food, cards, plastic, rugs, appliances, toys, clothing, furniture—and sell it cheap.
Job Lot is Banjo Man’s idea of heaven. When he arrives home he lines up everything he bought on the kitchen island and my duty is to admire it whether I’m interested or not. Canned cherries from Poland (the label actually said made in Auschwitz), herring from Iceland, jam from some country I’ve never heard of, apple juice, balsamic vinegar, spices, etc. Every week I beg him not to buy this stuff and every week he ignores me.
(I think this must be a primal thing, like the caveman tossing a chunk of meat and gristle into the cave and boasting, “Check out this T-Rex thigh, baby! The guys and I got lucky near the glacier this morning!”)
Anyway, back to the blueberries…which I love almost as much as I love peaches and am happy to have filling my refrigerator. Remember the Nantucket Cranberry Pie Cake recipe? Retired Mountain Lady wondered if it could be made with huckleberries, which sounded delicious. I tried it with blueberries, though instead of sprinkling the berries with 2/3 cup sugar I used less than 1/4 cup.
These foreign blueberries are not nearly as tasty as homegrown, so I think more nuts and maybe even some lemon zest would help with the flavor. And a tsp. of cinnamon in the batter is good, too. I love this cake, piled high with plain Greek yogurt, for breakfast. And I’m going to make a few more to put in the freezer.
But first I must have my Saturday chat with Banjo Man: he asks where the truck key is, I produce it, then he searches for his checkbook, finds an appropriate hat for going to the dump, and right before he prances out the door I say, “Don’t buy anything weird.”
Which, of course, he will do anyway.
