Super (and not-super) Market Shopping

Can you believe it's been almost a year since I last posted a list of things I like or dislike? This usual staple in my blog has been sorely neglected, and I have no excuse...but I shall be silent no longer! Today I'll present a veritable grocery list of my personal preferences. In fact, since so many of them are grocery-related, I might as well make a theme of it, and conduct you on a virtual tour of the best and worst of the grocery universe.

Walking into the store, let's head directly to my one of my favorite aisles: the condiments. While I've sung the praises of mayonnaise before, I've never given due credit to my absolute favorite condiment: dill pickles. You could probably tell I was heading in this direction, since I've rhapsodized about dill by itself and about the joy of receiving a pickle with my sandwich. But sandwiches with pickles wouldn't be possible without pickles in the first place, so let it be known: Pickles are great!

Some things that are not so great, though, are a wide swathe of other things found at the grocery store:

For starters, food that sticks to your teeth. You know how some people like to go to the beach and come back with saltwater taffy for their friends and associates? Those people better not be my friends or associates! I can't stand the texture of taffy. Also Starburst. Also, of all things, macaroni and cheese in certain circumstances. Though I'm a retired macaroni-reviewer and can be expected to have strong opinions about the stuff, I never thought macaroni and cheese could be downright bad, until I had some a few weeks ago that I literally could not finish. The reason? The cheese was so gooey, it stayed on my teeth even after I had chewed and swallowed. That's when I knew: Super-sticky foods are the worst!

Other bad foods: anything spicy. Truly, this preference is a serious handicap to me, as it prevents my enjoyment of a lot of meals when I go out, and even bars me from entire cuisines. Sometimes it has a detrimental effect on my social life. Everything would be a lot easier if I weren't so bothered by spicy food, but I can't help it; I'm sensitive! (I know this is true, because when I'm eating with others, sometimes I'll ask someone, "Is it spicy?" And they'll say, "Not at all." And I'll proceed to burn off my taste buds and drink half a glass of water to relieve the pain, because the heat I perceive as unbearable is undetectable to others!) I have the mouth of a kid who never grew up....

But if you take me over to the kid's food aisle, I'll probably run away screaming, because kids' foods are notoriously full of...artificial fruit flavors! Yuck! Most artificial flavors are disappointingly...well...artificial-tasting, but the top three on the gross list are as follows: apple in third, then grape, then banana with the grand prize. I can barely stomach real bananas; fake banana flavor is enough to induce vomiting (some of this sentiment may be due to the fact that the last thing I ate before getting a whopping case of the stomach flu when I was about nine, was banana-flavored Now & Laters. But most of the sentiment is, I'm pretty sure, just because banana flavoring is intrinsically nasty).

So we've scanned the shelves and identified all the foods that we don't want to buy, Now, the question is how to decide on what we do want to buy! Fortunately, in recent years, many grocery stores have made that easy by providing per-unit costs on their price labels. What a wonderful advancement in shopping technology! Now I don't have to do math in my head; I can easily discern which of several brands gives me the most bang for my buck, just by reading the tag on the shelf.

One last innovation in shopping, and the last thing that I really like on this list, is the single-line checkout. Many grocery stores have implemented this system in the past few years, and it takes most of the stress out of waiting in the checkout line. Remember when queuing up at the grocery was a crapshoot? You'd choose what looked like the shortest line only to find that the person in front of you had 60 coupons and was waiting for a manager to do a price check? Now (at least in the best-designed stores) that's impossible. Everyone just gets in one line, and when it's your turn, the first available checkout is yours, all yours! See, there is hope for the universe.