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Monday, January 12, 2015

It's the Club Pack Life for Me (Adventures in Grocery Shopping)

(in general, it makes me feel sick to my stomach to fill a post with mediocre 
pictures from my phone... but I'd look even MORE out of place and 
ridiculous with my  camera around my neck at the grocery store.  
Poor quality camera photos courtesy of my pride... and apologies in advance.)

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~ It's the Club Pack Life for Me ~
(Adventures in Grocery Shopping)


I am a spectacle when I go grocery shopping.  A spectacle.  

And it's always something different.  Sometimes I have all the kids - some of them precariously perched in the cart, some of them dangling off the sides, some of them fondling the produce with fingers they just took out of their nose.  Last week I caught one of my children sinking her teeth into a package of pricey Gouda that, until a few days earlier, had been "aging" in an underground cheese cave for longer than the offending child had been alive.  



Sometimes I only have two children - one in the cart who is allowed an unlimited number of rice cakes in exchange for a pleasant disposition, and one strapped to my back.  The one on my back is systematically enlarging the bald spot under my ponytail one fistful of hair at a time.  With the baby-back-rider method of grocery shopping, it's safe to say that for every item I take out of the store, I leave a knotted wad of hair behind on the floor.  



Sometimes I just have one child and it's (verging on) delightful!   We go at 5:30 AM to avoid the crowds and to casually spy on investigate the morning floor-waxing crew.  I'm paranoid they'll be hunting me down: "Hey Mac!  It's malfunctioning again!  Too much mousy brown hair trapped in the mechanism..."   I mean, they could track me down.  There's DNA in hair, right?  And then there's my fingerprints all over the macadamia nuts    that I really wanted to buy but put back after remembering "the budget."  Evidence everywhere.



It's always something.  But the one thing that never changes is the volume.  So. many. groceries.  I get crazy bug-eyed jealous when I see young single professionals getting on the checkout line.  They push a mini cart up to the conveyor, neatly put 3 cups of yogurt, a 1/2 gallon of almond milk, a box of Wheat Thins, two bananas, and a six-pack of California rolls up there.  Food for a week.  It looks so neat, and manageable, and civilized.  I'm jealous not because I long for fewer mouths to feed, but because I long for a shopping trip that is a calm, wholesome exercise in selecting personal nourishment... not a three ring circus.  

When I shop for my family, the picture that the shopping cart paints is not one of civilization but of barbaric hordes with insatiable appetites... and toilet paper needs.  When I make it to the register I'm a sweaty mess.  The cart is completely and utterly overloaded.   Wide-eyed employees have approached me and asked with a mix of pity and incredulity, "do you think you need another cart??"  I can't imagine what they think the problem is - the glass jars of salsa and dill pickles teetering at the top of my grocery mountain aren't in any more danger of falling and shattering here in the store than they are in the hands of my children who will help put put them away at home.   So...???



There's no way around it.  People eat food.  Seven people live in my home.  Seven of them eat food.  And we don't homestead.  Or make our own re-usable toilet paper.  So when I go shopping, it's. a. haul.  



But our favorite grocery chain, Wegmans (the best grocery store in America, so says Consumer Reports), makes it easy on a mom like me.   Wegmans sells their already reasonably-priced store brand food and stuff in further-reduced price club packs.  Only, they must have recently sunk millions into a marketing study to determine that "Family Pack" was a more consumer-friendly term.   "Club Pack" was abandoned for "Family Pack", and believe me, this family is on board.   



Wegmans has more than quintupled (not actual data; just me eye-balling it) their Family Pack offerings in the past year and a half.  It used to be you could just buy paper products in bulk.  But now it's much more.  And I'm so grateful!  I leave there with Family Packs of fresh fruit, salad greens, red peppers, cucumbers, frozen fruit and vegetables, eggs, flour tortillas and tortilla chips, peanut butter, cheese, bread, cereal, salsa, pasta sauce, ground beef, chicken breasts, and more.  And you know we're going to eat it all. 



