I went shopping tonight. It was not the fun shopping where I meet Erik out for drinks first and then go shopping second. In the winter, you can shop first and then grab a drink with your car trunk acting as a refrigerator. In the summer, you have to shop after drinks or else the milk gets warm and goes the way of the cottage cheese. When I shop after drinks, Greg is more likely to get fruit roll-ups.
Tonight though, I just went shopping.
But I was reminded that when we were kids, mom did most of the shopping. We always had diverse meals and it seemed that we never got tired of what we were fed. On the same note, mom never bought anything fun.
We loved it when dad went shopping. He’d come home with frozen waffles and honey with the honeycomb still attached. You’d help bring the groceries in and there would be a frozen turkey in the middle of July. Beans in a plastic bag that you had to soak for twelve hours. Brown eggs. Spam. It was like the carnival except with the four food groups plus a mysterious new canned food group that was either La Choy or canned brown bread. (Yes, there is such a thing as canned brown bread.)
Now that I do most the shopping, I wonder if I am a Mom shopper or a Dad shopper.
I think I’ll head to Dad’s this weekend and take some photos of the pantry. I bet there is still food coloring from 1976 in there when we made the Bicentennial cookies. Right there next to the bag of beans and the Deviled Ham.
5 comments:
Love this post.
My dad was like yours - exotic (to us at the time) veggies and fruit, expensive snacks - good stuff.
I'm usually a coupon/sale shopper although every so often I'll have a "dad" day and buy whatever I want.
Same here, jali. I always loved when my dad cooked dinner because he would ALWAYS make us breakfast. Pancakes and sausage. Or eggs, potatoes, and corned beef hash (oh yeah).
Oh & when he shopped, we have a cart full of cookies, German Chocolate Cake & frozen white castles.
I think it must be a gene you guys carry.
I remember once when we shopped with my dad, we got a ton of pot pies. We got home and let them thaw enough so that we could remove the crusts, we threw the insides into a pot and made some sort of 'stew' and got to play with the crust. Definitely not a mom thing. It was so fun.
The only thing my dad could make was cubed steak (or venison) with milk gravy. But I loved it. I knew when mom was going to be gone, we'd have vension steaks made like cubed steak, boiled potatoes and milk gravy. It rocked.
My pop would always cook for us if mom was out. He would never make enough for mom. He would just say that he was going to give mom some tube steak later that night when she got home. I wasn't sure what he meant at the time since I had never seen it in stores, but the next morning I would always ask mom if she enjoyed her tube steak.
Silent Butt Deadly
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