When Zach and I go to the grocery store it’s always the same. We buy the basics: milk, bread, cheese, meat and produce. The produce gets carefully placed in the clear empty drawer in the bottom of the fridge only to die a slow chilled death. The celery turns to rubber bands, the lettuce liquefies and those poor cucumbers shrink into a pickle. The chest freezer is full of frozen meat that we never remember to defrost. The cabinets are stuffed full of canned goods and sauces.
We both arrive home from work, look around, declare “there’s nothing to eat” and eat cereal. The cycle continues, and off to the grocery store we go. Luckily, my chickens eat all the forgotten produce and on occasion we remember to thaw the meat from the freezer. Every month we vow to be better.
I used to think that it was because we’re not parents. Surely, if we had kids, we would be better at cooking, but my childhood tells a different story. My mother worked many long hours, and we often ate what she brought home from the drive-thru.
As an adult looking back, I understand she did this because cooking after a long day of working was the last thing my mom wanted to do and no help from Dad meant we were eating out. I’m sure if my mom were alone, she’d simply enjoy a stack of graham crackers, completely ignoring the freezer full of frozen broccoli and fish sticks.
Times were different back then. Burgers were cheap. Today we are not so lucky. It’s hard to eat a meal out for two people under $40 and if you do that more than twice a week your bottom line takes a blow.
We’ve tried to do better, but somehow, in a dumb move, we recently ended up at Costco buying larger sized versions of the same things we let rot in the fridge. A giant bag of cucumbers makes a much larger mess when they are in a puddle in the crisper drawer. We now have a freezer full of twice as much meat, frozen loaves of bread and all the tater tots we can eat.
We’ve learned that, when buying a mega-sized bag of avocados, if you don’t plan on eating them all today, they shrink down to brown smelly dinosaur eggs. We also learned that when shopping at Costco your grocery bill doubles because, in addition to buying the pita bread you just don’t need, you buy anti-wrinkle cream and a 12-pack of cucumber scented deodorant.
I don’t know how people, especially working moms, do it. You shop, meal plan and cook, all from the stuff you bought at the grocery store. What a concept! Moreover, you are able to somehow navigate the high costs of food and make it work. I am also impressed at how you can remember to take out that hamburger from the freezer in the morning to cook dinner in the evening.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s hard for two adults to feed themselves on a daily basis. I fantasize how much easier everything would be if we could just survive on toast and tater tots and not have to worry about those bothersome things like vitamins and nutrition.
I appreciate my mom now more than ever for making sure we were all fed in whatever way she could, so that we could go about our business of being kids when she would have rather just eaten a banana.
I salute all those caregivers out there making meals for their families after a long day of work and not letting the cucumbers in the fridge rot.
You are the real unsung heroes.
Cassina Farley can be contacted at cassinaandzachfarley@msn.com