I love doing my big shopping super early in the morning - the store is nearly empty and I'm in a good frame of mind (I tend to buy less junk when I shop early.)  But in the early mornings they only have one cashier working to handle the normal 5:30 crowd - the two or three young, single professionals who already bought their yogurt and Wheat Thins earlier in the week and are now there only to buy an espresso and fresh, steaming croissant, not fourteen pounds of tissues.  One morning I could hear a collective groan from the customers around me as a started unloading my Family Packs of this and that onto the counter.  "What, is that like groceries for a month??" the man behind me asked.  (Honestly, it felt more like a commentary than a question.)   I laughed nervously.  "Hahaha.  This is for this week," I answered trying to look very busy lifting 16 lbs of apples and oranges out of my cart.  

My favorite story ever though, involved me with my normal load of Family Pack groceries and a far-from-normal instance of being "hit on."  (is that still what the kids are calling it these days??)  Maybe I forgot to wear my wedding ring that day, or maybe I had actually brushed my hair, or maybe I had gotten a few hours of uninterrupted sleep the night before and the ever-present dark circles under my eyes were looking light grayish instead of death-ish.  Who knows... but something overtook the cashier's powers of common sense, general awareness of his surroundings, and average abilities to assess the situation at hand.  He asked me if I was going to the big regional singles party that night.  I started sweating a little more than usual and looked at the groceries he was scanning so obliviously.  Does it look like I'm a single person?????????????   Would a single person be buying eleven canisters of oatmeal and seventeen tons of roasted unsalted almonds???????   Look at what is right in front of you ----- if I was single why in the name of all that is holy would I put myself through the agony and embarrassment of buying the Family Pack of 65 rolls of toilet paper??????????   Instead, I smiled and said, "No.  I'll be tucked in at home with my husband and four children."  (I had four children at the time, but I confess I briefly thought about falsifying the information about my offspring and telling him I had six or seven children just for shock value...)  

I know that one day I'll go to the grocery store and buy a mini-cart's worth of groceries - enough for Russ and I for a few days of simple eating.  One day, we'll be the empty nesters re-learning how to cook dinner for two.  But for now, feeding my family well is both a blessing and an ordeal.  Going grocery shopping feels like an Olympic event and looks like a carnival side show.  And for the next 15 years, at least, it's the club pack life for me :)






19 comments:

  1. Ok, I laughed out loud at the Gouda. Heehee!! Even with just three kids, it feels like all I do is shop for, prepare, serve, and clean up after food. All.day.long. They need to eat like all the time!! Arrgh! :) so hats off to you for managing it with 5. :)

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    1. just as you finish up from one meal it's time to prepare for the next, right?? It's like a revolving door kitchen :)

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  2. There's a scene in the original 'Yours, Mine and Ours' when the parents are grocery shopping, they approach the checkout and the operators shout out, "Hey Jack, Dan, Mike, the Beardsley's are here!" and the helpers come running to help bag up. I always feel that mentally my checkout operators are shouting the same when we approach.
    Our method- we shop once a month for 10-12 people which equals 3 trolleys. Which is why I shop really, really early in the morning, I feel less conspicuous. and I leave the children behind;)
    Hugs my friend, one day they will be older and you can leave them at home, for now I'd vote 5.30am everytime{{}}

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    1. ahh! One of my favorite movies (and books!) I love though, how the bill for all their food only comes to something like $127 and the cashier says, "would you care to check it??" :)
      I'd love to hear about your grocery survival tips. Do you do one big shop a month and fill in with fresh foods/dairy throughout? You must have extra refrigerators and freezers, right? With a family your size, I can imagine the logistics of storing food is just as crazy as the shopping itself!

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  3. I am now seriously considering a 5:30 am shopping trip. That is sheer genius. I made it to the store today with two children, coupons and not my list which was odd since it was in the same pocket as the coupons. Got most of it except for stamps and crockpot liners, so more scrubbing for me this week. Is it bad that a brand new, awesome HEB opened near us, and I went by myself, for fun one night. I felt goofy just walking around the store. I didn't even really get anything, just wanted to browse uninterrupted.

