Market

Finally this weekend, I managed to get my ass moving enough to clean. Started with cleaning a bit of carpet, due to Moby re-marking it. Enzymatic cleaner, hot water, and Feliway, and hopefully that will discourage further deposits. This is new, sort of, he's always liked throw rugs placed anywhere, but not regular carpeting. I'm sure it's a cat thing that makes perfect sense to him. Staring at the clean area spurred me on to do more, although we started with a grocery run.

We shop, when we can, at a market that is further away, and with somewhat higher prices at times, but on stuff we often can't get at the Close store. We learned to do this in Boston, eclectically shopping in different places throughout the week, since we often stopped on the way home from elsewhere, always walking, often just wanting to carry a bag, not bring the wheeled cart.

So we go to the Upper Store, in part because of a few brands, better cheeses, mostly because it's so much less frustrating, to move around in, to check out. They deal with our cloth bags without a whimper or a snarl, and seem to actually train their baggers. I mentioned the Upper Store at work, and they were aghast, "It's more expensive!" They mostly shop at Costco, and the like, getting huge amounts at discount, having houses (or living with their parents) with plenty of places to store the bulk, and more people to eat the food.

We are two people with different tastes, in a small apartment. Even if we pay twice as much (we don't) it's still a bargain because we eat what we buy. Getting twice as much would mean throwing half away, as it went bad, or we got sick of it. Which is why we don't make a point of going to Farmer's Markets (although I did at the excellent ones in Boston.) Prices seem good, fresh local vegetation, until I factor in how much of the mass will get eaten, versus thrown away, or just goes bad.

My mother often complained about the prices of food. But however low our income then, as we teetered on the edges of poverty, I would have preferred less food with better nutrition. No money for more than a couple pieces of fruit, when it was cheap. But we always had sugar and flour, coffee and tea, white bread and mayonnaise. She isn't really to blame, this was how her mother cooked, the common wisdom then was Fill 'em up with whatever will stick to their ribs.

But something is wrong when spinach is a rare treat given me by Aunt Alma. The first time I tasted spinach, I was in heaven. I ate lemons, just pulling apart sections and eating them like an orange, also from my dear aunt. I ate the rhubarb out of the back yard, the sour grapes from the arbor through the neighbors fence, the cherry tomatoes from the garden (bless mom for the garden) clover leaves. I may have been a bit malnourished. Not that I did much better when I had to feed myself. I still struggle to eat well, it all gets very complicated and fraught.

Because I wanted to brag about all the cleaning that got done, and instead ranted on about food.