Grocery Shopping in a New Place

I have safely arrived in my new domain. First things first—I kicked my evening off with a grocery run.

I should tell you that I’ve only been in a true grocery store about three times in the last year. Louisiana is a Wal-mart hatchery apparently; we have super Wal-marts on practically every exit, which I frequent tri-weekly for everything. Turns out St. Louis is a big union town, and Wal-marts are scarce; super Wal-marts, almost unheard of. So I’m experiencing a traditional grocery store visit revival.

To begin, I was extremely impressed with the spices section. This particular grocer had Zatarain’s, Louisiana Fish Fry, and Tony Chachere’s products. (Imagine “I Will Survive” blaring in my head.)

The three major crises (in order of criticality) were rice, blue bell, and sausage:

Rice
1. Where’s the rice? I never realized how under-appreciated rice is. (This from someone who admittedly would rather have rice and crackers as a meal than almost anything else.) As opposed to the half-aisle devoted to rice in LA, rice here has a 4’ span on the bottom shelf of a non-descript aisle. Tsk tsk. I won’t comment on how much attention the blessed potatoes received. Oh, the injustice of it all!

Blue Bell
2. I hope this is a quirk of the particular grocer I visited tonight, but… there was no Blue Bell ice cream. Conspiracy theories welcome.

Sausage
3. Not a lot of pork sausage. I guess hoping for Savoie’s or Richard’s (pronounced Ree-shardz) sausage was a stretch. But then my eager eyes spotted a “Cajun Style” sausage. Victory! And then the “proudly made in Ohio” byline. I literally laughed out loud (not the most brilliant way to meet new people) in the meat section. So we’re going to see what red beans and jambalaya taste like with a generic pork/beef/chicken blend.

My guess is that I covered the major cultural adjustments tonight. That and the weather. It’s 82 and the wind is blowing. It feels like October in Louisiana!

Another New Arrival
I’m not the only newbie in the city. St. Louis Zoo has welcomed a new baby elephant. I voted for its new name to be Jaya, and I’m planning to visit the critter soon.

Source: St. Louis Zoo