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    1. A night to browse the grocery store sounds divine!! Glad you enjoyed it!
      I've never tried crock pot liners, Sounds like they're worth it?
      I love going early and getting it out of the way. Since the employers are still putting out the fresh foods at that time, I shop "backwards" from the way I normally do and get to produce last. I've found that this requires enough concentration that I really only buy what's on my list and I avoid impulse purchases and cookies and ice cream purchases. So, it's worth it to get up early. (However, I confess that in the deep winter, I beg my friends and relatives to shop for me and just drop the groceries off at my house! Sometimes my mom or my husband oblige :) )

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    2. I love my crockpot liners. Seems wasteful but soooo worth it for some things (like oatmeal). Also makes saving leftovers supper easy. Just throw a twist tie on the bag. I don't know if I would buy crockpot liners now because my life is more calm, if they would be worth it. But I have leftovers from a busier Fall a couple years ago when they were a necessity.

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  4. Mike has thankfully taken over the grocery shopping for our fam ever since i was 34 weeks prego with the twins. it used to take him hours (even sans kids) and he would always go over budget. but now the man is a pro and he can get in and out in about an hour...even with kids. though he often uses the W Kids for them, which they beg to go in, and shops with the twins in that massive car cart that cannot make turns...ever. but he gets tons of consolation for all his trouble with ooooohhhhs and aaaaahhhhs from all the ladies. nothing says attractive like a man going grocery shopping...with all the kids...and 2 of them are twins...that look just like their dad! haha. man, i love wegmans. i honestly might have a nervous breakdown if they all disappeared and we had to shop at Tops. shurfine has got nothing on weggies!

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    1. Way to go, Mike!! Russ does my little fill-in stuff, but I do the big shop every 2 - 3 weeks. I don't think I could forgo control of that :)
      (ps - I hate TOPS...)

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  5. I try to shop for 2 weeks at a time for my crew, and it takes 2-3 carts, but our grocery store doesn't open until 9 am, so I can't do early morning trips (like I used to do before I defected from a larger chain). I remember the days of having to take my little ones, but now I have older kids who can watch my littles, and when I get home the call is, "If you want to eat this week, come help bring in the food." Everyone helps--my favorite helper is my 3 year old, who takes this duty very seriously. You're not alone! There are lots of us out there shopping this way--it just seems that we're hiding ourselves from the world and perhaps from each other.

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    1. Yep, it's all hands on deck here as well when the food makes it home from the store :) Thank goodness for enthusiastic helpers!!

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  6. Ha! I laughed out loud at least five times reading this. I love the single professional with three cups of yogurt and a carton of almond milk!!

    We don't have that chain by us but I like the family pack idea!!

    Jamie

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    1. Thanks for stopping by and commenting, Jaime!
      (write to Wegmans and invite them to your area. Their cheese shop and bakery are to die for!)

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  7. Wow! That is a lot of groceries!! Is that every week? I love Wegman's for some of their club packs…the shredded cheese and spinach are usually on my list there and they do send good coupons in the mail. I don't take the kids usually anymore…either shopping at night (before women's group!) or sending a list with Brian. It's always been one of the least favorite chores that we just have to fit in somewhere. Which is probably one of the reasons my menu plans are pretty lame…makes the shopping and planning so much easier.

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    1. I know! I seriously can't believe sometimes how much it takes to feed a family. But the shopping described above is more like what I do about every 2 weeks. Russ is generous enough to use an occasional lunch break for picking up fresh foods and extra stuff during the in-between times :) What would we do w/o our guys?!

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  8. I should be in the group of young, single, professionals buying 3 cups of yogurt but I definitely go for the family pack (or equivalent, since I don't think we have Wegman's in SoCal) of non-perishable anything. That's partly because I don't like grocery shopping and partly because I'm still in the bulk-buying mindset after growing up as 1 of 5 kids.
    I love that you can go so early in the morning, it sounds like it makes your trips much simpler.

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  9. Love this Theresa! I give you credit- I try not to bring the kids grocery shopping- thought I'd give that up for Lent a couple years ago:) I go super early on Sat. mornings too just to avoid the crowds and kids hanging off my cart begging for food or toys. I age every time I have to run there with kids- so stressful! And---- Wegmans is the best!

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  10. This was hilarious! I'm not quite there yet (with just three kids), but grocery shopping is increasingly becoming more of an ordeal. 5:30 am sounds nuts to me! I don't usually wake up for several hours after that. But perhaps one day, it will be the only way to manage it. Yikes! (were these photos actually current? Because I'm shivering just looking at your kids in short sleeves in January!)

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    1. haha! Even though my toddler loves to wear as few clothes as possible even in winter, I've been collecting the grocery pics since summer :)

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