Betty Dowdy's Diary
by Betty Jean Craige, University of Georgia
[published in Flagpole Magazine, July 24, 1996]
I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow night when my guests come for my dinner party. I was planning to have baked red snapper and pasta, which I know how to prepare, but I didn't manage to get the right ingredients when I went to Kroger's.
I shopped at Kroger's today because senior citizens get a discount on Wednesdays. I guess that's because there's so little we can digest that we mostly just buy drugs. Anyway, I got one of Kroger's nice new gray shopping carts and headed toward the vegetables. On my way through the bakery I picked up a loaf of The Great Dakotas Sundried Tomato Bread. In the wonderful vegetable section, where sounds of thunder tell us when the vegetables are about to get a shower, I put into my cart six Roman tomatoes, one head of Boston lettuce, one clove of elephant garlic, one bunch of parsley, a bag of lemons, and a pound of pole beans. Because Kroger's is so big and the aisles are so long, I parked my cart near avocados, so that I could pick up a few items nearby quickly. I needed two bottles of LaCroix mineral water for my party, because nobody drinks water anymore. Then I walked over to the fish counter, where Titus gave me the last of the red snapper.
I returned to my cart and deposited the LaCroix and the package of red snapper. Then I left it again to get vermouth, which was on aisle #2 with all the wines. Finding Cinzano Sweet Vermouth with little trouble, I figured that I had gotten almost everything I needed for my party--except pasta and milk. I pushed my cart a half block across the store, past frozen foods, hardware, Hallmark cards, charcoal, automotive, dog food, and shampoo, to the dairy department.
As I put the milk into my cart, I discovered that somebody had taken my red snapper and the two bottles of LaCroix--and also my tomatoes, lettuce, garlic, parsley, lemons, pole beans, and Sundried Tomato Bread! Oh dear! Instead, of what I'd selected I found four cobs of white corn, Fresh Express Farms Riviera Salad Mix, peaches, a watermelon, a cake in the shape of a bulldog, and Pineapple Walnut Delight from the deli. I must have picked up the wrong cart back there in vegetables! So I grabbed the vermouth, left that cart parked near butter, and returned to vegetables.
I couldn't find my original cart, but near kiwi fruit I found one with most of the stuff I needed. It had parsley, garlic, red leaf lettuce, green leaf lettuce, lemons, Colombo Fisherman's Wharf Sourdough Bread, summer squash, okra, white grapes, and a bag of Vidalia onions. That was good enough. I took that cart and rolled it over to tomatoes, where I replaced the six I had lost. I don't eat onions, because I can't digest them, so I removed the onions from my cart and put them in another cart that some folks had left unattended near melons. I gave those folks the okra too.
Now I needed to go back to Titus at the fish counter and get his advice about another kind of fish to cook. He showed me grouper, cod, halibut, amberjack, orange roughy, salmon, salmon trout, tilapia, mussels, Pacific sea bass, medium shrimp, large shrimp, extra large shrimp, and jumbo shrimp, and mussels, oysters, squid, octopus, and live Maine lobster. Since there was no more red snapper, I decided to try orange roughy.
I took the orange roughy and headed back to chicken, where I found chicken livers for my dogs. On my way I passed a cart with paper plates, plastic cups, Quick Lite Charcoal, José Cuervo Margarita mix, Wise Choice Low Fat Bar-B-Q Flavored Baked Potato Chips, pork chops, and marshmallows. Somebody was going to have a cook-out. I took the Margarita mix and left the summer squash.
All I needed now was pasta. I parked my car near chicken and then spent ten minutes looking at all the pasta: Kroger Enriched Spaghetti, Kroger Enriched Thin Spaghetti, Kroger Enriched Vermicelli, Kroger Enriched Elbow Macaroni, Kroger Enriched Fettucini, Kroger Enriched Angel Hair, Kroger Enriched Lasagna, Kroger Enriched Rainbow Salad Whirls. Since they were all enriched, I felt that it didn't matter what I chose. So I selected Kroger Enriched Angel Hair and went back to where I'd left my cart. Good grief! It was gone! Somebody must have moved it by mistake!
I was just too exhausted to continue shopping, so I started walking towards the check-out counters. But would you believe my good fortune! I found an abandoned cart with all kinds of interesting things: elephant garlic, jack cheese, Romaine lettuce, six long yellow peppers, a dozen little green tomatoes which I think are called tomatillos, some tiny dark green peppers, limes, corn tortillas, José Cuervo Margarita mix, Tribe of Two Sheiks Scallion Hummus, a Bugs Bunny helium balloon, The Great Dakotas Pesto Bread, the movie The Terminator, and a white package from the fish counter that looked a lot like my red snapper. So I took that cart to the check-out stand. $31.43.
On my way home I tried to create a new menu for my party: I could have pesto bread with scallion hummus for an hors d'oeuvre, a tomatillo and garlic salad, and fish with some of those long yellow peppers. I'd find out how to cook the tiny dark green peppers from that nice young Williams boy in the deli. Maybe I could bake the fish with both yellow and green peppers.
But when I got home and opened up the fish package I found squid. Goodness! I have no idea what to do with squid! I guess I'd better go back and get advice from Titus. I'll do that after I watch The Terminator.
By Betty Jean Craige
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