Grocery Store Strolls

Clean up on aisle seven.

I had some appointments and errands downtown so I decided to stop for a few groceries while I was out and about.  I stopped at Publix and when I walked in I realized this wasn’t like the other Publix stores in town.  Bountiful bouquets of flowers greeted me, spacious aisles welcomed me.  

I was mesmerized.

On the drive home, I realized that I would’ve deemed that a fancy grocery store when I was a kid.

In my hometown, we only had two grocery stores for most of my childhood. A little IGA near my house and a bigger grocery store, Fazio’s, on the other side of town, a whopping three and a half miles away.

Mom took grocery shopping seriously.  On Sundays, when the Sunday newspaper arrived, Dad would read it and Mom would take it apart to get to the coupons. Scissors in hand, it was a Sunday routine for her to go through and snip coupons that she then put into her coupon organizer. It was a little expandable, accordion file with categories for canned goods, breads/rolls, cleaning products, paper products, cakes/cookies, spices/extracts.

Sometimes we’d go grocery shopping as a family, the three of us.  It usually didn’t work well. I would push the cart, Mom would lead and fill the cart. The shopping was one of a thousand chores Mom had each week.  If she was serious about the shopping, Dad was serious about the eating.  Dad would linger and lag behind looking at everything. It was like he was a student studying for an exam. What was on aisle five? How many types of soup does Campbell’s make? By the time Mom and I were in the dairy aisle and getting ready to check out, she would be so annoyed. Go find your father.  I’d search for him, find him, tell him we were checking out and then return to the cashier where Mom was handing over her coupons.  

Once in a great while, she would take us grocery shopping in the next town over, Bay Village.  We would go to Heinen’s (it’s still there!) and stroll the aisles oohing and aahing at the special ingredients they had on their shelves. I guess Mom needed a change of pace.

That’s when I realized that there was such a thing as a fancy grocery store.

You know you’re in a fancy grocery store when it has tile work, if not in the whole store, at least a section of it. Or even some hard wood flooring. The ceilings are high, higher than a normal store. The employees may have name tags pinned onto their shirts. On the coffee aisle, there are bins of beans and an industrial grinder for the customers’ use.

Grocery shopping was an event when we went Heinen’s. 

The store had a variety of produce that we didn’t have in our little town. I’m pretty sure I saw leeks for the first time and thought they were just extra large scallions. There was an international aisle and a relish bar. Mom had a weak spot for Catalina salad dressing. She could only find it at Heinen’s. Our stores just had generic French dressing. Not only did the store stock spaghetti, linguine and elbow macaroni, it also provided a plethora of pasta shapes that I considered fancy: wagon wheels; corkscrew; and bowtie noodles.

Mom would take us over there before the holidays to get some fancy items for dinner or appetizers on Christmas Eve. A tray of poached shrimp with cocktail sauce. Extra large mushroom caps for her stuffed mushroom recipe.  I’m pretty sure that’s where we’d get those little cocktail bread slices for Mom’s Hanky Panky recipe (I mentioned those in this issue.)

When we checked out, they would ask if we wanted them to load our groceries into our car. They’d put a green plastic tag on our carts with a number on it and we’d put that number on our car window. We’d go get our car and drive up to the curb.  Then, someone would bring our groceries to us and load them in the back. It was beyond lavish.

Even in adulthood, Mom and I would seek out new or “fancy” grocery stores. We discovered Whole Foods Market and Plum Market in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Mom introduced me to Fresh Market in Florida.

The last visit I had with her while she was still healthy, she took me to Nino Salvaggio’s in Detroit. We had so much fun looking at all the produce, buying and tasting things we’d only seen on TV, like lychee and dragon fruit.

To this day, when I find an especially good grocery store, a “fancy” grocery store, I remember Mom and think, she would love this place.

Thanks again for reading! I care about you, please don’t forget to eat your greens.